It’s a thrilling journey for both young viewers and those with more cause to ponder the afterlife. A fine bow from one of the great directors.

The Boy and the Heron, while typically bursting with imaginative elements, is also narratively tangled and a bit confusing, and falls far short of Mr. Miyazaki’s best work.

Kyle Smith

Wall Street Journal

If this film is Miyazaki’s true bow, it’s a magnificent final flourish that folds together many of the thematic and aesthetic threads he’s explored through his career: man’s relationship to nature, the majesty of flight, the twin pulls of love and loss. It’s stunning and inscrutable and measures among the best of his works.