Pop Culture Imports: Hayao Miyazaki's First Feature Film, A Harrowing Diane Kruger Crime Drama, And John Woo's Netflix Team-Up

Country: JapanGenre: AnimeDirector: Hayao MiyazakiCast: Yasuo Yamada, Eiko Masuyama, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Makio Inoue, Goro Naya, Sumi Shimamoto, Taro Ishida.Hayao Miyazaki is an animation titan whose works are beloved all over the world, and whose films under Studio Ghibli helped establish anime's footing in international pop culture. So it's weird that his first feature film was hard to track down — until now.

You wouldn't be blamed for never seeing, or even hearing of Miyazaki's directorial debut, which was released six years before Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro is an adaptation of a Japanese manga mainstay Lupin III, and a sequel at that. But directed by Miyazaki as the animator was taking his first, timid steps out of the television world and into filmmaking, The Castle of Cagliostro is a stunning introduction of a bold new director with the stirrings of Miyazaki's trademark whimsy and opulent visual style. Lupin III is a long-running manga franchise whose titular hero comes off like the Japanese equivalent of a pulp hero — the snide master thief named Arsène Lupin III has shades of James Bond and Zorro crossed with the slapstick of Scooby Doo. The Castle of Cagliostro follows the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin III as he discovers a great conspiracy at the heart of a tiny country called Cagliostro, whose evil regent, the Count, is set to marry the country's princess against her will. Recognizing the Princess Clarisse from his past, Lupin decides to save her from her forced marriage and stop the Count from his nefarious plans to unearth the royal family's hidden treasure.

The Castle of Cagliostro is chock full of vibrant characters and heart-pounding action, set against a dreamy fantastical backdrop that expertly blends European architecture with Japanese culture. There's actually a term for it that was coined after Miyazaki created the richly realized world within The Castle of Cagliostro: "akogare no Paris," literally "The Paris of our dreams" in Japanese, which describes a fantastical view of Europe "through Eastern eyes." It's a visual style that Miyazaki would constantly return to throughout his films, and just one of his trademark flairs that you can see him experimenting with in his very first film.

Having never seen this film before despite being a Miyazaki uber-fan (trust me, I searched for the DVD for years and was only alerted to it on streaming by the Netflix Anime U.S. Twitter), I was ecstatic to see so many familiar elements in The Castle of Cagliostro. Shades of Clarisse's character design and gestures would be seen in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Kiki's Delivery Service, and there, that shoot-out would be recycled for Castle in the Sky. It's astonishing how fully formed of a filmmaker Miyazaki was in his 1979 directorial debut. If you're at all a Miyazaki or Ghibli fan, or just like good old animation, The Castle of Cagliostro is an expertly crafted must-see.

Watch This If You Like: Porco Rosso, Castle in the Sky, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., obnoxiously pointing out Miyazaki's visual trademarks to your friends while rattling off Castle in the Sky trivia.

Country: FranceGenre: DocumentaryDirector: Agnes Varda, JRCast: Agnes Varda, JR.

At 89 years old, Agnes Varda has had a rich and varied movie career in front of and behind the camera. But her best works were always ones that harness her own whimsical persona to tell delightful stories about life and all its miracles. As her final film ever, Faces Places is all that, and more.

Co-directed and co-starring the semi-anonymous street photographer named JR, Faces Places is a fitting swan song for one of the pioneers of the French New Wave movement, as she embarks on a journey through France to document the lives of the ordinary people. JR approaches Varda with the idea to create collages of the colorful characters they meet via a traveling photo booth that blows up the pictures to a monumental size, plastering their images on walls across the country. Varda is immediately taken with the idea, saying that she is compelled to "photograph faces so they don't fall into the hole of memory."

But the film is as much an exploration of the ephemeral nature of life as it is an ode to Varda and JR's unlikely friendship. Despite seeming polar opposites — she the elfin icon, he the arrogant ingenue — the two of them immediately click, and there's a sense of regret that Varda couldn't have met JR earlier in her life. "Every new person I meet feels like my last one," Varda says wistfully at one point, and it feels as much a commentary on her newfound friendship with JR as it does an encapsulation of the documentary's theme: the fleeting nature of the faces and places that we pass by every day.

Watch This If You Like: The Gleaners and I, Exit Through the Gift Shop, accepting Agnes Varda as queen.

Country: DenmarkGenre: Sci-fiCreator: Jenny Ann Balverde, Esben Toft Jacobsen, Christian PotalivoCast: Alba August, Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, Mikkel Følsgaard, Lukas Løkken, Jessica Dinnage, Sonny Lindberg, Angela Bundalovic.

Netflix rolls out yet another post-apocalyptic foreign-language title, but Rain, the streaming service's first Danish series, may be its most promising yet. A taut, tense sci-fi show, Rain is a climate thriller masquerading as a zombie movie. It borrows heavily from the post-apocalyptic tropes we know and love, yet it feels strangely fresh. That may be because it's anchored by an emotive female lead played by Alba August, whose Simone goes into hiding with her younger brother Rasmus (Lucas Lynggaard Tonneson) in an underground bunker that shields them from a killer virus carried in the rain. Six years later they emerge, only to find half of humanity wiped out, and the survivors congregating in hordes to protect themselves in a dog-eat-dog world. Desperate to find their scientist father who left them in the bunker six years ago, Simone and Rasmus join a young and beautiful group of survivors who are on a quest to find signs of life throughout disease-wracked Scandinavia. The conspiracies are deep and the characters compelling enough to keep your attention for the entire eight-episode run.

Watch This If You Like: The 100, Fear the Walking Dead, Dark, bad English dubs of a Danish series when you forget to switch the audio language.