Wolff rating: UNSURPASSED
Plot summary: Boy meets girl who falls from the sky; they are chased by pirates and only gradually discover why the girl is in such danger.
Biased, pithy comments: Japanese animated features tend to fall into obvious categories---guns'n'robots, romance, comedy, and lots of ``I wish I were William Gibson'' stuff. Laputa is none of these things; it's more on the creative level of Frank L. Baum's ``The Wizard of Oz.'' An exquisitely rendered world of endless beauty and imagination meets a well-paced script filled with that elusive sense of wonder missing from Hollywood science fiction. Definitely worth watching, and enjoyable both by children and adults. One must realize, though, that Japanese films tend to like to mix lowbrow humor and high art together, which the first time through can be jarring as the scenes switch gears. See this film.
Other Notes: Animated, Japanese with subtitles. I understand that this was once imported by Disney and was severely edited to remove some of the, well, non-Western stuff going on in it. Watch only versions in Japanese from Japan; this is one of the few movies I encourage people to pirate, unless the new interest in ``Princess Mononoke'' allows this work to make it over uncut.
How many times I have seen it: x2
Starring: Mayumi Tanaka, Keiko Yokozawa
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki