Similarities in Miyazaki movies

There are many similarities in Miyazaki's three movies we watched in class. Two (Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke) contained mysterious blob-like things that tried to destroy things. Two (S.A. and Totoro) had children as the main characters who stood up for what they believed in and didn't hold back from a challenge. They all seemed to have main characters that made foolish mistakes also that put themselves at risk. Another common element was the use of gods. All three of the movies contained gods, both good and bad, that affected the main character(s). They also contained other strange spirits and creatures that were very interesting in appearance like the little tree spirits, the totoro, and the turnip spirit.
All three movies were very interesting and entertaining. Miyazaki has very interesting ideas and a very unique way of animating movies.

Eternal Sunshine and Waking Life

From Waking Life I learned that many people have different views on the aspects of life. I learned that these philosophical ideas are very in depth and hard for the average person to easily understand. I also learned about the many different types of animation and this allowed me to see others' views of people and things. The movie also educated me about dreams and how far the mind can go in imagining things. I found some of the ideas to be true like the fact that you can't change lighting in dreams. It made me remember back to some of my dreams and I found that I couldn't turn off or on lights in my dreams.
This movie was very confusing to me and at times seemed random. It changed from character to character and I had no idea why except that it was introducing new ideas and characters to us. It was an interesting movie with some very unique animation types, but it didn't seem to have much of a story line and was very confusing.
The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a much better movie in my opinion. It was also confusing to watch, but after thinking about it made since. This movie made me feel like life is shorter than we think and that we should basically live it up and do as much as we can in this short time. I think it had some interesting film techniques and an interesting story line. I found this movie to be really inspirational in a way because it showed how much he loved her and how he wanted to hold onto the memories of her. It was inspirational in a way I can't describe because it was as if even though you can do something that may change life for the better, it may in turn end up changing it for the worse. I can't really describe well how this movie was so inspirational to me.
This movie was very interesting, but seemed to be out of order in a way. The middle part where he was getting his memories erased happened first and yet was in the middle part of the movie. It was pretty confusing but very strong in a different way than other movies I have seen before.
This movie seemed to teach that even though someone has wronged you, you should give them another chance. It said that even though you remember the problem and what went wrong, there were still good things that you remember more. It basically said that even though you have been wronged, you have been "righted" in so many more ways. I really liked this movie because it seemed so relevant and strong.