January 3, 2015 : Back From The Holiday (Travel) Season
Like most years, the holidays tied up my time and made it difficult to write any posts these last few weeks. This year was particularly hectic since I had to fly in from out-of-state and crash at multiple people’s houses over the course of my visit.
Now that I am back east and things have settled down, I hope to once again make more frequent posts. Over these past few weeks, I have been able to catch a few movies – in a wide variety of genres, with a varying amount of accolades.
One movie I saw was an anime (Summer Wars); and while the animation was really cool, the story was pretty disappointing. Much of the plot took too long to develop, and many of the key plot points seemed to far-fetched or convenient to really grab me. Besides, any anime that uses Koi-Koi (which apparently is a real card game in Japan) as a focal point to the plot, is fighting an uphill battle.
I also saw a more mainstream movie (The Lego Movie), and it definitely lived up to all the hype. I liked the animation and enjoyed the story (although I felt the ending sputtered a little). Still, I thought it was a solid movie and can see why it was so successful.
Another movie I just saw was Snowpiercer. I heard about it a few months ago, and it came with solid reviews. Unfortunately, I thought the movie was pretty awful. It was based on a French graphic novel; and while the premise seemed interesting, it really felt like this story would have been better served as an anime series. Much like Watchmen, trying to condense such a dense story/ world into a movie was too difficult. The pacing of the story alternated between too slow and too fast, and it felt like it resulted in poor character development. Plus, some of the story just didn’t make much sense. Plus, the ‘fish scene’ was just too bizarre (if you saw the movie, you’d understand… if you didn’t watch it, then consider yourself lucky).
posted by Pi Visuals at 11:20 pm