HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE
PG, 119 mins.

Kooky and organic, “Howl’s Moving Castle” is a Freudian free-for-all, a clockwork fairy tale, and an antiwar epic. Director Hayao Miyazaki is Japan’s greatest animator, and while his movies are made for children, they blow away everything else on the market. One almost feels sorry for poor old Disney, which is contractually obligated to release this movie that is so highly concentrated, it makes their own films look as weak as wet bread.

“Howl’s Moving Castle,” adapted from a book by Diana Wynne Jones about a timid little girl transformed into a resourceful 90-year-old woman, is so expressionistic and dreamy, it hardly feels like a kids’ movie at all; its closest cinematic cousin is Jean Cocteau’s surreal “La Belle et la bete.” If Picasso made cartoons, “Howl’s Moving Castle” would have been his “Guernica”: a tragic vision of a fallen world that you can’t shake off once you’ve been engulfed in its goop.

Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer and Jean Simmons) is a mousey hatmaker who lives in a storybook Europe of chugging steam engines, Alpine villages, and mechanical airships. Through no fault of her own, she offends the glutinous Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall) and is transformed into a pain-wracked old crone.

Escaping into the wilderness, she searches for her last hope, the wicked wizard, Howl (Christian Bale), and a turnip headed, hopping scarecrow directs her to his home: a gigantic organic machine that perambulates about the countryside on chicken legs. Howl turns out to be less an evil wizard and more of a Tiger Beat pinup, who takes his fashion cues from Japan’s androgynous visual kei glam rockers. Sophie grows a backbone, develops a crush, and she and Howl assemble an ersatz family (which unfortunately includes the voice of Billy Crystal as a frantic fire demon). The motley crew flees as a misguided war plagues their country and the king attempts to recruit Howl as a wizard of mass destruction.

Mr. Miyazaki has more than a little darkness in his heart (in interviews he loves to rhapsodize about his dreams of a world where humanity is extinct) and “Howl’s” is genuinely chilling: The war is an all-engulfing firestorm that turns gingerbread cities into smoking ruins. As in a dream, “Howl’s” horrors are vague and terrible and, also as in a dream, full of sublimated sexuality: If flying means what Freud says it means, then “Howl’s Moving Castle” is one long orgy.

When Howl accidentally dyes his blond locks black, he cries out, “I don’t want to live if I can’t be beautiful,” and dissolves into a puddle of protoplasmic goo. Sweat and slime spew from pores like waterfalls. Lovers try to eat each other’s hearts. When Sophie proclaims her love for Howl, she does so during a dream, pursuing him through long tunnels made of broken childhood toys. When she finds him, he’s been transformed into an enormous monster with slavering jaws, covered in filthy feathers.

Full of ruin and devastation, “Howl’s Moving Castle” unleashes Mr. Miyazaki’s imagination onscreen in its darkest form yet. The movie isn’t perfect, but it is majestic and personal. Kids will love it.

– Grady Hendrix

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
PG, 124 mins.

“The Bridge of San Luis Rey” opens in 1714. When what was considered to be the most sturdy pathway in Peru snaps, five people fall to their deaths. The question raised here – and in the original novel by Thornton Wilder – is whether such a tragic occurrence was a meaningless accident, or part of God’s plan. Such philosophical fodder perhaps calls for a lengthy conversation. It does not, however, call for a long-winded, unstimulating costume drama. Unconvincing and at times almost spectacularly boring, Mary McGuckian’s film, the third cinematic adaptation of Wilder’s story, features several high-quality actors, all of whom seem adrift.

Brother Juniper (Gabriel Byrne) witnesses the collapse of the bridge and is so shaken by what he’s seen he spends the subsequent six years thoroughly researching the victims of the disaster. He publishes a book declaring the fall conclusively the work of God. This gets him brought up by the Archbishop of Lima (Robert De Niro) on charges of heresy. At his trial Juniper recounts what he has learned about the five victims (why he does this is peculiar – he’s already explained his notions in the book for which he is on trial). A Victorian soap opera ensues.

Those who lost their lives in the incident include Dona Maria (Kathy Bates), an aging aristocrat who yearns to be in the good graces of her estranged daughter, and Uncle Pio, a privileged European who devotes his time to promoting the career of his actress daughter, La Perichole (Pilar Lopez de Ayala), who herself has borne the child of the Viceroy (F. Murray Abraham), who is presiding over this very case.

In their two scenes together, Mr. Keitel and Mr. De Niro fail to re-create the chemistry they possessed in “Mean Streets.” The sequences that involve Juniper’s trial slow the film considerably; Mr. Byrne looks listless and speaks in monotone. In an irritating punctuation, his voice echoes mercilessly when he talks, as though he’s announcing a starting lineup every time he opens his mouth.

Fine technical work has been done on the film. Yvonne Blake’s costume design is meticulously detailed. Lalo Schifrin, famous for writing the themes to “Mission: Impossible” and “Enter the Dragon,” has composed one of his better recent works. But to no avail. The problem is that the film, ostensibly about a theological debate, contains no real exchange of ideas – just monotonous flashbacks featuring people in oversized hats.

– Edward Goldberger

THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3-D
PG, 94 mins.

In “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D,” Robert Rodriguez’s intentions seem honorable: to make a charming, low-tech, 3-D movie for children, based on the writings of his pre-teen son. But the result is astoundingly boring and, frankly, tedious to sit through.

It’s about a 10-year-old kid named Max (Cayden Boyd) who daydreams so intensely about his imagined superheroes, Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner) and Lavagirl (Taylor Dooley), the fictional creations come alive. Max and his superpals find themselves (put on your 3-D glasses here) on Planet Drool, where Max must help them battle the nefarious Mr. Electric (George Lopez), a cheaply superimposed head inside a metallic holder, which fizzes with electricity.

Mr. E. also looks a lot like Max’s math teacher, Mr. Electricidad. (I’m not sure if I was awake at that moment to truly understand the significance of that one.) The planet is Max’s creation, which means if something goes wrong, he’s got to lie down, fall asleep and literally dream up a solution. Unfortunately, all the sleeping in the world couldn’t improve this movie. The dreamscape, with its cookie mountains and a milky “stream of consciousness,” is disappointingly mediocre. And the 3-D effects are unimaginative and eventually too obnoxious for the eyes. Maybe Rodriguez should stick to vampires and guitar-strumming heroes.

– The Washington Post