Watched "Howl's Moving Castle" several days (maybe a week) ago. Hmm well... I can't say this anime has impressed me much, despite the fact it's by Ghibli. The beginning was interesting, a young girl turned into an old woman and trying to live in that role, that castle with portals, the yet another view at your ability to fly. The scene with that witch and the main heroine climbing up these stairs has made me laugh. I also liked that scene when Howl was acting childish and immature, it was unexpected yet believable, nice that they showed that even the most powerful magicians have imperfections. But everything else...

I haven't noticed any straight plot in the movie. Everything that happened after first 20 minutes wasn't making any sense to me... to pretend Howl's mother to convince the Emperor to dismiss him from the army? Come on, this sounds idiotic even for a russian lazybones like me, for typical japanese this should make even less sense To have such powers and be unable to stop the war, even to protect people from it? The ending, when that scarecrow has turned into a prince and promised to bring peace to the earth, has plain disappointed me.

Dunno, maybe I'm just not an anime person... and the translation also didn't help. The DVD had only one audio track (with the single-voice dub, and the translator was missing half of the phrases), and subtitles were only in english. To watch a movie, hearing stingy translation on the background of japanese speech, while reading english text... that's not easy at all.

I still don't regret I watched it, the beginning was very promising, and it had its funny moments.

I saw "Metropolis" and I must say that was pretty unusual
The feeling of something grand that happen in the film in addition with a great jazz soundtrack makes you to feel in very unusual way. With a perfectly insane ideas to mix all known styles, epochs and tech levels that is typical for the genre this film has catched me by it's sincerity and light grief. The main question for Tima to understand who she is was a perfect end for her line. When she has fallen and died... That scene with remainings of her was thruly heartbreaking for me, and aside with a feeling of doom that expected through all the movie
Still I must say that I'm not anime-guy at all and to see "Metropolis" was a big luck for me as I tend to think. I'm for such deep-sense and slightly griveous films.

"Ghost In A Shell"
That film was really something of a high class. The story of a cyborg woman was great and to unite with a program of artificial intelligence for her in the end was something really outstanding. All the film has leaved me with a sense of light discomfort but with admiration for creators and artists that made it. Especially I do like the "realism" in every instance that they permanently involve in the movie. Be it exaggerated amount of details and shadows, the details of surrounding like haze, weather and such, or be it those "techical" questions like giant recoil of armor-piercing gun, the crumling ferroconcrete or something like this... And the music digressions when heroine realises something again and again was great, the foating shadow of ghost-aircraft, the megalopolis, the water trams - that was very atmospherical.

Nice reviews Yggdrasil, i totally agree with you about Ghost in the Shell. In my opinion still the best product anime has offered in the kast years, surely a classic.
See if you can find the sequel too, called "Ghost in the shell: Innocence". Imho if you watch it with attention is even more mesmerizing.