Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke) delivers another bewildering and beautiful film fantasy. The title edifice – which is called a castle but actually resembles a medieval hamlet perched on gargantuan mechanical chicken legs – is the sort of burst of imagination that opens your eyes in wonder. The complicated story, based on a book by British fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones and involving wizards and warfare, isn’t quite as tantalizing. Yet even when the plot devolves into nonsense, Miyazaki proves that nonsense, too, can be bliss.
