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St. Vincent is standard indy movie fare. All the character beats were there: curmudgeon, beatific child, harried mother, lovable lady of the night. They even threw some thugs in that made no sense to the outcome of the movie.

It was okay. Better to watch Big Hero 6 all over again.

3 of 5 stars.

Big Hero 6 deserves to be as big a phenomenon as the last Disney animated movie, Frozen. Unfortunately, since this one’s for the boys, I doubt it would create as big a splash in the American zeitgeist. The young princesses will dominate whereas the asian hero won’t.

Disney did this one right. So did Marvel. They made a real diverse animated movie and they made a good one. The lead is an Asian. So is his dead brother. There’s a black guy and two women. There’s a white guy stoner. And they all are scientists. Except for the stoner white guy. This diversity hasn’t been called out in the reviews, but it is cool to see more than white people, and in this instance asians, on the big screen.

The opening animated short was also fun too. I liked that it used cell-shading and didn’t look like CG. It’s a welcome relief to see a different style.

4 of 5 stars.

I have a problem with Christopher Nolan. Although I did enjoy Interstellar, I find him taking himself to serious at times. It makes it tough for me to judge his movies on their own merit.

Interstellar was decent, but if you think about it too long, holes start to pop into the story.

3 of 5 stars.

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.