Those two movies really couldn’t be more different, but that’s what I watched this week. A few words on each:
The buzz about The Hangover was everywhere when that movie came out. Heck, even Rotten Tomatoes was calling it fresh, but I refused to believe it. I’ve been burned by far too many mediocre, unfunny, lowest common denominator comedies in the past and I refused to believe that this was any different based on the trailers. I could not have been more wrong.
Maybe it’s just the absurdity of the situation and the characters, like how they stole a tiger from Mike Tyson or how they had a Chinese mobster in their trunk, or maybe it’s just the sharp dialogue and the brilliant interplay between the movie’s three stars who have hilarious on-screen interactions. Either way, it’s a surprisingly funny movie well worth renting.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the Studio Ghibli produced Howl’s Moving Castle. If you’ve ever seen anything by Miyazaki, you pretty much already know what to expect. Gorgeous art, sweeping landscapes, epic stories, and cute, well-acted characters. There’s a specific visual style that Ghibli employs and it fits in just right with the European setting of HMC. It’s great to see that someone like Miyazaki is able to capture the wonder of both Eastern and Western locales with such great skill. Some parts of the movie don’t make much sense (but that may have been because I was splitting my attention a bit) and it’s not Ghibli’s best work, but it’s still a fine movie well worth watching especially because of how well the character Calcifer is drawn and portrayed (he’s a cute little fire demon).
Leave a Reply