On paper, Ghost Cat Anzu would seem to be this year’s most family-friendly offering at the annual Scotland Loves Anime Film Festival, now in its 15th year. Compared to most other films, the audience was certainly composed of a higher proportion of families with children. Perhaps they weren’t expecting such a deeply strange movie, with a first half structured of loosely associated, scatalogically humorous skits and a second, more action-packed half descending into a chaotic exploration of Buddhist Hell, complete with violent comedy torture demons and deeply unsettling afterlife implications for at least one central character. We go from funny cat man licking his balls to “Needle Mountain Hell” and “Great Screaming Hell” within a matter of minutes.

Ghost Cat Anzu is bonkers, and I love it for that.

It’s not only the unhinged plot that sets Ghost Cat Anzu apart. For one, it’s a French-Japanese co-production and an adaptation of a relatively obscure single-volume 17-year-old manga (though a sequel began serialization earlier this year). Screenwriter Shinji Imaoka is best known for his work on several sexually explicit “pink films,” a brave choice for a “family” movie. Unusually, Ghost Cat Anzu has two directors because, in The Case of Hana and Alice-style, the film was first shot with one director entirely in live-action, then digitally painted over under the aegis of an animation director. I’d hesitate to call the animation style pure rotoscoping, however – while the characters do move in a more naturalistic fashion than in much other anime, it’s not distracting or deliberately provocative like Flowers of Evil, which reveled in its naturalistic ugliness. Here, the live-action performances are transformed not into something uncanny or disconcerting, but human and relatable, even fantastical.

Take Karin – she’s a brat. Manipulative and conniving, she’s not a “nice” kid, but then life hasn’t been “nice” to her. We quickly learn that she changes her demeanor depending on the audience. With her father, she’s rude and condescending, referring to him only by his given name and with no honorifics. Around other adults, such as her grandad, she’s all wide eyes and broad smiles as she pretends to be a “good girl.” It’s funny and a little sad how she uses the blushing village boys to pursue her vindictive agendas. The animation style captures every nuance of her body language, adding to our understanding of her conflicted, complex character. Her facial expressions, in particular, are hilarious. It’s unusual for a child in this animation genre to be so thoroughly fleshed out – she’s an excellent example of a character who acts hatefully but remains empathetic for the audience.

Despite being a supernaturally-sized immortal “ghost cat” (a translation of the Japanese term “bakeneko”), Anzu himself acts more like a slightly weird, single, 37-year-old uncle with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts and farting loudly in public. His facial expression rarely changes – huge wide eyes that are difficult to read, emoting mainly by the liberal use of oddly-floating sweatdrops. He’s hilariously flawed, getting pulled over by the police for riding a motorbike unlicensed and losing Karin’s money at pachinko. At times, he’s the unfair target of Karin’s resentment, but as part of her family, he loves and looks out for her, making sacrifices and suffering for her wellbeing. He’s a good kitty, really.

Anzu’s not the only strange creature. In this version of rural Japan, the supernatural is but another aspect of everyday life – hence, when we meet various yokai, they’re engaged in normal human activities, and no one bats an eyelid. Of course, a tanuki can work as a golf caddy, and obviously, a human-sized frog digs enormous holes and runs his own private hot spring pool. There’s a gaggle of cute little spherical tree sprite birdie thingies that stepped straight out of a Miyazaki movie and a really weird-looking mushroom guy that adds to the extremely colorful supporting cast.

While Anzu’s daft antics raised a great deal of laughter from among the festival audience, it’s a slowly-paced film with strange comedic timing, where it takes a long time for anything to happen. That’s not necessarily a criticism; many writers and directors have made entire careers producing slice-of-life anime celebrating the pleasures of a slow life. So it’s unexpected that Ghost Cat Anzu goes to such exotic – and disturbing – places in its second half – switching up bucolic country existence first for urban Tokyo and then for the various levels of Buddhist Hell, here depicted as an upmarket hotel populated by Chinese-style demons and the souls of the dead. Comparisons with Keiichi Hara‘s Colorful spring to mind, with newly-deceased humans queueing up to receive details of their souls’ fate from businesslike attendants.

I don’t want to spoil the details of why the characters end up in hell or what they do there, but the film culminates in a truly demented car chase involving a minibus full of demons, Anzu demonstrating his most dangerous motorcycling skills, and an insanely-animated yokai-driven sports car sequence. It’s all so silly, and while wonderfully fun for adults, there’s a tonally discomforting element of quite brutal violence, played apparently for laughs. It may be too much for younger kids, and the ultimate outcome of these events may lead to challenging conversations with questioning children about Eastern concepts of the afterlife that may require entering a Wikipedia Death Spiral for parents.

