The Prestige - The wife and I watched this to compare it with The Illusionist. We couldn't recall at the time what the differences between the storylines were, but there was some attributes to the movie that wanted us to watch it. We are both fans of Christian Bale's work and I like Christopher Nolan's work as well. The majority of the movie is told through back story by the two man characters (Bale and Jackman) reading each other's journals. They portray rival magicians with a personal vendetta against each other. While the movie tries to play itself like a mystery, I think that Nolan was trying to have a big hook/twist in the end. However, the movie has too many clues throughout the movie to make the twist easy to guess half way through the movie. Of course, this may be just a side effect of how I watch movies: always processing in the background to figure out the conclusion. This is why I like movies that surprise me and do the unexpected (such as The Usual Suspects). If you are looking for a love story involving magicians, I recommend The Illusionist. If you are looking for a vengeance story/mystery, the I would suggest The Prestige. One surprise that took me off guard in The Prestige is the fact that David Bowie and Andy Serkis are in it.
Dreamgirls - I am not a fan of du-wop music, but I am a fan of musicals. When the wife decided to watch this for the evening, I proceeded to get my Nintendo DS out to play, in the event that the movie completely lost my interest. To its credit, Dreamgirls did keep my attention. Much of the buzz early on regarding Dreamgirls, was that Jennifer Hudson completely upstages Beyonce Knowles in this movie. I completely agree with this observation but I don't believe that it was because Hudson is a better actress than Beyonce. Hudson's character's story and songs had much more emotion and soul. Her character kept my interest in the movie. Her story was not that of the glamorous diva, but of the girl that had it all and lost it only to bring herself back again. I can't argue against Hudson getting the Oscar for this role because I have yet to see the other nominated supporting actresses' movies. If you do decide to see this movie, keep some Kleenex handy, because the ending is a doozy.
My Neighbor Totoro - To demonstrate how quickly movies get watched in our queue, check out this comment thread: ghibli museum, mitake - haruszpapa's blog. Almost one year ago, I put this movie on my queue, and I just recently watched it. Sad, I know. So I watched this movie to screen as parent whether the wee one would be able to handle the movie. I watched it by myself under the influence of Robitussin, a double quarter pounder with cheese meal, and an empty house (wife and wee were up in New Hampshire). This was my second Miyazaki film (my first being Spirited Away). Spirited Away was a bit too overwhelming for me to grasp or at least get the underlying message behind it. My Neighbor Totoro was much easier and perhaps a better introduction to Miyazaki's work. I enjoyed this movie and the character Mei reminded me so much of the wee one. I wanted to watch it again with the wee one but I was not sure she could handle it. While the soot sprites were not frightening, the wee one may be frightened by them by their black color and their "overwhelmingness". Also, the introduction of Totoro in the movie with his roaring and the "camera in the mouth" perspective may have made the character more frightening that it was intended to be. So when I made it to New Hampshire, I decided to give the movie a try. Sure enough, when the wee caught site of the soot sprites, she sat a little closer to me. When Mei and Satsuki investigate the attic and Mei runs into the soot sprites again, she was out of the room asking me to turn it off. She did like the DVD menu opening with Totoro flying around the countryside with the two girls as well as the opening song and animation, but that was about as far as she watch the movie. I did try later in the day to see if she would like to watch the scene of Totoro and his 2 other friends helping the acorns grow. I had to talk her through it and hold her but in the end, the movie got turned off. For the rest of our time in New Hampshire, she kept saying how she didn't like Totoro and didn't want to watch it but kept asking me if we could watch the opening number. Listening to a two year old say Totoro is extremely cute, but for the sake of my own sanity, I sealed up Totoro when I got home so I wouldn't have to watch that intro again or hear her say how much she didn't like Totoro. Hopefully in a couple of years, she will be able to handle it.
Pan's Labyrinth - I didn't know what to expect when I saw this. From what I had read and seen, all I knew was that there was a faun, a crazy guy with eyes in his hands, a little girl, and the Spanish Civil War. Every review that I read loved it. I watched it and enjoyed all the fantasy aspects of it. I wasn't sure the type of audience this movie was going for because of the amount of unnecessary violence in the movie. I know this is not a kids flick and have seen it promoted as a fairy tail for adults, but I didn't need to see a guy's face be the receiving end of a wine bottle multiple times. Also, the scene where a soldier's horse runs back to base camp and you are constantly reminded that the soldier is dead hanging off the horse because of the multiple thuds from every tree the horse passes. A bit unnecessary in my taste. If this was Rambo, then I would have expected it and perhaps laughed at it, but this was high brow entertainment. In the end, I enjoyed the movie. Guillermo del Toro left it up to the watcher to parse everything they had seen to come up with their own conclusion about what had transpired. It was not the ending I expected but after given some time to parse it, I really like being given the decision on whether or not the movie ended "happily ever after".
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