After seeing lots of movie promos with giant bears in the snow, Alec and I were keen to see this movie when it was released.

The Golden Compass is based on a series of books, which explains the huge amount of exposition they try to cram into the movie by way of the characters’ dialogue. It’s doesn’t entirely work, and is a bit clunky – it also doesn’t make sense all of the time, as concepts are introduced but not fleshed out. The editing was also clunky, making me think the movie makers had to edit a great deal of footage down to make the film and only had a short time to do so in.

The movie is set in a parallel world where a child, Lyra, is the only one who can work a magical artifact called the golden compass. Lyra’s friends have been disappearing, and she journeys into the far north – leading her to discover that the children have been kidnapped and experimented on, and only she can save them.

I liked a lot of the concepts, such as having your soul externally to your body, as an animal that walks by your side, and the large ice bears were impressive, but the large gaps in the storyline and bad editing took away from the enjoyment of the movie.

On New Year’s Day, Alec and I went to see Death At A Funeral, a British comedy recommended to us by Alec’s Dad.

I have to say, I did laugh a lot. I thought it was a bit odd in part, quite over the top in others, but in total, really funny and particularly good to watch when i had been feeling low over being so sick.

The general storyline is that a father dies and his family and friends convene at the family home for his funeral. The film interweaves multiple story lines, involving members of the family and a mysterious stranger who has a secret about the deceased. There is accidental drug-taking, nudity and dwarfs. How could it not be the funniest funeral ever?

I particularly liked Alan Tudyk as Simon Smith, who also stars in Serenity and Firefly.

I recently read the novel so was keen to see the movie version of Atonement with Rosalie.

The early reviews were not overly flattering, so I wasn’t hoping for an amazing movie. I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful it was. Very much like the book, it was delicate, understated and old world in style.

Atonement was also very faithful to the book, with only one major deviation from the novel – the ending of all things! I would have much preferred if the movie had remained completely faithful to the book, but I think the change was made to enable Briony to voice her thoughts and hopes for atonement. In the book she internalises her thoughts on this, and without a narrator in the movie, it would have been much harder to get the character development and message across.

What I enjoyed most about the film was the cinematography and small details like musical themes and whimsical moments of filming, capturing tiny moments that summed up the characters so perfectly and spoke louder than dialogue. I also thought the editing was fabulous, as well as storytelling methods like showing the same moment through different characters points of view. it could have been disjointed, but it as seamless.

Since I read the book first, I don’t know how much people who haven’t read it would enjoy the movie, but I loved it.

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.

Alec and I had a dinner and movie night, and decided to see Lions For Lambs, the new Robert Reford movie. As it stars Tom Cruise, we were a little apprehensive about it, but after some glowing reviews decided to give it a go.

Lions For Lambs is a very “talky” political movie. Nothing much actually happens, but there is a hell of a lot of talking going on, which makes it hard for me to condense into a short review.

Tom Cruise plays a smarmy senator – perhaps the most perfect role he’s ever had. Meryl Streep is fabulous as a hard-hitting journo wanting to tell the world what’s really going on but facing opposition from her commercially-bent TV station. Robert Redford is a university professor who is trying to inspire students to reach their full potential and give a damn, frankly. In the midst of these three characters talking, talking, talking, a deadly situation is being played out in Iran. Two young soldiers involved in a new military strategy (being hailed as the new solution by Cruise’s senator) find themselves alone and stranded while the enemy approaches on all sides.

When the drama flicks back to Cruises’ smarmy senator telling Streep’s journo how they have to do “whatever it takes” to win, you can’t help but think of all of the young men and women in the Middle East right now whose lives are being sacrificed because of men like this, for a cause that has been warped by propaganda to resemble nothing of the real reasons the troops are actually there.

It’s time we all opened our eyes and stopped being apathetic.

This is not your average romantic comedy. It’s witty, poignant, sweet and sad, all rolled up into a tasty pie.

I haven’t seen a lot of Keri Russell lately. I used to love her in Felicity, and she shows in this movie why she was a huge hit in the show. She is so beautiful, in a best-friend-you-want-to-hug kind of way. She expresses so much in her adorable little face and huge eyes – in this film in particular, it’s sadness and extreme happiness.

Keri plays Jenna, a waitress who is stuck in a dead-end marriage with a dead-beat husband. The only thing Jenna has going for her is her talent of making fabulous pies. The pies are a running theme throughout the film, with Jenna making pies in her head to sum up the various situations she finds her self in, such as “I hate my husband” pie.

Nathan Fillion, Captain Malcom “Tightpants” Reynolds in Firefly, is her doctor who falls for her. It’s a great roll for him – he’s funny, sweet and sexy. And a doctor! The perfect leading man.

The dead-pan humour in this movie is great, especially from Keri Russell, in a role that is as far from self-absorbed Felicity as possible. She is quite luminously beautiful and has a great screen presence, with a girl-next-door quality that makes her a perfect leading lady, especially in a quirky, sweet movie like this.

Alec also enjoyed Waitress, so I think I can be safe in saying it deserves way more than to be dismissed as a “chick flick”. See it!

I wasn’t sure if I should blog about this, but I feel compelled to save any of the few people who stumble across my blog from the horrendous movie that is Good Luck Chuck.

As it stars Jessica Alba, I thought it would be a romantic comedy like Knocked Up, but no, it was actually about 100 times cruder and sexually graphic that KU, and was without a hot male lead. Hello? What was with the ugly guy with the expressionless face? Rule number one for romantic comedy: The leading man must make the women in the audience swoon. The only swooning I did was in horror at the multiple graphic sex scenes.

The general premise of the film is that Chuck has been hexed as a 10-year-old by a girl he rejects at a party and cursed to be always outside of love. As an adult, Chuck is unlucky in love – when he dates a girl, she meets her soul mate and gets married right after he breaks up with them. This gives Chuck the reputation of being a lucky charm, so women everywhere want to shag him – hence the excessive amounts of graphic sex scenes we endured. Chuck is also in love with Jessica Alba’s character, and [SPOILER ALERT!] gets the girl in the end. Huh? How does that work? The guy sleeps around and STILL gets the nice girl in the end? I don’t think so.

The only redeeming feature in this movie was the penguins that Jessica Alba’s character is obsessed with. It comes second only to Happy Feet for pure amount of penguins and talk about penguins. It was odd juxtapositioning though, like the movie producers thought that pairing off cute sweet penguins with disgusting crude men would make for a movie both girls and guys would enjoy. Umm … wrong? And thanks for sending out the message to guys everywhere that they can have both the girl who sleeps around to have fun with, and the virgin to marry.

Save yourself the hour-and-half and the $15. Don’t even waste the bandwidth to download it.

The only inoffensive shot I could find from the movie. Penguins shouldn’t be involved in this type of movie!