At its core, Ghost Cat Anzu is a film about a young girl struggling with the scars that death has inflicted on her life, lashing out in anger and resentment at those around her, bargaining in an attempt to change her situation, and finding a way to gain acceptance. Indeed, there’s some denial mixed up in there somewhere, too. Ghost Cat Anzu‘s ending will spark disagreements among viewers, as many aspects are left ambiguous, even though the central conflicts are satisfyingly resolved. It’s absolutely not the sort of animated film you’d expect to see from a Western studio.

Even if you’re not a fan of rotoscoped animation, don’t let that put you off Ghost Cat Anzu. It’s a deeply strange but entertaining film that, although it seems to start as a silly comedy, proves to be profoundly emotionally intelligent and interesting. Karin makes for a compelling and conflicted lead, ably supported by her charismatic and weird cat-uncle. Recommended for fans of Japanese folklore, “difficult” girls, and fart jokes. Nya-ha-ha-ha!

At the end of her first summer camp, 11-year-old Naíma Arteaga was nervous about the final group activity she was required to do: sing in a rock band and perform onstage in front of a large audience.

The task sounds ludicrous, but Arteaga wasn’t at any ordinary camp — she was at Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles (pronounced cheek-ecks roh-kerr-ecks), where girls, trans, and gender-fluid youth learn to play instruments, create bands with one another, write original songs and perform live for a crowd during a showcase, all in just the span of a week.

“Going into that camp I was honestly a little bit more on the shy side,” Arteaga, who is now 18 and a camp volunteer, said. “I was nervous about singing, I just didn’t feel comfortable with it, but by the end of the week it really helped me boost my confidence, and it really helped me come out of my shell.”

Former campers like Arteaga are celebrating the rock camp on Saturday with an opening reception at the South Gate Museum and Art Gallery, where a special exhibit on CRSELA will be on display until Dec. 3. The exhibit highlights a decade of CRSELA’s history, with editorial photographs of students through the years, DIY flyers, camp artwork and archival objects representing colorful moments in the kids’ musical journeys.

“It’s important to make sure we are using this space to highlight and honor our communities,” Jennifer Mejia, cultural arts coordinator at the South Gate Museum and Art Gallery said. “What Chicxs Rockerxs SELA has been doing for 10 years should be celebrated and seen.”

CRSELA began as an idea in 2013 by a nonhierarchical collective of musicians who were inspired by Portland’s pioneering Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and the larger Girls Rock Camp organizations in the U.S. CRSELA became an official nonprofit in 2014.

Museum Cordinator Jennifer Mejia poses for a portrait with Chicxs Rockerxs memorabilia in the background at South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

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Like the other camps, CRSELA’s mission was to empower young girls through musical self-expression, however, CRSELA sought to make camp more accessible to low-income families, especially since other camps required a steep tuition. At CRSELA, donations from the public cover the costs of the program for each student.

“Chicxs Rockerxs is tuition-free, and when you have these fees it does deter people, so [rock camp] was something that they definitely wanted to take to their communities,” Priscilla Hernandez, an organizer with CRSELA, said.

The camp also wanted to make the experience more inclusive for historically disenfranchised neighborhoods throughout South L.A. This appealed to Hernandez, who as a teenager in 2013, received a scholarship to attend a Girls Rock Camp in another city. She had a positive experience but says she was cognizant of the glaring fact that few campers shared her background.

“I definitely didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me there,” Hernandez said.

After reaching the age limit at the Girls Rock Camp, Hernandez wondered what to do next. She heard about CRSELA and felt aligned with its values, so she decided to join in 2017 as a volunteer, teaching bass to students. She eventually became an official core organizer, a “Comx” (pronounced cohm-ecks) as their group calls them, a gender-neutral version of the Spanish word “Comadre,” which translates to “godmother.”

Miles Recio, from left, Priscilla Hernandez, Angie Barrera and Vikki Gutman pose at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

“The message resonated with me a lot when I was aging out of [Girls Rock] camp, [CRSELA] wanted to incorporate a lot of things about Latinidad and pieces that were in Spanish, and that was something that wasn’t part of the other camps,” Hernandez said.

Programming for the South East L.A. camp goes beyond music education. The kids take part in a wide range of artistic workshops to express their creativity, such as zine-making and screen-printing. During lunch, they’re visited by drag queens and local bands who perform for the kids to provide play and entertainment.

