Just a random remark: I watched this with the Spanish dubbing as a way to practice that language. I’m glad I did, because when I attempted to re-watch parts of it in English, i found Dustin Hoffman’s lisping performance as Mr. Magorium unbearable. I don’t think I would have enjoyed the movie in English as much as I did in Spanish (and I really did enjoy it).

I don’t often say this, but I enjoyed the movie more than I did the book. The story and characters in the book are actually very different from the movie, and I thought the movie story was… just better. More thought provoking, more interesting, better paced. The book isn’t bad, far from it, but it’s very different from the movie.

This book was funny, moving, tragic, real, mystical, marvellous. It made me cry; it’s been a while since a book did that.

I think that if you like Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, you’ll like this.

What is the What is the fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan, who fled from his country during the second Sudanese Civil War and eventually (re)settled in the USA.

I finished reading this book last night, and started again at the first page this morning.

My review of What is the What is as follows: you should read it. Seriously.

(Related: the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.)

Okay, so the supposed science behind the technology that was at the heart of this movie was utterly unconvincing (at one point the girl next to me in the theatre sucked her teeth and exclaimed “That’s a lie!”), and I’m not a big Denzel Washington fan, but this was pretty decent, for what it was. I enjoy movies where things are hinted at in the beginning and then start to make sense and come together at the end, so I enjoyed this. The ending was super-cheesy though.

A story about three sisters coping with their issues and the death of their supremely selfish mother. A rather pointless book and not very well written (some of the sentences made me cringe, they were so poor); I felt like I’d wasted my time reading it.

Used to be that Adam Sandler’s presence in a movie would pretty much guarantee that I wouldn’t want to see it. These days it pretty much guarantees that I will. Go figure…

I fell asleep halfway through the first “Pirates” movie. Same thing happened with this one. Woke up after a nice nap, only to find that the movie still wasn’t over.

Too long. Too many stunts, not enough story. No resolution to any of the major plot points. The grotesqueness of the Flying Dutchman crew consistently grossed me out. And I did not like the cliffhanger ending at all.

I felt conflicted about this movie. The best I can say about it is that Pixar did a fairly decent job with a story that was utterly formulaic and unoriginal. Although I liked the movie well enough, I felt this nagging sense of faint disappointment. I thought that the movie could have been better, but on the other hand, I couldn’t see how it could have been better, given the triteness of the script material. Still worth a viewing, but not up to usual Pixar standards for freshness and fun.

One unqualified positive comment. I watched it with my boyfriend (who calls all animated features “cartoons”), and during the opening moments of the film, he looked at me and said “You told me this was a cartoon; this isn’t a cartoon, it’s a real movie.” The animation was that good.

Probably the worst movie I’ve seen all year. First of all, Milla Jovovich’s character seemed like a rehash of the one she played in the Resident Evil movies (particularly Res. Evil 2), and the story itself seemed similar. Second, the dialogue was brutally awful. I mean, really really really really bad. Third, the acting sucked (with the exception of the dude playing the friendly, helpful scientist guy—my annoyance at the movie abated a little whenever he was on the screen). Fourth, the plot was incomprehensible. Things happened, but they just didn’t make sense. The movie finished and I felt like I had no grasp of what the point of it was or what it was really about. Fifth, the soundtrack was irritating. Sixth, for what I assume was supposed to be an action move, the “action” scenes were boring as hell, and ridiculously poorly choreographed. Seventh, it felt like the movie was actively trying to substitute style for substance; it was like the makers knew it was crap and were hoping to distract us from its crappiness by making it look cool. They failed miserably.

Overall, a really terrible movie. Nothing whatsoever to recommend it. Avoid at all costs.