Alice in Computerland

If you’ve never experienced Japanese anime , then Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” is a perfect first opportunity. Now playing at the Newport Highway Cinemas, this variation on “Alice in Wonderland” boasts some of the best computer-generated animation ever made. And it is a leap of imagination that makes Hollywood product, even the best (“Toy Story,” for example) seem like Saturday morning cartoons.

Hardly anything made in L.A.’s dream machine is impressive enough to, years later, convince your own little Alice to pass on the memories of them to her own children and “feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.”