Don't listen to the negative reviews

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Millennium Actress is one of Satoshi Kon's finest works, and considering just how respected he is as a film director, that's saying something. It's a story about an aging actress who reminisces about her life as a young film star in the early 20th century Japan. The tale is told largely through flashbacks where memories mix with reality and dreams.And it is utterly gorgeous. The whole film looks fantastic, especially how they managed to capture the different eras and genres of film making with slightly changing animation styles. The only other studio or director that can in any way compete with this level of quality is Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki. It's that good. I also really like the way the framing story is mixed with the smaller flashback segments, with the interviewer putting in as different heroic characters. It's a tale about movies, but also about her personal struggle to find meaning in her life and to reach towards her past and lost chances. All the flashbacks intertwine, making it one of those film you almost have to see twice to fully get.The voice acting is also topnotch, the character designs are fantastic and even though the way the story is told is almost better than the story itself - journey over the destination - it's not a bad story at all, dealing heavily with Japan's film history.Millennium Actress is a treat for all that appreciate non-conventional storytelling, deeply layered characters and gorgeous animation. Please, check it out.

Brilliant ! Beautiful ! Heartbreaking and hilarious.A uniquely told story, with a mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat, laughing, crying, and everything in between.The artistic geniuses of Madhouse animation have done it again, bringing us an exquisitely animated feast for the eyes. There are so many "wow" moments in this film, with great attention to realistic details, textures, and shadows. Millennium Actress is truly a visual masterpiece. This is a MUST SEE film for fans of anime, and anyone who likes a slightly surreal, mysterious, amusing, yet heart-tugging story.The only thing this film left me wanting was : more.

Satoshi Kon's films tend to have ambitious narrative structures. This one, "Millennium Actress", is no different. It revolves around Genya Tachibana, a documentary director who tracks down Chiyoko Fujiwara, a Japanese movie star he's long admired from afar. He finds her living in the countryside, now a recluse, having retired from acting some 30 years ago.Much of the film watches as Chiyoko recounts her life's story for Tachibana. Her many accomplishments and achievements are then tied to a young man whom she once briefly met and fell in love with. Tachibana, it turns out, spent much of her life attempting to track this man down, not knowing that he died shortly after their first encounter. The film then becomes an elaborate metaphor for a mankind which is doomed to perpetually chase after idealised, objects of desire. The unbridgeable gap between fantasy and reality then becomes the engine which both inspires all human progress, and is responsible for an intrinsic human Lack, an unquenchable discontentment. Achievement, then, is paradoxically tied to an inability to quite achieve. Typifiying the film's psychological complexity, "Millennium Actress" is structured as a grand chase, Chiyoko's reality is repeatedly traumatically interrupted whenever she nears her lover (on a psychological level, humans tend to self-sabotage, or self-destruct the closer they get to Desire), the film is symbolically framed by giant rocket-ships, mankind's capabilities limitless so long as there exists a gap to be bridged, and Tachibana's long-distance love for Chiyoko echoes Chiyoko's own love for the stranger.Whilst the film's first hour may seem disjointed, shapeless and even dull, a powerful ending helps bring things into focus. This ending is almost ruined by an unnecessary line of dialogue, given to Chiyoko, which spells out the film's central theme. It's a heavy-handed and unneeded line. Elsewhere the film uses Chiyoko's life story as a means of trawling through Japan's own political and cinematic history (lots of allusions to famous Japanese films and events).7.9/10 – Worth two viewings.

Two guys, a journalist-fan and a cameraman, go and visit for an interview an old actress-san. But she is not an actress, it's a spirit, and a mess. The spirit of why we go to the movies, epic ones, lovely ones, and with a sustained interest when there is love in the ones...But are we ever satisfied, since we go from one movie to the next, and we never seem to find the perennial text, since she wanders from one film to the next? Oh, certain ones will certainly say, it's the mess of haughty metonymy, that persists on things we've x'd, from one life to the next (to half-quote James Merrill), our desire being ever unsatisfied, and are we defied, does that really interest me? Not this me, unfortunately...As the cameraman stands naggingly, and long before the end redundantly, for the audience, one longs to be something else than an audience, since constantly being reminded so, and to a tepid purpose. The film concludes with a kind of secretive a la "Citizen Cane" phrase, that would clarify things, things concerning the actress's quest: it all is something that goes on forever, supposedly for the sheer pleasure of it, but it all comes off as a kind of masochistic silliness.