It was definitely enjoyable. I'm told it was much better than the other terrorists-attack-the-White-House movie last summer.

I was mostly able to turn my brain off and enjoy the spectacle, though I do think it was absolutely ridiculous that the bad guys were allowed to play whack-a-mole with the Presidential limo in plain sight while the military stood around gawking. The air between the roof and the perimeter fence should have been so full of covering fire that the antitank weapons would have bounced off it if anyone were left alive to fire them.

So I hear Christopher Walken is going to play Captain Hook in the latest Peter Pan remake.

I saw Begin Again last night. Rather like Once, it's a pleasant and low-key movie about people and music. It's also a bit of a love-letter to New York City. Mark Ruffalo is endearingly scruffy as a down-and-out A&R guy, Hailee Steinfeld plays his daughter and Catherine Keener his estranged wife, and Keira Knightley is her Kiera Knightley-est as a singer-songwriter on the outs with her rising-star boyfriend.

I liked the music, and the relationships, and it's just a nice little flick. Recommended.

I just saw Snowpiercer, and I think I'm in love. (I haven't read anyone else's comments on it, because I knew I'd be seeing it, but now I want to sit in a bar and TALK about it. Damn.)

We saw it too. It was entertainingly weird. I've seen reactions from people who loved it, people who said it made them thoughtful, and people who thought it was a clusterfuck.

We saw it too. It was entertainingly weird. I've seen reactions from people who loved it, people who said it made them thoughtful, and people who thought it was a clusterfuck.

I thought it was brilliant. One of my top five dystopian movies, certainly. I think my eyes were basically round with delight the whole time. And it was so, so, so pretty. So very beautiful. (I'm talking about the cinematography. To be clear. Though Song Kang-Ho and Chris Evans are both gorgeous in it.)

We saw Earth to Echo and found it quite enjoyable (although I'd only recommend it for those with tweens who like That Sort of Thing). I'd describe it as ET meets Super 8.

I did not love Snowpiercer as much as I wanted too. I didn't have enough handwavium to fill the plot holes, but I did love parts of it, and it was very pretty. Also, I'm kind of amused that Tilda Swinton has been in three of the last four movies I've seen.

If you count things seen on video, I think Chris Evans has been in almost every movie I've seen this year, and the two exceptions were Queen of the Damned and The Covenant.

(I've spent more time in movie theatres this year than I have in the bulk of the last decade, but twelve of those showings were all the same damn movie. So.)

I think going into it assuming a certain degree of graphic novel logic and debt owed to magical realism helped me re: plot holes. Plus, pretty. It's also a movie I'm going to need to rewatch a few times, just to catch everything.

Summer blockbusters could learn a lot from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Focus on character conflict and motivation, action sequences that serve the story and characters, and no lingering shots of disaster porn. The climactic scene in the movie is between two special effects and it's so emotionally cathartic it brought me to tears.

So glad Andy Serkis got top billing on this one. Even moreso than the first one, it's his movie. It's amazing how well characterized all the fucking CGI apes are. Bravo, Weta, you better get a goddamn Visual Effects Oscar out of this. For fuck's sake, the movie opens and closes on Caesar's goddamn eyes. HIS DIGITALLY CREATED EYES.