It took Laika 1,155 days, 142,000 3D-printed faces and more than 715 miles of brass wire to build the woods outside Portland, Oregon, one frame at a time. The result is Wildwood, a stop-motion fantasy about a girl who follows a murder of crows into an enchanted forest to bring her baby brother home.

In this episode, Joshua Johnson and John Dougherty review Travis Knight’s adaptation of Colin Meloy’s novel, while Craig Detweiler is away traveling. They talk about grief that refuses to let go, parents who will do anything out of love, a kids’ movie where violence has a cost, and rival factions learning to listen to each other. They pair it with two films about children, monsters and enchanted worlds, from Hayao Miyazaki and Jim Henson. John reports from the last days of the Philadelphia Film Festival, and a listener asks about Rob Reiner.

When does love that will do anything stop being love?

Now Showing
02:06 – Wildwood (Travis Knight)
19:30 – Spoilers begin

Double Feature
50:33 – Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
55:31 – Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986)

Philadelphia Film Festival Report
1:02:25

Listener Mail
1:09:45 – When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989)

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Produced and Edited by Joshua Johnson

Music by Steve Slagg

The Good, The True, and The Cinema is a part of The Shifting Culture Podcast Network