The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 19 - ‘Spirited Away’

The Big Picture

The Ringer

Tv & Film

4.3 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sean and Amanda return to continue their yearlong project of listing the 25 best movies of the 21st century so far. Today, they discuss Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, ‘Spirited Away’: the wonderful 2002 animated fantasy film, which features an unbound representation of what it feels like to be a child. They talk about what they make of Chihiro as an unusual main character figure, celebrate the huge technical achievement in its stunning animation, and explore how its “perfect movie status" is defined by its singularity. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show.
0:04.0	That's right.
0:04.7	I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to.
0:08.9	We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the playoffs are coming up.
0:13.3	And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel.
0:20.6	Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're going to love.
0:25.1	So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify
0:30.0	or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast.
0:33.2	Let's go!
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0:42.3	And Breeze co-pilot keeps you two steps ahead, giving you the right insights at the right time.
0:46.8	Get started today at HubSpot.com forward slash AI.
0:50.0	Thank you. I'm Sean Fennacy.
1:02.7	And this is 25 for 25, a big picture special conversation show about spirited away.
1:10.0	We finally have an animated film on our list. Amanda,
1:13.4	how are you feeling about that fact? I feel great. Jack, our producer, was like, I don't know what
1:19.1	the argument against Spirit Away would be. And that's not the point of this series that we're doing.
1:24.8	No arguments. There are no arguments. What a beautiful film.
1:28.2	We've had some complicated conversations about animation on this show over the years, but
1:31.6	recently, well, it means that Chris doesn't watch them.
1:34.9	And you will watch them, but not with intensity.
	...

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