The Wind Rises

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, I went to see the movie The Wind Rises.  This is the latest movie by Hayao Miyazaki.

For this movie, I got a response from a friend of mine who said that "We will not be joining you, since my girlfriend is not interested in movies about planes."

And I would like to state that the above impression is so flawed.  It is a story dedicated to two Japanese plane builders.  It also talks about Japan's economy between 1919 to 1940s, Tokyo, falling in love, tuberculosis, the fight between keeping the old and in with the new, the earthquake, aftermath of the earthquake and so on.  It is not just a simple movie about planes...  Nothing involving Miyazaki is ever simple.

I watched the dubbed version with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jirô Horikoshi and John Krasinski as Honjô.  Emily Blunt dubbed the voice of Nahoko Satami and Stanley Gucci as Caproni.  However, I would have preferred to have watched the version in Japanese with English subtitles, but I was not able to.  Another great masterpiece by Hayao Miyazaki.

The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)

On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, I went to see the movie The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza).  This was the winner of the best foreign Oscar.

I don't know how this movie won the Oscar.  It must have been up against some pretty crappy movies.  Essentially, this movie is 2.5 hours of cinematic farting.  No storyline, just some scenes about some random people and characters.  I would daresay that this movie was worse than Dead Funny, which my father made me watch.

I looked up the list of foreign films for the 2014 Oscar...  And I see that The Grandmaster made the January short list, but did not even make it to a nomination.  Seriously?  What are the people at the Academy thinking?  How can a movie with no storyline, no character development, a bit of mish mash of this and that, throw in a vertically challenged actor, some sisters, a Mother Theresa-esque figure.

Don't waste your time or money with this movie.  It's already got too much money already from all the suckers who went to see it.

Cinematic farting.  That is all. 

This is a clip of how I feel about this movie.  Except my line would be, "That's not Oscar worthy!"...  And possibly in Italian.

Lego Movie

On Tuesday, March 11, 2014, I went to see The Lego Movie.

This movie features the voice work of many actors, including Liam Neeson, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, and other actors.

The movie features Emmett, who is a very ordinary worker in Lego Land and is the person who is the chosen one to save Lego Land.  Everyone follows these rules and instructions to make sure that Lego Land runs perfect.  However, he needs to stop Lord Business, who is the evil Lego land overseer and wants to unify the Lego universe.  He plans to Kazygle the citizens, but a bunch of Master Builders thwart his attempts.

Do they succeed?  You'll have to watch the movie to find out.

An entertaining movie with an interesting mix of animation and real acting.

The Monuments Men

On Saturday, March 1, 2014, I went to see the movie The Monuments Men, featuring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett.

This movie is based on Frank Stokes, played by Clooney, who is in charge of recovering art stolen by the Nazis during WWII.  He gets to hire his bunch of men for this project.

So, the team consists of:

Frank Stokes (Clooney)
James Granger (Damon)
Richard Campbell (Murray)
Walter Garfield (Goodman)
Jean Claude Clermont (Dujardin)
Donald Jeffries (Bonneville)
Preston Savitz (Balaban)
Sam Epstein (Leonidas)

And they go around helping the Allies restore stolen art and returning them to their rightful owners.

What happens?  You'll have to watch the movie to find out.