Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
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The delightfully pert Emily Mortimer is the young Sophie, and Jean Simmons is her older incarnation—and Simmons is inspired vocal casting because her voice might quaver but her inflections are still those of the young Estella in Great Expectations.
It's great to hear Jean Simmons again, a gorgeous young woman back in the 1940s in David Lean's Great Expectations, Michael Powell's Black Narcissus and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
Her first contact is with a cheerful scarecrow whose single wooden appendage forces him to cover the terrain via big bounces (in this respect, he has less in common with his obvious inspiration, The Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow, than with human pogo stick Bobby Van, whose bounce-dance in the otherwise forgotten Small Town Girl was immortalized in the That's Entertainment! series).
There's more than a passing resemblance to "The Wizard of Oz," with Sophie as Dorothy and Howl as the tin man who has no heart, and there's even a scarecrow and a Toto-like dog.
Adapted from a British novel by Diana Wynne Jones , it resides halfway between the Brothers Grimm and " The Wizard of Oz ," with shape-shifting that includes not merely beings but also objects and places.
“Howl,” which can be described as an antiwar allegory, a magic realism fable and a deconstruction of “The Wizard of Oz,” is something of a departure for him in that it’s set not in Japan or a fantasy world but a place that mostly resembles Victorian England.
Her first contact is with a cheerful scarecrow whose single wooden appendage forces him to cover the terrain via big bounces (in this respect, he has less in common with his obvious inspiration, The Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow, than with human pogo stick Bobby Van, whose bounce-dance in the otherwise forgotten Small Town Girl was immortalized in the That's Entertainment! series).
It's great to hear Jean Simmons again, a gorgeous young woman back in the 1940s in David Lean's Great Expectations, Michael Powell's Black Narcissus and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
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Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of milestone Japanese animation films such as Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, is often referred to as the Walt Disney of anime.
Miyazaki adapts British author Diana Wynne Jones' young-adult fantasy into something truly his own, and while Jones' story is richly inspired, Miyazaki's artistic vision dominates, stylistically consistent with "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke" and the singular imagination that drives all of Miyazaki's animated epics.
Yet even earlier Miyazaki titles like Castle In the Sky (1986) and Princess Mononoke (1997) provide better peeks than this new release at how he links his dazzling visuals to gripping storylines that incorporate his recurring themes of courage, sacrifice and self-respect.
From Princess Mononoke’s bounding ecological storyline to Spirited Away’s story of greed and redemption, Miyazaki constructs the most adult children’s films around, and ones that are firmly rooted in a heady sort of Japanese mysticism that echoes and multiplies the films’ pleasantly intoxicating surrealism.
For one thing, the well-deserved success of that movie inspired people to discover his earlier works like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (verdict: not as good), and to re-visit his high-profile 1997 environmentalist screed "Princess Mononoke" (verdict: I still don't know what all the fuss was about).
The latest fine example of animation from the mid-sixtyish aged Hayao Miyazaki, known as the master of anime and the director of "Princess Mononoke," "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away," is this sophisticated childhood fantasy tale emphasizing a decided distaste for violence and war.
He earned his fan base with films like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky, which are as straightforward as they are enchanting.
Yet even earlier Miyazaki titles like Castle In the Sky (1986) and Princess Mononoke (1997) provide better peeks than this new release at how he links his dazzling visuals to gripping storylines that incorporate his recurring themes of courage, sacrifice and self-respect.
DVD TIP: Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" (1986), which anticipates some of the imagery and themes of his later work, is a masterful film in its own right -- a floating island out of "Gulliver's Travels," a breathtaking adventure story about flying, a meditation on technology and the sweet fragility of our environment.
Much like his past film “Castle in the Sky,” this time the director uses the back drop of a war-ravaged and bygone (but technologically advanced) Europe to tell a love-story, but at the same time fills his world with playful characters that children can appreciate.
We certainly have obvious choices like the titular fortress of Castle in the Sky, the one from Miyazaki’s feature debut before forming the Studio, The Castle of Cagliostro, and the one that occupies this week’s film; but we also have more unconventional versions of this trope of sorts, like the Bathhouse in Spirited Away, and the pilots’ resort found in Porco Rosso.
It's the third film in Miyazaki's filmography, after Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind , to open with a shot of a foggy landscape (the second, after Nausicaä, to show something mysterious emerging from that fog), and the effect is generally the same in all three cases: it suggests a vast world of unexplored possibilities, and it's the very fact that you can't make anything out very clearly that creates that feeling.
Also, the otherworldliness of Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t as complete as it is in, say, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind or Princess Mononoke.
Like Miyazaki's previous, famously delicate inventions (see also, 2002's Spirited Away, 1999's Princess Mononoke, and 1984's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), Howl's Moving Castle is alive with nervous energy and unsettledness.
My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke-when it comes to animation gods, there's Hayao Miyazaki, and then there's everybody else.
For one thing, the well-deserved success of that movie inspired people to discover his earlier works like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (verdict: not as good), and to re-visit his high-profile 1997 environmentalist screed "Princess Mononoke" (verdict: I still don't know what all the fuss was about).
