Hayao Miyazaki is one of those directors you are either obsessed with or have never heard of. I am obsessed with him. His movies are incredibly creative, bordering on insane. They’re all animated, but this is about as far from Disney as you can get in the same medium. And every one of them, to my knowledge, has a strong female lead or supporting character.

Princess Mononoke, played by Claire Danes in the English version, is a half-wild human who lives with wolves. She is met by Ashitaka (Billy Crudup), a warrior who is cursed by a boar/god/disgusting monster thing. The only cure for his otherwise fatal mutilation is to find the deer god. You think this sounds tame, but really there are some beheadings and dismemberments in between. It’s Miyazaki, so the violence is metaphorical and magical, but getting your head shot off looks the same no matter how you slice it (ha!).

The story is traditional: humans versus nature, peace versus war, wild wolf girl versus ambitious town developer girl. What Miyazaki brings to the table is entirely new: animals and other creatures possessed by spirits (the highlight of the movie is the forest spirits, which are really cute and also really creepy), warriors inflicted with metaphysical wounds and magical beings existing alongside humans.

There’s a reason Hollywood celebrities clamor to lend their voices to Miyazaki films: they’re the most original work our malnourished movie industry gets anymore. They’re beautiful and disturbing, simple in message and mind-boggling in execution. Somehow everything that comes out of Miyazaki’s brain makes me feel more alive. After you see “Princess Mononoke,” I promise you’ll never look at the little woodland creatures in “Snow White” the same again.