The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Released in 1979, "Lupin III: the Castle of Calgiostro" features all the elements of the perfect adventure caper movie with the kind of charismatic and flamboyant antiheroes cruelly lacking in today's cinema.You know the ones I'm talking about, they spend the two thirds of the movie flirting, bragging, joking and doing a few physical stunts and their 180° turn to depth and seriousness in the last act takes the film to its highest post. Indeed, while watching the ways of Lupin III with both women, enemies and his secret past, I could definitely picture Jean-Paul Belmondo playing the part. The whole movie fuses the vibes of comedic thrillers of the 70's which doesn't come as a surprise given the film's year of release, but is surprising coming from Hayao Miyazaki.Indeed, the name of the master of animation immediately evokes dreamy imagery and inspirational stories magnificently rendered by the delicacy of hand-drawn animation, but not exactly the kind of ride "Cagliostro's Castle" embarks you on. The story is based on the Manga of the same name, drawn by Miyazaki himself and inspired from the iconic French gentleman thief, but closer in spirit to the adaptation of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes from Studio Ghibli in the 80's, with a more adult tone though. There's something very 'Bondesque' in the story with Lupin's gadgets, the car chase scenes, the majestic castle full of trap doors and of course, the Count of Cagliostro who forces a young girl named Clarisse to marry him in order to get a a hidden treasure thanks to some ring-mechanisms. He's probably Miyazaki's most irredeemable villain, which would have been disappointing if it wasn't for the presence of Lupin's nemesis, Inspector Zenigata.Obviously, their relationship is embedded in the series' previous stories (even the title sounds as if it was written for a sequel) but even without being familiar with the original Manga, we feel there's an interesting parallel between the two men, a flawed law enforcer and an ethical outlaw, so the moment they decide to combine their efforts doesn't come as a surprise and is handled with the perfect mix of action and humor. In fact, even the film starts with an ambiguous Lupin, he robs tons of money from a casino in an opening sequence that would belong to a great parody movie but once he discovers the money is counterfeit, he heads to Cagliostro, the smallest town of Europe where he suspect the bills come from, he could have spent the bills so since they were undetectable but something seemed to attract him in the mysterious city.The reason comes later and adds to the richness and depth of the character, so don't let the premise of the film fool you, it's still a Miyazaki movie after all. And perhaps one of its most remarkable aspect is the exhilarating way Miyazaki tames the vertiginous roofs of the castles, making it a thriller on the vertical side and a climactic side that pays a great tribute to "Safety Last!", a race around the clock in the literal meaning of the world. Speaking of castle's heights, Miyazaki said he was inspired by French animated masterpiece "The King and the Mockingbird", I could see the connection although the French one still evolves on higher grounds. Miyazaki wouldn't take too much time to join it on the Pantheon of animated masterpieces when he made only five years later, the classic "Nausicaa".But in its own right, and within its average anime looks, "Cagliostro's Caslte" is legitimate action picture with one merit though, to have put Miyazaki in the map of animation, if only for its being the one that started one of the greatest careers and legacies of cinematic animation, this is a film that deserves respect, and as Lupin himself would say : "Chapeau, maître!".

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.

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.

Miyazaki's debut (not including some TV work) lacks the fantastic imagination and whimsy of his later work. But it packs a lot of fun into 100 minutes. An action tale featuring Lupin III, a thief/adventurer/detective character... something like a mix of James Bond and Robin Hood and the old-time serials. It's no surprise that Spielberg loves this movie, and I have to wonder if he saw it before making RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The animation doesn't have a lot of wow factor, but it looks pretty nice. I could do without the exaggerated facial expressions, and in fact a lot of the attempts at comedy are just too goofy. But I enjoyed these characters (archetypal though they may be) and their antics. There's a lot of nifty situations and it's told at an enjoyable pace. Good times.