Early in his career — My Neighbor Totoro notwithstanding — he seemed satisfied with solid if offbeat plots, self-contained stories that required little elaboration.
I settled back in my seat, confident that Japan's Hayao Miyazaki had once again created his particular kind of animated magic, and that the movie would deserve comparison with " Spirited Away ," " Princess Mononoke ," " My Neighbor Totoro ," "Kiki's Delivery Service" and the other treasures of the most creative animator in the history of the art form.
The bustling book seems like it would jibe poorly with the sweeter, more sentimental style of Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro), but the two work surprisingly well together, and Miyazaki's animated adaptation of Jones' book is a charming and thoroughly absorbing treat.
(For my money, 1988âs My Neighbor Totoro remains his most profound work, a giddy, sometimes somber examination of childhood fears and magic that has propeled and informed all of the animatorâs films since.)
For one thing, the well-deserved success of that movie inspired people to discover his earlier works like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (verdict: not as good), and to re-visit his high-profile 1997 environmentalist screed "Princess Mononoke" (verdict: I still don't know what all the fuss was about).
My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke-when it comes to animation gods, there's Hayao Miyazaki, and then there's everybody else.
I settled back in my seat, confident that Japan's Hayao Miyazaki had once again created his particular kind of animated magic, and that the movie would deserve comparison with " Spirited Away ," " Princess Mononoke ," " My Neighbor Totoro ," "Kiki's Delivery Service" and the other treasures of the most creative animator in the history of the art form.
He earned his fan base with films like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky, which are as straightforward as they are enchanting.
Miyazaki doesn’t always make a new world; Kiki’s Delivery Service (one of my favorites) is essentially European, and Porco Rosso is explicitly Italian.
Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of milestone Japanese animation films such as Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, is often referred to as the Walt Disney of anime.
Coming after the impersonal guano of Batman Begins, it's a relief to luxuriate in its fondness for detail and acceptance of the sheer strangeness of life; the movie doesn't break the banks of imagination as often (or as richly) as Miyazaki's previous hit, Spirited Away, though that may be because the original source (the popular 1986 novel by Diana Wynne Jones) offers easier Western frames of reference than the filmmaker's usual beguiling "foreignness."
Although reportedly considering retirement after completing the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, Miyazaki was apparently intrigued enough by the prospect of adapting a novel by children's author Diana Wynne Jones to return to the drawing board.
The first sign of amazement this movie caused me came from the foreign markets report in Weekly Variety in late January (it opened there in November, 2004), where its grosses exceeded $200 million--a figure this movie-loving country hasn't seen since "Spirited Away" in 2002!
Hayao Miyazaki's new film Howl's Moving Castle is so good that it shames virtually every animated film made since Miyazaki's last film, Spirited Away, graced movie screens in 2002.
It’s a bit of a comedown from “Spirited Away”, but how could it not be?
Miyazaki doesn’t always make a new world; Kiki’s Delivery Service (one of my favorites) is essentially European, and Porco Rosso is explicitly Italian.
We certainly have obvious choices like the titular fortress of Castle in the Sky, the one from Miyazaki’s feature debut before forming the Studio, The Castle of Cagliostro, and the one that occupies this week’s film; but we also have more unconventional versions of this trope of sorts, like the Bathhouse in Spirited Away, and the pilots’ resort found in Porco Rosso.
It's great to hear Jean Simmons again, a gorgeous young woman back in the 1940s in David Lean's Great Expectations, Michael Powell's Black Narcissus and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
The delightfully pert Emily Mortimer is the young Sophie, and Jean Simmons is her older incarnation—and Simmons is inspired vocal casting because her voice might quaver but her inflections are still those of the young Estella in Great Expectations.
The irony should not be lost on the fact that David Fincher's Mank, a dramatized feature about the writing of one of Orson Welles's greatest films, Citizen Kane (1941), is being released by the streaming giant Netflix.
Just about the only thing this "Howl" gets right -- and that's only because Jones doesn't describe it with that much physical detail, but rather leaves it to the reader's imagination -- is the castle itself, which Miyazaki imagines as not so much a floating edifice of stone and turrets as a cross between a tank, tree house and one of the sets from Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" . . .
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Almost the first sight we see in "Howl's Moving Castle" is the castle itself, which looks as if it were hammered together in shop class by wizards inspired by the lumbering, elephantine war machines in " The Empire Strikes Back ."
They include Pixar mastermind John Lasseter ( Toy Story, A Bug's Life) and Pete Docter ( Monsters, Inc.), but Miyazaki's world has little to do with their pop-culture-stuffed, wisecracking comedies.
It’s a lot like Miyazaki’s other films, but his style is completely different from animated features like DreamWorks’ Madagascar, Pixar’s Toy Story, or even Walt Disney’s run of features from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King.
They include Pixar mastermind John Lasseter ( Toy Story, A Bug's Life) and Pete Docter ( Monsters, Inc.), but Miyazaki's world has little to do with their pop-culture-stuffed, wisecracking comedies.