Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

joshuafagan-64214 Here we are, folks: the first full-length movie Hayao Miyazaki ever made.Back then, he was a youngish animator who had paid his dues and made quite a name for himself in the anime industry, but he had not yet begun his ascent into a global icon. He was a name in anime, but he was far from the name to know in anime.This movie... did not much change that. While it was warmly received by fans of the television series, which Miyazaki also had a hand in, the series did not have particularly high ratings or many fans at the time, and the money failed to make a major splash in the Japanese box office. It did, on the other hand, make a major impact on one young Californian working at Disney. His name? John Lasseter.Even nowadays, not enough people know about this movie. Most that have are either fans of the Lupin III animes- the franchise is going stronger than ever today- or fans of Hayao Miyazaki that are interested in his entire oeuvre of work. I am firmly in the latter category.It's a shame that this film isn't more popular, as it's absolutely fantastic. While it's not my favorite Miyazaki movie, it's a fun, epic, adrenaline-filled adventure with classic characters, great music, stunning animation, and some of the best fight scenes that had been animated up to this point.If I had to describe this film, I'd say it's like a PG-13 heist film mixed with a grand, romantic, save-the-princess story, taking the best elements from both genres. It's just a blast. You care about these characters and the situations they're in. It never gets cheesy, both because it fully believes in itself and because there's always some action to balance things out. And it never gets cold or meatheady, both because the action is always personal and fluid and because there are always some mice character moments to balance things out.There is not another Miyazaki movie like this. I could spend the rest of this review listing things that are in this movie but not in any other Miyazaki movies, or I could spend the rest of this review listing things that are in other Miyazaki movies but not in this one. But instead, I'll say that in a lot of ways, this does feel like a Miyazaki movie, through and through. Miyazaki has a very specific way of making films, right down from the character interactions to the pacing. That core style is in full display. If you showed me this movie, didn't tell me who it was by, and then told me it was a Miyazaki film after I was done watching it, I'd say, "Yeah. That's about right." The relationship between Lupin and Lady Clarisse is as wonderful as it is pure. It really makes this movie work. When she's taken away, you really feel her pain, and his pain too. I'd even go so far as to say they have one of the best relationships in any Miyazaki movie. While I can understand why Miyazaki moved away from this type of storytelling and these types of characters and relationships, he is very good at constructing them.Our villain is also very good. It is actually quite difficult to create good 'pure villains', characters that make you go, "I want the hero to take this guy down." instead of "Ugh. Can this guy just jump off a cliff already. He's annoying me.", but this film manages to do it. He is relentless and slimy, and his famous battle with Lupin on the hands of the massive clock tower is a truly great scene.This is not one of those Miyazaki movies that make you feel like you've been transported to a different, better dimension, but it is an utterly fantastic genre flick that will enchant and delight anyone who watches it.

SnoopyStyle Master thief Arsène Lupin III and his sidekick Daisuke Jigen steal billions from the Monte Carlo Casino but it turns out to be all counterfeit. Lupin decides to throw away the fake "Goat bills" and go to the Grand Duchy of Cagliostro to investigate. They rescue a damsel in distress pursued by thugs. She is captured but leaves behind a ring. She turns out to be Clarisse, the princess of Cagliostro who is being forced into marrying power hungry regent Count Lazare d'Cagliostro. The Count is making the fake bills and Inspector Zenigata from Interpol comes to investigate. Lupin sneaks into the castle to rescue the princess and runs into an old acquaintance Fujiko Mine. The Count intends to reunite the two families and find a 15th century hidden treasure.It's a fun escapist caper movie. I really love this movie for over an hour. It's got all the great simple characters. It stumbles a little by forcing a flashback scene which tries to connect Lupin and the princess unnecessarily. I was hoping for something more compelling as the treasure but this is a fun caper. It marks a great first full length directing effort for Hayao Miyazaki.

