Yesterday and the day before were bad days for ol' Egg, so last night I threw on Castle in the Sky to cheer myself up and it was such a good move that I moved my score up from a 9 to a 9.5 and moved it from my 15th to 9th favorite movie. Just for the spectacle alone it's one of my favorite movies. The only movie that looks as good to me is Kiki's Delivery Service. There's such a majesty to some shots. The hills, the clouds, the shadows, it's gorgeous. Laputa breaking down is one of the most impressive looking things I've ever seen. This was the 80s. People had to draw all that debris and make it fall. Amazing. But it does fun visuals extremely well too. There's a crazed, manic quality to the action that I've never seen anywhere else. And there are so many absurdly dangerous close calls that would really bug me in another movie, but here it's part of the charm. I usually hate it when characters are excited about getting into danger, but in this setting it just makes sense to me somehow. The story is simple, but it doesn't over explain anything. There's a moment where Patsu sees his father just outside Laputa and it has no explanation but it doesn't need one. The movie lets you use your imagination to fill in some gaps. It doesn't heap exposition on you. It's mostly a mix of fun and beauty. The action is so fast and fluid and yet the movie always feels like it's taking it's time.

I dunno, I just love it.

Castle in the Sky has some of the most beautiful animation I've ever seen in a movie, only behind Kiki's Delivery Service. The scenes of flight and of structures breaking down towards the end are the most impressive, and the soundtrack is of course terrific as well. I'm often not into the adventure genre, as characters with a "Gee it sure is wonderful being in mortal danger a lot!" attitude tend to bug me, but for whatever reason this is an exception. I find the action and adventure fun and exciting in this one. Also, the robots are as charming as most any character with a personality, and the nature themes towards the end are oddly soothing. It's sort of a light, cliche film, but I adore it.

@Pape Badiane obviously you've already noticed I mistakenly created a duplicate of this page, since for some reason nothing came up when I searched "Castle in the Sky" before making the page. The duplicate page is still in my Watchlist on my profile, even though you deleted it, and now I don't know how to remove it.