I'm curious to hear your thoughts on The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Is there any reason your siblings aren't allowed to watch the movie? It's quite appropriate for children (at least those 8 or 10 years and older).

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Is there any reason your siblings aren't allowed to watch the movie? It's quite appropriate for children (at least those 8 or 10 years and older).

Mostly the younger kids didn't get to watch this time, because I want to be able to hear and follow the movie. I have three younger sisters who giggle a lot when they watch movies and I mean a lot and loudly. I love those girls, but sometimes it is hard to watch TV with them.

The other reason is that we hadn't seen it before and most of the time if one of the younger kids watches something, then they all do. I would definitely let the older two of three girls watch it the next time.

I liked TinTin a lot. It was very enjoyable. I have never read any of the books, but I have heard good things about them and not just here on NarniaWeb. If my library has any of the books I will definitely get one next time I go. I think my sisters enjoyed it as well. I liked the action, the story was intriguing. I will be watching the price on the DVD, I would like to buy it (don't tell my brother though, he thinks I love and want every movie I watch. That is not true BTW about the wanting every movie, I don't.).

I hope that all makes sense, work didn't go well today and I am a little tired and disappointed with my nearly finished project.

SnowAngel

Finally got around to seeing The Avengers. I enjoyed it! I watched it mostly because I heard lots of good things about it. My first watching, I enjoyed it, but I also found it a tad underwhelming. However, it took a second watching for me to appreciate it more. I liked it, overall. The only thing I definitely didn't like about it was the language here and there, but apart from that... it was good. The story was not as exciting as I was expecting, but it was still enjoyable. I liked that it was character driven - though the story did not lend itself to deep psychological musing, the characters' relevance to the story and their interactions with one another did. I enjoyed the part where they reached the peak of disagreement, and each found something that bugged them about the whole venture... but then soon assembled. The humor was good, too, and the film is very quotable.
I don't really "do" superhero flicks, and I'm really not accustomed to sci-fi (at least not the way I am with fantasy), so it took some adjustment while watching. I know barely anything about the superheros, but I feel like the movie did a very good job of communicating character development to unfamiliar audiences like myself.
My favourite characters were Black Widow, Captain America, and Dr. Banner/the Hulk.
The fight sequences - I think Black Widow and Hawkeye's was the one that had me most on edge. However, I feel like some were a bit too long - specifically, the one between Iron Man and Thor and then the final battle. The final one had a bit too many sequences, IMO.

But, anyways, very interesting film! I might be checking out the other Marvel ones.

I watched Oz The Great and Powerful with friends last evening. On the whole we gave it a thumbs up as an enjoyable movie. I'm not as familiar with the Oz canon as others, but it was fun to see other characters from the books, such as the China Girl (who got universal 'awwws' from our crowd for cuteness).

There were a number of nods both to the books and to the original classic movie; this one ends up setting itself up as a sort of prequel to that one.

Oddly we, also, watched Oz the Great and Powerful on the weekend. I'd agree it is a reasonable movie with a few unexpected twists to it. I don't know how it would compare with the other two movies. We have a copy of Return to Oz, which I always rather enjoyed. But the girl who plays Dorothy is obviously younger in age than Judy Garland who played Dorothy in the original 1939 Wizard of Oz.

We also saw an old movie, Crimes of the Heart, which we saw earlier this year performed as a play by a local theatre group, who, now we have seen the original movie, we think did quite a good job. I think that I might go and see more performances like that one. I'm surprised just how many old movies end up as musicals and plays.

Bella, I saw The Avengers fairly recently (last month) too. I had a similar reaction to you; I was a bit underwhelmed with the plot, but was very happy about the character moments. To be fair, I was also half-asleep, there's only so much you can do with the save-the-world plot, and a large part of what made me decide to watch it wasn't everyone raving about how great it was, but the character bits I'd heard about. It's grown on me, and the plot made more sense after a second viewing, though I'm still far more interested in the characters than the plot.
I agree with the favourite characters list, though I'd add Hawkeye on there too; was there a reason he wasn't on your list? I really like Thor and Iron Man as well, but they come across more arrogant that they could've/should've in the beginning, especially if you don't have their backstories. You'll have to let me know what you think of the other movies if you see them; I've liked all of them I've seen, though some more than others, and mostly still for the characters.

Valia, I agree. I think it's the characters that really made the film as strong as it was. The movie made more sense with more viewings. Ah, Hawkeye... no, no particular reason why I did not add him to my favourites. I liked him, for sure, but I guess I added, off the top of my mind, the ones I could relate with. I felt a little bit disconnected with Hawkeye during the film (maybe this was just my first impression), as he is missing for half the plot, so I wasn't sure of his relationship to everyone at that moment... but I really did like him. I wish he and Black Widow recieved more attention, merchandise-wise!
Yes, I agree about Thor and Iron Man. I didn't know them, and I understand how they can come off as arrogant (specifically Iron Man ), but I liked them overall. Thank-you! If I get to watching them, I will be sure to post about it!