Students entering the program are divided into two groups: the Bidi Bidis and the Bom Boms. The monikers for the two classifications pay homage to the song “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” by Tejano legend Selena Quintanilla. The Bidi Bidis consist of kids ages 8 to 11 while the Bom Boms are ages 12 to 17. When Arteaga joined CRSELA as a student in 2017 (the same year Hernandez became a volunteer), she was part of the Bidi Bidis, and even though she was joined by kids younger than her, Arteaga said it didn’t diminish the experience. The band allowed her to discover her self-confidence and power.

“The second that me and my band stepped onstage, I felt like I was a different person,” the former CRSELA student said. “My parents had even told me that they were like, ‘Wow,’ that they had never seen me like that before. I don’t know what happened, I was just doing my thing up there.”

Miles Recio poses for a portrait with Chicxs Rockerxs memorabilia at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

This was a breakthrough moment for Arteaga, who felt compelled to sign up every summer thereafter. She even tried out the drums, which she ended up loving so much that she never stopped playing them. In 2023, she reached her final year as an eligible camper. Resolved to make the most of it, she made what she says is her “best” band — a punk act with her cousin, a fellow Bom Bom — but her graduation from the program was bittersweet, and Arteaga admits she cried immediately after the showcase.

“I loved the camp so much, I didn’t want that feeling to end, I’m glad that I still get the opportunity to go back as a volunteer, but it was very heartbreaking to me,” she said.

At the 10th annual camp this past July, Arteaga completed her first year as a volunteer band coach with the Bidi Bidis, the same group she started out with seven years ago. She hopes to re-create her camper experience for others and continue to propagate CRSELA’s work in L.A.

“It changed my life and it’s had such a big impact for me. I feel like it’s so important to keep [CRSELA] around because a lot of stuff goes on in the world and you just never know what’s happening in someone’s home or in their own community, it’s a way to get away from all of that and a way to escape reality,” Arteaga said. “This is the perfect place for people who want to learn more about themselves, learn more about music, get to know people. It’s an amazing place for anybody to be at.”

Gladiator 2 recaptures the grandeur of ancient Rome, echoing the epic scale of the 2000 original. Directed by Ridley Scott, the sequel leans heavily into grand action, however, it lacks the emotional depth that made its predecessor unforgettable.

Set over two decades after Gladiator [2000], the story follows Lucius (Paul Mescal), now called Hanno, who lives as a soldier in Numidia until General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invades, forcing him back into the Roman Empire. Under Macrinus (Denzel Washington), Lucius re-enters the brutal arena, ultimately driven to challenge young emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn) to fulfil his father Maximus’s vision of a Rome free from slavery.

The word Gladiator evokes emotions and memories of Russell Crowe in the Ridley Scott film. There has been an entire generation of audience that has grown up to love Gladiator and watched it multiple times. Unfortunately, the new film not only fails to match up to the original but also disappoints on multiple fronts.

Here’s the trailer:

The sequel delivers action, gore, and an electrifying score that elevates the viewing experience, but none of this compensates for the lack of emotional resonance. Unlike the original, which skillfully pulled emotional strings, Gladiator 2 fails to evoke a lasting impact. Family reunions and Lucius’s separation from his loved ones lack poignancy, leaving viewers uninvested. The story, while epic in scale, is too predictable and lacks nuance, with a few twists that genuinely surprise you.

When Lucius loses people close to him, one is supposed to feel empathetic towards him, but it hardly stirs any emotions. Perhaps the delay and the writers’ strike in Hollywood are to be blamed, or maybe it is just lazy writing.

The hand-to-hand combat scenes of Gladiator made the film a unique experience in 2000. While the action scenes in Gladiator 2 are good, they don’t add up to the experience people had while watching the Russel Crowe original.

David Scarpa keeps the screenplay more or less linear with flashbacks connecting the dots. The only interesting character in Gladiator 2 perhaps is that of Denzel Washington as Macrinus, who plays to the gallery. He is covet in his tactics and is driving the politics in the narrative. But it isn’t enough. The revelation of Lucius being the Prince of Rome is hardly startling for us or the Roman Empire.

Performances by the cast are great. From Paul to Denzel to Pedro, everyone knows the stakes are high, and they are pitch-perfect with their dialogue delivery and action-packed performances. However, without a strong emotional core, Gladiator 2 can feel like a chore, with its two-and-a-half-hour runtime dragging to feel even longer.

The challenges of making a follow-up to a cult classic film are multiple. While Gladiator 2 has a few moments that work, overall, the inevitable comparisons to the original prevent it from becoming a wholesome new experience.

2.5 out of 5 stars for Gladiator 2.