johnnyboyz One of the more remarkable things about 1979's The Castle of Cagliostro is just how well it melds together. The film bites off all of this material; all these reference points and points of inspiration, spanning a wide range of genres and prior texts, and just manages to lump it all together into a tale which is at once dizzy; electrifying; enrapturing and never confused nor with a sense of mangled, ill judged hybridisation afoot. The film is a spectacular romp, one of the finest animated films I think I may have ever seen and one of the best stand alone adventure films, animated or otherwise, that may have ever been made. For sure, the film is for adult audiences; its sub plot to do with women being forced into arranged marriages, its holding of people against their will element and its the general crime-come-heist genre related content, which in itself sees characters steal; thieve and use an array of weapons to varying degrees, is enough for it to remain strictly for adults. In spite of this, it has a sort of giddy, child-like glee to it – the film is like one long incarnation of the adventure games one may have played out with action figures as a kid, when acting out taboo sequences featuring made-up characters getting hurt and forced into less than social situations were one's world because you knew it existed but had to be sheltered from its fictitious incarnations at this early stage in one's life.Indeed, the film will begin with a heist sequence. Two people, the eventual lead and his supporting act, steal a large sum of money from a casino situated in the south of Europe; make it to their getaway car; speed on out of there and then need-do nothing much else but laugh at those flailing in their wake as the establishment employees desperately try to give chase in their pre-sabotaged automobiles. The twosome, a sort of precursor to the Samuel L. Jackson/John Travolta duo making up the opening and closing segments of Tarantino's 1994 Pulp Fiction (itself an opus of homage) is made up of Daisuke Jigen (voiced by Kiyoshi Kobayashi) and Arsene Lupin (Yamada), who is, I read, a long standing franchise protagonist whose adventures and quests have made for cult reading over a number of years.Disaster strikes when they look deeper into the cash haul they've just obtained and realise that it is made up of fake currency, an instance at once calling to mind Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch when the chaos and mania of the opening was then cruelly understated by the fact the whole thing was a set up for a fake haul. The difference being that we do not get an elderly man rather humorously dancing around the frame paraphrasing "You went through all that for five dollars worth of washers!" Agrieved, Lupin and Jigen decide to hit the place wherein the forgery was supposedly created: a castle in a neighbouring, fictional principality wherein a cruel count has say over most matters, a stretch of land located on the continent neatly syncing up with this overriding sense of hybridisation in the sense it essentially appears to be derivative of somewhere such as San Marino, although carries with it the geographical characteristics of somewhere else such as Liechtenstein. Upon arrival, an important altercation with a young woman named Clarisse (Shimamoto) comes to further shape Lupin's presence there; a woman revealed to be a princess and whose introduction of being involved in a high speed road chase as she is pursued by an ugly assortment of henchmen has her come close to death before being whisked back the principality's centrepiece: that titular castle Lupin and Jigen plan on hitting.From this premise, renowned director of animation Hayao Miyazaki spins the sort of tale fraught with danger; adventure; excitement and that overriding conflict between good and evil that you would see in any child's comic book or early morning weekend kid's television show. Rest assured, that is a compliment – we come to root for those who might ordinarily be slimy thief archetypes against that of a man of royalty and affluence who's actually a sordid and morally decrepit individual doing well to make the lives of those around him a living Hell. The Count is voiced by Tarô Ishida, but it is the work of Kirk Thornton in the English language dub who really brings to life the character with a snarling, patronising tone which goes a long way. An additional element to proceedings is global agent Inspector Zenigata (Naya), who "goes where Lupin goes" and has made it his mission to bring this crook to justice. The fact he too has stumbled into this unpleasant plot to marry someone off to a monster makes for often amusing viewing. For sure, Miyazaki's film sees women locked in towers awaiting "knights" so that they may be rescued, but the depiction of your more standardised fairytale archetypes (such as picturesque castles and royal weddings on the horizon) as fundamentally broken attributes to a sordid, disfigured community is what's at the core of the film and it runs parallel with our rooting for a shyster who's actually quite charming.The films genre fusion and adventurous style is infectious, from its Bond-esque opening credits sequence through to its Modern Times inspired finale, the film holds together in a way that is quite remarkable given there are moments in which it appears everything is about to fall apart at the seams. Pleasingly, that doesn't happen while overall it is difficult to find fault with the film; a project with an immense amount of both energy and cine-literacy which just never wears one out: an animation that does its fair share of thrashing around and yet is quietly beautiful in its animation what with several sequences ranging from car chases to the negating of castle walls via the air. All things aside, this is something to seek out.

Dave from Ottawa Famed animator Miyazaki directed several episodes of the 1970s Lupin III TV series, such as the brilliantly action-packed Wings of Death: Albtross, one of the series' most thrilling episodes ever. Thus he was a natural to choose to direct this, one of the first Lupin III features. The result combines recognizable Miyazaki elements (spectacular aerial action, a spunky girl princess) with the wild, wacky action familiar to fans of the Lupin III TV series.Impossible stunts, breakneck chases, daring heists - this film has everything. The castle itself is a wonder, filled with labyrinths, machinery, mysteries and secrets. Great fun.