Tonari no Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Someone in IMDb said something funny. They compared Miyazaki to Hitchcock. Apparently Miyazaki was a huge fan. The scene at the bus stop, they pointed out, is similar to the waiting scene in North By Northwest when James Stewart is waiting by the roadside. I think that one thing that Miyazaki took from Hitchcock is pacing. Your can't really compare story because Totoro doesn't really have one (which is the key to its brilliance!!). The pacing is - obviously - much slower than average but the film is set up so hat details that pass through the frame become really sublime and surreal almost. An acorn lying on a stair, through Miyazaki's gaze, is as magical is a giant meowing Cat Bus. Hitchcock was known to take his camera out into the locations where he set his films and he would know the spaces intimately. The rural neighborhood in Totoro is really really richly detailed as well. When Mei goes missing you see the same familiar bridges, pathways and houses. Miyazaki makes you wait and get to know the space you're in before he shows you anything the same way that Hitchcock does in the slower scenes in North by Northwest. In that way they both made use of the revelatory potential of the cinema, in the Bazinian sense. Using the cinema to represent time - even in animation - through long takes and detailed setting while somehow not being boring is so great.