Sophie, an average teenage girl working in a hat shop, finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is literally swept off her feet by a handsome-but-mysterious wizard named Howl, and is subsequently turned into a 90-year old woman by the vain and conniving Wicked Witch of the Waste. Embarking on an incredible odyssey to lift the curse, she finds refuge in Howl's magical moving castle where she becomes acquainted with Markl, Howl's apprentice, and a hot-headed fire demon named Calcifer. Sophie's love and support comes to have a major impact on Howl, who flies in the face of orders from the palace to become a pawn of war and instead risks his life to help bring peace to the kingdom.
Boring math professor Gregory Larkin comes completely unhinged by any thought of sex. He sets out to build a relationship with homely literature professor Rose Morgan based on a more intellectual level. They marry, but she misses the sex. While he is away on a lecture tour, she diets, exercises, and has a makeover, but that still doesn't solve all their problems.
Romance author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) longs for parting with Misery. Sheldon's plucky heroine of seven novels has delivered Sheldon fame and fortune and recognition beyond the average writer's dreams, but she is also interminably linked to him. Determined to escape an eternal role as dimestore novelist, he kills her off in the eighth novel and heads to his cabin to work on his own Great American Novel. Upon completion, Sheldon excitedly sets out for his New York City publisher in the midst of a raging blizzard and within minutes veers into a desolate snowbank. From the brink of death, he is rescued from the snow by Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who just so happens to be Misery's self-professed biggest fan. At first, she nurses him back to health in her remote cabin, telling him the roads and phones are knocked out by the storm, fawning over his literary accomplishments. However, things change when she purchases his eighth Misery book and reaches the point of Misery's death. Annie's psychotic underbelly swiftly surfaces as the unfortunate author is held clandestinely captive in her home. Meanwhile, a wily small-town sheriff (Richard Farnsworth) circles in....
