Finally saw Howl’s Moving Castle yesterday. Laurent and I have been talking about watching this on the big screen for nearly a year now, as we’re both MASSIVE Miyazaki fans. In fact coming to think about it, I don’t think you can possibly watch a Miyazaki movie and not become a fan of his. Every new Miyazaki movie should be savored because in my opinion they honestly don’t come out as often as they should, which if I had it my way would be every single week.

The thing I liked the most in the movie was the characters who were all extremely well defined. The thing that made me laugh was how all the male characters came off as incredibly CAMP (read: slightly fruity in case you’re not familiar with the term camp), and to a certain degree I couldn’t really take them seriously. My favourite character without a doubt was Turnip Head, who is a fantastic addition to the number of characters under the Studio Gibli umbrella. A really pleasant surprise as well was the voice of Billy Crystal for Calcifer, who did an excellent job.

The world that this movie was set in reminded me of Kiki’s Delivery service a great deal, however for some strange reason I didn’t think the animation was even as close as polished as it was in Spirited Away, which remains my favorite Miyazaki movie ever.

Having said all that coming out of the movie you’ll have a massive smile on your face, since it’s such a great piece of cinema. As Laurent put it:

"There's still hope in this world"