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The Cat Returns is regarded as one of Studio Ghibli's more underrated films and actually shares a deep connection to Disney's Cinderella. The Cat Returns is a fantasy isekai anime which follows a young girl protagonist named Haru, who accidentally lands herself in the crosshairs of the strange and conniving Cat King of the Cat Kingdom. The Cat Returns is also a rare Studio Ghibli spinoff film, as the studio is not known for producing spinoffs, prequels, or sequels to their stories.

Haru's story incorporates many different fairy tale motifs. Not only is this a common style of storytelling for fantasy films and children's media, but it's also a popular choice for Studio Ghibli creations. As is always the case for Studio Ghibli films, the chosen fairy tale motifs in The Cat Returns are clever, thoughtful, cohesive, and they analyze fairy tales from a few different angles.

Haru Becomes...

Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is one of the stars who has been the topic of discussion ever since she dropped the lawsuit against her co-star Justin Baldoni and his production company in December 2024. Of course, Baldoni, who not only co-starred opposite Lively but also served as the director of the movie It Ends With Us, was not going to sit back and accept the allegations. He has since then filed a lawsuit against the New York Times, Blake Lively, and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us | Credits: Sony Pictures

The actress, who is going to be seen in the sequel of A Simple Favor along with Anna Kendrick, has the full support of her husband. They recently stepped out in the public eye to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Saturday Night Live. Baldoni and Lively’s trial will begin in May 2026, but ahead of that,...

The elaborate heist that kicks into motion early into Dominik Graf’s The Cat effectively douses the steamy sex scene that opens the film with ice cold water. As the well-tanned, brawny Probek (Götz George) stands naked at the window of the low-lit hotel room in which he’s just gotten his rocks off, and from where he’ll orchestrate much of his exacting plan, one can’t help but think of the antiheroes in Michael Mann’s crime films. That’s especially true once Probek dons a shirt and tie and meticulously puts together his assault rifle and sets up his telescope to check out the bank on the other side of the courtyard.

Indeed, Probek is the very image of the sharply dressed, highly professional criminal. And he takes on his duties in a god-like fashion as he serves as the unseen puppet master from above, secretly pulling...

Old, resurfaced Tweets by The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt Red reveal that the upcoming project wasn't always labeled as a direct sequel. The Polish developer revealed the first details of its next project after Cyberpunk 2077 in a dramatic narrative trailer during The Game Awards last night, leading players to speculate on everything from potential release windows to the identity of its protagonist. But lest players forget, the next Witcher game was actually announced a long time ago, in a far more cryptic manner that implied it might not have been a direct sequel.

The Witcher 4 was originally announced in a promotional image posted on social media, depicting what looks like an amulet of representing a Witcher school (pictured below). It was originally captioned, "A new saga begins." On that occasion, Cdpr's PR Director Radek Grabowski posted on X (then called Twitter) to remind fans not to call the upcoming game...

Studio Ghibli dazzles fans the world over thanks to its stunning animation, compelling characters and unforgettable stories, many of which draw viewers into breathtaking worlds. While many of Studio Ghibli’s films are celebrated for their heart and artistry, some include elements of action, danger and suspense, with the characters forced into explosive situations in the pursuit of their goals. The high-octane moments lend the stories a dynamic punch, keeping viewers captivated and on the edge of their seat, while satisfying a need for fantasy at the same time.

These elements of action help drive up the stakes the characters face, adding to the trials and tribulations that make the protagonists’ victories all the more savory. From Sheeta’s and Pazu’s explosive discovery of the legendary Laputa in Castle in the Sky to Nausicaä stopping a budding war between the Empire of Tolmekia and the creatures of the toxic...

The InvinciblesA decade ago, Dominik Graf was Frg’s (Federal Republic of Germany) best kept secret: The nation’s one grandmaster of cinema whom the rest of the world had never heard of, or not taken proper interest in his work whenever there was a chance to. There certainly have been chances: his heist thriller Die Katze (The Cat,1988) was big enough back home for even distant observers to notice. His eccentric comedy Spieler (The Gamblers, 1990) screened in Venice’s competition, with seemingly nobody giving a shit, not even the locals—the film looked like some bizarre alien creature in those early post-Wall days when good spirits and humor were the order of the day, not subversive laughter about life’s inherent weirdness. When a dozen plus years on his melodrama Der Felsen (A Map of the Heart, 2002) got selected for the Berlinale competition, the film provoked something akin to...

Dominik Graf has finally properly landed in America, and it's about damn time. The German director, known almost exclusively for a prodigious—and unexportable—output of work for television, has been directing since the 1970s, but only Beloved Sisters, one of this year's Berlinale competitors, has managed to secure proper theatrical distribution in the United States. I don’t know if the time is ripe or, more likely, if this is a mere fluke. Graf’s omnivorous ingestion of German social, political, cultural, and material histories and transformation of their tensions into deeply intelligent, supremely revealing genre dramas ipso facto must eventually create something international distributors think non-Germans might want to see. Then again, previous films by the director seemingly ripe or obvious for English-language audiences, including the Die Hard-like action-siege film Die Katze (1988, which was actually pathetically limitedly shown with an alternate soundtrack in the Us), the zany post-Berlin...

One of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, it's already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).

Graf's work includes pieces from the seventies to the present day. By working in TV he has been able to work regularly, something denied most feature directors, and seems to thrive on the tight schedules and budgets. Nightwatch, a 1993 episode of the long-running series "Der Fahnder", comes on like Fleischer's The Narrow Margin, with a cop guarding a gangster's moll who doesn't...

Below you will find our total coverage of the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam by Daniel Kasman.

Above: Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part.

Trembling Disturbed

On Sergei Loznitsa's Letter, Peter Schreiner's Fata Morgana, Pedro Costa's Sweet Exorcist, and Filipa César's Cacheu

Two as One as Many

On Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Long Farewells (1971), Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part, and David Gatten's By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging.

Of Cinema, Pixels and Chinese Warfare

On Mary Helena Clark's Orpheus (Outtakes), Makino Takashi's 2012, and Johnnie To's Drug War

Graf Attack!: or The Possibility Space (The Cinema of Dominik Graf)

On Dominik Graf, including Die Katze (1988), Spieler (1990), Der Fahnder: Nachtwache (1990/1993], Die Sieger (1994), Denk ich an Deutschland - Das Wispern im Berg der Dinge (1997), München - Geheimnisse einer Stadt (2002), Der Felsen (2002), Die Freunde der Freunde (2002), Hotte im Paradies...

Rotterdam this year has offered one certifiable giant discovery in international cinema: German filmmaker Dominik Graf, revealed in a simultaneously introductory and interventionist retrospective programmed by Christoph Huber and Olaf Möller. An incredibly prolific filmmaker beginning in the late 1970s, Graf has interwoven his cinema into the fabric of the German television industry, producing a body of work ranging from television episodes, made-for-tv films, essay movies, documentaries, and a handful of films intended for the cinema.

Yet despite Graf's prodigious output of nearly sixty works, its primarily creation for national television has meant that it has been essentially unavailable to English-speaking audiences prior to Rotterdam's 17 film retrospective. The first film of his I saw was Komm mir nicht nach (Don't Follow Me Around) in the middle of the Dreileben trilogy in 2010, notably another for-television project, but one which had festival and theatrical ambitions beyond German living rooms, perhaps due...