With numerous film adaptations under its belt already, Rudyard Kipling’s story collection The Jungle Book receives its most expensive re-interpretation to date. This “live-action” version (a term I hesitate to use, given how much reliance there is on computer-generated effects) is most closely related to Disney’s 1967 animated version and could be considered more of a remake of that film rather than a strict retelling of the source material from Kipling. While this newest iteration puts forth some truly jaw-dropping visual effects and an outstanding voice cast, there’s still something hollow at the heart of this film’s execution that makes it come across as more of a nostalgia cash-grab rather than a faithful re-telling of the original story.

This film follows the same narrative beats of Disney’s previous animated work, which introduces Mowgli (Neel Sethi) as an orphaned young boy living among talking creatures in a mythical jungle. His surrogate father, a black panther named Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), also acts as Mowgli’s protector as he is being mercilessly hunted by the vengeful tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). On his journey to flee the now unsafe jungle, he also receives aid from the sloth bear Baloo (Bill Murray) and a smorgasbord of other animals with more questionable motives at play.

I should re-iterate early on just how blown away I was with director Jon Favreau’s visualization of this jungle landscape. I didn’t have high expectations for seeing a film shot entirely with green screens but there’s an attention to detail in the settings and the realization of each creature that is breathtaking and clearly state-of-the-art. As good as the movie looks, the sound design may actually be even more laudable than the visual achievement put forth. When you take into account the cacophony of ambient noise present in such a vast nature setting, it’s mind-boggling to think how much time went into re-creating all of the levels of auditory realism.

In addition to the stellar work from the audio side of things, the vocal casting is particularly on point as well. Bill Murray brings a warm humor and quiet gentleness to Baloo and Idris Elba is properly menacing as the most despicable version of Shere Khan yet. Lupita Nyong’o, who plays a wolf and mother figure to Mowgli, is absolutely astonishing in the few scenes that she has in the film. Sadly, Neel Sethi’s performance isn’t quite up to the level of his co-stars and is undercut by stiff line readings and an underlying artificiality behind his interactions with the computer-generated creatures.

On the surface, there may not be as much to criticize here but my chief complaint is perhaps more of an esoteric one: this just feels like a very safe play for Disney at this point. I won’t deny the craft and creativity that went into making this film but at the same time, it could have been a much more memorable achievement if Favreau and his production team hadn’t hedged their bets with a more conventional storytelling approach and an almost slavish reverence towards the far from perfect animated movie. We’ve seen with recent successes like Zootopia how rewarding it can be when Disney steps even a bit outside their comfort zone and in terms of narrative ambition, The Jungle Book feels like more of a step back than it should have been.

Over the past 30 years, renowned Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli has produced several of the Japan’s highest grossing anime films ever but since its co-founder Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement in late 2014, the studio’s future has been in limbo. Fortunately, fans in the US have a new reason to be excited, as one of Studio Ghibli’s seminal works is finally being made available for American audiences. First released in 1991, Only Yesterday is director Isao Takahata’s follow-up to the devastating war film Grave of the Fireflies that serves as a ebullient and life-affirming counterpoint to the overwhelming tragedy of his previous work.

We begin in 1982, where 27-year-old Taeko (Daisy Ridley) finds herself yearning for a more simplified way of life after having lived in the non-stop hustle and bustle of Tokyo her entire life. She decides to take a trip to visit relatives in the rural countryside but during her overnight train ride, Taeko is overcome with vivid memories from her schoolyard days that cause her to reflect on the purity and innocence of her childhood. The film wistfully tracks between this time period in 1966, where 10-year-old Taeko (Alison Fernandez) is just starting in the fifth grade, and the “present” time in 1982 that finds her helping her relatives harvest their seemingly endless fields of safflowers.

One of the artistic techniques that Takahata uses to differentiate between these two time periods is to depict the past with a sort of hazy glow around the edges of the frame but it’s not done in a way that calls too much attention to itself. Besides being a clever way to visually distinguish the story’s timeline, this also serves as a subtle commentary on how we tend to overly sentimentalize stories from our childhood when the memories become blurred and fuzzier as time goes on. The sharp, crisp animation style of urban Tokyo shows a world with clear limitations but the bright and dreamlike scenes from Taeko’s childhood suggest a largely undiscovered world with infinite possibilities.

The flashbacks play like extended vignettes that aren’t meant to relay specific sets of plot-relevant details but rather convey the feeling of longing that the main character is consumed with during her later years. These stories seem to come about in an almost random order but nonetheless cover a wide range of emotional territory: some are bittersweet, some are heartbreaking and some are quite amusing as well. An awkward first exchange between Taeko and her first childhood crush, during which the two share a hilariously unproductive conversation about whether they prefer cloudy or sunny days, perhaps best captures all three of these sentiments within one scene.

The coming-of-age material is very effective on its own but ultimately, this is a story of a young woman coming to terms with her past and deciding to break free from the burdens and expectations of her friends and family. The movie’s originally title translates roughly from Japanese to “memories trickle down” but it turns out that Only Yesterday is an even more evocative and appropriate title after all. It not only captures this film’s signature brand of charming nostalgia but also serves as a potent reminder that the past can be rendered inconsequential for those willing to overcome it.