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Let me just quote the woman I overheard as I was leaving the early showing of Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. “The movie was good, but too long.”

It was a phenomenal effort from Studio Ghibli’s second in command, Isao Takahata. He doesn’t get the same accolade’s as Miyazaki, but he is just as good an animator. It was an amazing animated film. In this day and age of CG animation, Takahata stuck to traditional hand drawn animation. Not just regular hand drawn — he did the film in a style that can only be called drawing. It looked like a Bill Plimpton animated film. The pencil lines shown through, and the colors all pastel like crayon. It was exhilarating to look at. Here is art. Especially in the sequence where the Princess escapes from her the jail that her home in the city had become. It was a fluid sequence, and very dynamic. It was one of the best sequences I’ve seen in an animated film in a long while. It ranks up there with the breathless ride of the Valkyries on the ocean waves from Ponyo.

This is a film to see. Too bad it will only show in the US in very few cinemas. Catch it if you can.

4 of 5 stars.

Before I Go to Sleep should put you to sleep.

It’s a standard mystery/thriller fare. Woman, Nicole Kidman, has selective amnesia after a horrific accident. She wakes to find a life she does not now, because it has been 10 years since then. She finds a man, her husband, next to her. He gives her instructions to what her life was and is. Now she has to know, if that is really the case.

So the story tries to make you wonder, who should she trust. Her husband? Or a psychiatrist treating her? This psychiatrist makes her video tape her daily life so that she doesn’t forget. As she views the diary she seems to regain memory. Slowly, but surely details start to emerge about the day she lost her memory.

Needless to say, we find out who she is and how she lost her memory. It comes after a reveal that you knew was coming. The movie then ends on a coda that was too long, tacked on minutes did not help it making the movie any better.

I really need to forget I saw this.

2 of 5 stars.

Keanu Reeves takes a page from Liam Neeson’s movie role play book and goes after bad guys who have harmed him in John Wick. The film has been getting decent reviews for a revenge-action movie. The reviews have focused more on the action and the world building than for the story. If you read any further, warning spoilers abound.

Reeves plays a long retired assassin, probably the greatest assassin the underworld of mobsters has ever seen. He retired because he fell in love. Unfortunately, disease took his wife from him leaving him with a broken heart and a puppy his dying wife left for him to love. He crosses paths with the son of his former boss, and in short order finds that he’s lost his dog and his car to the punk. Reeves is out for revenge because the punk killed his puppy.

The world in which this film takes place is sort of like our world except that there is a hotel for assassins to stay at without getting killed.

The action was pretty decent. Hand-to-hand combat, close range fighting, and hand guns going off were clear to understand. The gun play was slightly hilarious as they were used like knives. I wanted to see this action in a samurai or ninja setting. Also, the blood was all computer generated so it looked like fake splatters. The fights were real though.

Not bad for a film in the fall.

3 of 5 stars.

The Judge will surprise you.

I didn’t think it would be any good. Turned out I was wrong. It was good because of the acting. Robert Downey Jr. is always on point. Great to watch and chew up the scenery. Robert Duvall is an old man; ornery. Then there was the others in the cast, Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Bob Thorton, and Vera Fermiga. They are all renowned actors. Not a bad one in the bunch.

So this movie is a display on acting, but there’s a story there. The standard bad son comes home to resolve issues with his family, father, and hometown. You knew it would get there, and you know how it would end. But the acting makes it all worth while.

3 of 5 stars.

I think I’m falling into the camp which finds Gone Girl misogynistic.

At least, that’s what I thought 2 to 3 weeks ago right after I saw the movie. I still feel it is a tad misogynistic, but I think it could be of how the balance of the story was told. The wife was batshit crazy, and the husband wasn’t dickish enough. Not sure the book was imbalanced in that way. I just been reading other reviews comparing the book to movie.

Supposedly, the husband was a dick. More so in the book. In the movie, he just seems ass-holey. He could’ve been made more of an ass.

And the wife could’ve less crazy with capital K for KooKoo.

The best part is the ending. They are married.

3 of 5 stars.