Still dazzled by Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service, I turned to Castle in the Sky, Hayao Miyazaki's third theatrical film after Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, and to my delight I was dazzled all over again. Castle imagines a world a half-step away from ours, where zeppelins and wasp-like skycraft buzz through the clouds looking for the elusive floating city of Laputa. But the movie is far more than just spectacle and wide-gauge images: if Miyazaki can be said to be consistent in any one thing, it's in the amount of care and heart he put into his characters as well as the attention to detail he paid to his designs.
This is the fifth of Miyazaki's films that I have seen, and each time I see a new movie by him, or even an old one, I have to ask myself how someone of his genius has been condemned to what is essentially a cult following in the States. His work is broadly accessible to both adults and children and doesn't condescend to either; in terms of pure look-and-feel, his output is on a par with if not superior to Disney's work; and, unlike Disney, his movies are not canned, politically correct little moral treatises. Princess Mononoke was as troubling and contemplative a movie as any made with real actors, Spirited Away as enchanting, and My Neighbor Totoro as endearing.
