Things I've Seen Lately

Having seen The Queen, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Venus in the last few weeks my Oscar list from last year now stands at 83% completion. Just six more left to see, none of which I’m particularly excited about. They are all in line in our queue at Blockbuster.com so I’ll have to see which one comes next.

The Queen was a very watchable movie. It didn’t drag although most of the film took place over only two or three days. The subject matter was relatable since I remember when all of this occurred and I was actually in Paris less than a year afterward and saw the memorials by the tunnel still being replenished daily by mourners.



(not spectacular pictures, I know. Don't blame me. It was crappy weather and digital photography hadn't been invented back in 1998...) It was an interesting peek into the life of the royal family although I don’t know how much was speculation. Other than that there isn’t really much else to say about this one.

I couldn’t get the subtitles to work on Pan’s Labyrinth and I fell asleep for probably half the movie so I can almost guarantee I probably missed something. I saw the beginning and was decently creeped out by the CGI bug that followed the girl around. I fell asleep right after she met the monster dude in the Labyrinth (Pan, I presume?) and woke back up somewhere around when people started getting sliced up and dying. I’m not quite sure what the point of the film was. It didn’t have a particularly happy ending. Perhaps I should attempt to watch it with subtitles and without falling asleep and I’d have a better clue? I liked the music but the whole magical, mystical creature thing kind of put me off.

After starting Venus months ago and never managing to be able to watch it all the way through before Blockbuster started calling and threatening us if we didn’t return it I was finally able to get it from our Blockbuster Total Access list and watched it this past weekend. It’s an interesting movie. Kind of creepy how the old man interacts with the barely legal girl though. Her horrible “ghetto English” accent bugged me for most of the movie, although I loved when she informed Maurice that she was interesting in modeling and he thought she said “yodeling.” The ending was kind of sweet and I loved the slip from reality to the painting. All in all, a good movie that I’m glad I finally got to watch all the way through.

With Ocean’s Thirteen completely wiped out from the shelves when I went to swap out our movie yesterday I picked up Are We Done Yet? instead. This had looked like a funny film but I couldn’t bring myself to spend the money to go see it in the theater. It turned out to be pretty decent. The best part of the whole thing is John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox from "Scrubs") as many different “characters”, all of which he plays quite well. The plot itself is kind of cliché and sappy but there are plenty of jokes and terrible puns throughout the film to keep it from being too much to handle.