TheRetroCritic

Spirited Away sure must have been a tough act to follow so you would have expected Hayao Miyazaki to take it easy and release a lighter, smaller film before bringing us another substantial effort but that didn't happen. Instead, we got Howl's Moving Castle , one of the director's most creative works to date. Based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, the film follows 18 year-old Sophie as she is turned into a 90 year-old woman by a witch because the latter was jealous about the young hatter meeting some wizard called Howl, which she herself had her eye on. Sophie then wanders the land in search of the witch, potentially the only one who could reverse the spell at this point, but instead she finds some weird-looking scarecrow who ends up leading her to the titular castle. There, she meets Calcifer, an adorable fire demon, voiced by Billy Crystal in the English version, who agrees to help turn her back into her old... well, young self, rather, if she can help break his own c