Ah, okay, Bella. No, I think a lot of people don't like/disconnect from Hawkeye because he is mostly off-screen/gone for the first half. Going into the film, though, I was kind of prepared for that because of my sisters. They had told me right after they'd seen it that

Also, I knew that my sisters thought he was a great character, and that he didn't get as much appreciation/attention as some of the other Avengers, so I was kind of set up to like his character. (And part of what made me interested to watch the movie was what I'd heard about him, and about Natasha, and a few other folks.) I guess maybe that all made it easier to connect and appreciate what he did with the time he did have---like
Ditto about Hawkeye and the Black Widow not getting as much merchandise attention! I've heard that they're both supposed to have larger roles in the second Avengers, so if that's true, hopefully that'll change.

I just watched "The End of the Spear" on DVD. For those who have never seen, or heard, it's based on a true story of a missionary family in Ecuadore during the 50's, and 60's. The father was killed by a tribe, and according to custom the son has the responcibility to seek revenge. Well, to the tribe's suprise the family seeks them out, not to kill them, but befriend them.
I won't bore you with any other details, and I won't say it's one of the best I have seen, acting-wise. But the message is very powerful.

I just saw Aladdin last night. It was hilarious!

My mom made me watch a past mini series in movie format called "The Thorn Birds" made back in 1983. At first I didn't want to watch it because I knew it was going to be a sappy romance and it was long, like 7 hours. I ended up enjoying it a lot, sad but had a great message at the end.

So I've watched two movies recently that I thought were worth mentioning in here. The first was 'Snow White and the Huntsman'. It was ok. There were certainly parts that I liked I didn't think I was going to, and vice versa. Perhaps because I've never seen Kirsten Stewart in anything before she didn't bother me at all. I thought she made a very nice Snow White. The special effects were cool. The movie as a whole reminded me of Legend. Now for the part I did not like...

So that kind of ruined it for me.
I do want to ask, did anyone else think of Barbara Kellerman's White Witch in the way Charlize Theron portrayed the Evil Queen?

Moving on to the next movie, I saw 'Now You See Me' a couple nights ago and liked that one quite a bit as well. Really my only complaint was the lack of focus on The Four Horsemen. I would have thought that since the movie is sort of about them they'd be in there more, but they weren't. The movie did catch me off guard with the twist at the end, so bravo to the filmmakers on that one. Anyone else see it?

I watched Apollo 18 on Netflix recently and overall enjoyed it. The plot, which is a sort of sci-fi/horror combination, is about NASA launching another Apollo mission, this one top secret, to the southern pole of the Moon. The astronauts land and begin setting up some radio devices used to monitor Earth for Soviet nuke launches, or some such. Things start to get weird when they start exploring and find an old Soviet LK lunar lander, and the Cosmonaut that piloted it dead in a crater surrounded by really weird rocks. They take a few of the rocks back to the LEM with them and...well, I suppose you'll just need to see it.

When I first heard about this film I was curious but also a bit doubtful because it wouldn't be able to break my suspension of disbelief, most of which was nicely resolved in the first 10 minutes of the film. The film is shot in the ever popular "found footage" method, which I really like but lots of others do not, so if that's not your thing, you probably won't dig it. 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

I just watched The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and am not going to pretend I didn't sob a few sobs at the end.

Cillian Murphy is a great actor btw. Have any of you seen Sunshine by chance? He was great in that one too.

Sunshine is a great movie and Cillian Murphy is a fantastic actor.

I saw The Great Gatsby (2013) the other day. On this board, i could get pelted with rotten tomatoes for saying this, but i liked it better than the book.

My sister read the book first and really liked it, and the movie, so i bought it a few days ago and tried it. If it hadn't been so short i don't know if i would have finished it: while it seems i followed the plot well enough, Fitzgerald's prose constantly confused me. I felt like i was always missing his point. I didn't care about any of the characters, and the entire thing seemed like a waste of time.

The movie was a bit too "artsy" -- weird filming effects, switching perspectives, etc. -- in the beginning, but i think around the time of the "party" at Myrtle's apartment it got better. The acting was pretty good all around, the narration flowed well with the rest of it, and while i still couldn't exactly root for the characters and their intentions, i cared a lot more about what happened. It felt more real.

I was surprised to see it was so badly received by the critics. The top complaints i saw seemed to be that it missed the heart of the story and was too flashy. Honestly, that confuses me a little, since the movie conveyed the emotion of the story a lot better for me than the book, and if any story could handle being made with too much razzle-dazzle, it would seem to be this one.

Anyway, if you read and liked the book you might be disappointed. If you read and disliked the book for reasons other than the ending or the characters, you might like it. If you haven't read the book, i'd recommend it with the minor caveats -- it's got people making poor decisions, an unhappy ending, lots of drinking, a violent accident, and some suggestive content.