I loved the first National Treasure movie – rollicking good fun, I think I called it at the time. Clean fun with a happy ending. My perfect movie.

When the sequel opened this week, Alec and I were keen to go. We’ve seen so many movies lately with sad endings, I just needed something happy!

National Treasure lived up to its promises – action, flippant, superficial characters, codes needing to be broken, and a happy ending. Perfect!

I enjoyed the entire movie. Yes, it’s not the best movie ever. In fact, it’s got some pretty bad things about it – bad writing and characterisation, clues that require enormous leaps of assumption to get the answer, which of course Nicholas Cage’s character gets off the top of his head, and Nicholas Cage himself – he looks like he’s lost quite a lot of weight and has had some kind of plastic surgery or air brushing on his neck. Still, all of this doesn’t matter. I really really enjoyed the movie and will be getting it on DVD to watch again on rainy sad days.

The premise of the movie – I really should get to that. Nicholas Cage’s character (Ben Gates) is presented with evidence that suggests his great-great-grandfather was a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. In order to clear his ancestor’s name, he has to find the treasure his great–great-grandfather was helping to conceal. To do this, Gates has to break into all kinds of famous places like Buckingham Palace, the White House and kidnap the President to get information out of the legendary Presidents’ Book of Secrets, which supposedly contains all of the secrets of the United States, like the truth behind the JFK assassination. Far fetched – yes, Did I care? No.

The movie borrowed heavily from several other movies that I love, like The Goonies, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and The Da Vinci Code. At least it did it well! Fine holiday fun.

Into The Wild is based on a book by Jon Krakauer, written about the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young man who, in the ’90s, gave all of his savings to charity and vanished. He trekked across America and into Alaska, where he lasted for about 100 days before dying of either poisoness berries or starvation, it’s unsure.

While the movie portrays Christopher as some kind of free-spirit on the search for wisdom, the facts of the story seem to indicate that he was more of a fool than tragic hero. He took nothing with him into the wilds of Alaska, such as a compass or map. He was rained in to the area he was camping in, and hence starved to death. However, there was a crossing only a few miles down the river. Oh, for Google maps!

What I did like about the movie was the documentary tone of it – very well directed by Sean Penn. He captured the young man’s will to be at one with nature and to be free from society’s trappings of wealth and expectations. It was a very poignant story too – Chris meets all kinds of people along his travels whose lives he effects in positive ways. Each of these people ask him not to go, and mourn his leaving, yet he seems to have no care to be around people, and dismisses their affection for him, choosing to be alone. He even says to one that you don’t need to have other people to enjoy life and experiences. However, during his three months solitary confinement in Alaska, he seems to get the wisdom that he is seeking. He acknowledges that he is lonely, ans his final act is to write in his journal that happiness is when shared. Pity it took dying alone in the wilderness to discover what most people instinctively just know.

The movie has some great wildlife scenes, and the lead role is acted very well by Emile Hirsch. His physical transformation alone for the role was quite remarkable, added to which his happy-go-lucky character who changes from a boy to a man throughout the movie, is a touching journey to watch.

I’ve been really lazy and haven’t posted about the movies and books I’ve seen and read lately. It’s so much easier to simply post pics of pizza.

Alec, Alec and I saw the 3D version of this retelling of the old Scandinavian folk tale. It was an interesting blend of animation and what I think were real people and scenery, but it was hard to tell. In some places the people in particular looked really fake, but then in others looked quite amazing – the monsters in particular.

It was a really grisly story – lots of blood thirsty hacking off of limbs and so on, tempered by a naked Angelina Jolie.

The 3D was pretty great, and really unobtrusive. It felt weird wearing the glasses, but technology has improved dramatically since the days of red and blue cellophane, and I didn’t even notice after a while.