Rats, Slugs, Undercover Agents, and Magicians

In between all the running, the anti-pining, and the disinterest in work, I managed to see a couple of good movies lately.

The Departed, which is a remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs is ultra violent, dark, lengthy and classic Scorsese. I actually like it more than the original and though his character didn't even exist in the original film, I think Mark Wahlberg (of Marky Mark fame) stole the show.

I think I may have laughed the loudest in the theater for Flushed Away. I love Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts and all things Aardman. Though this film was CG mimicking claymation, I swear the slugs looked just as smudgy as the original clay models. The French frogs were hilarious. Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet are excellent voice actors. And the film was less schmaltzy than the usual studio animated features.

Finally, The Prestige, which has two fine pieces of eye candy, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. Ah, but the movie isn't just about eye candy, it's about an intriguing story that twists and turns and does upside down loops. The director, Christopher Nolan, excels at the whole nonlinear timeline storytelling technique. I was captivated throughout the entire movie, not once looking around me to see what other people were doing, as I'm apt to do during slow moments of a movie. You don't know who to root for and you'll be talking about it with your friends, trying to dissect the movie and figure out what really happened for an hour after it ends.

I love the holiday movie season! So many good movies dumped in the theaters the last 3 months of the year to qualify for the Academy Awards. I'm going to watch as much as I can.