A beautiful movie to look at and to sit down and watch. The story, which is a rather placidly-paced mystery about a woman searching for her betrothed though he was considered killed in the Great War, makes for a fairly tight story with interesting characters — perhaps not as endearing as Amelie, by the same director (and also starring the same actress), but good.

The movie does suffer the same way Amelie did; the side stories are for more interesting than the main story.

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Good movie. Technically excellent — goes for breadth over depth and does of a good job of doing it. I’m not a big fan of Leo, but he keeps showing up in movies I want to watch.

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Happy Festivus.

Good movie. Nothing great, just solid. A nice way to spend two hours of a lazy afternoon. Never saw the original film, so can’t make a comparison, other than that since the plane in this one is CGI, no stunt pilots were killed in the crash — which is sadly what happened during the filming of the original. And yeah, I like Miranda Otto.

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Disappointing. Look, you expect it to be a bit of fluff, you know actors having fun making a movie together — so yeah, nothing deep, nothing serious. But this was STILL disappointing. Repeated camera movements were annoying, and the actors were wasted on a plot whose capers were just plain silly, and I’m not talking Hudson Hawk silly, ’cause Hudson Hawk silly would have been great.

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Fun. About what I expected. A bit disjointed, and not much of it ties well together, but fun. Blade II remained the best of the bunch.

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Still sore.

Went to see The Life Aquatic last night, got free passes as a UCLA employee along with Han. Funny story. I thought I left my free pass at work, so after dinner at In’n'Out I walked back to my office to get the ticket while Han went ahead. I get to the office and don’t find it… I come to the conclusion that I must have been blind and it was exactly where I thought I put it: in my mesenger bag… which was in my car, in a parking lot, back in Westwood.

Running to Westwood from my office is easy because there’s a slight downgrade, but it still wipes you out if you’re not in shape. The run/walk back up to campus was worse.

My quads and shins still hurt.

Han and I caught a sneak preview at the Ackerman Grand Ballroom in UCLA last night. Aside from the horrible sound and lack of a sloped floor, the experience was enjoyable purely because the movie is good… good enough for me to pay $10 to see it again under better screening conditions.

Out of Wes Anderson’s films, I put this up there with Rushmore (no, I am one of the few who didn’t appreciate The Royal Tanenbaums more than Rushmore… sue me). It’s more light-hearted, and Bill Murray is, well, awesome.

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Good movie. A bit long, but it sort of held to this episodic kind of narrative, so it felt like watching a short tv season on DVD in one sitting. Paul Giamatti continues to impress me with his mostly understated but occassionally explosive performance… ick, that sounds too much like a critic’s review. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, enjoyed how it enjoyed savoring the hobby of wine, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Hollywood yet not-so-Hollywood ending.

This is worth seeing now.

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