Movies...

I've seen a few movies recent that I thought I would offer my thoughts on. Spoiler ahead if you haven't seen them.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I've got to admit that I was a bit disappointed by this one. I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or what, but this movie didn't thrill me. I enjoyed it well enough and having Indy back on the screen was really cool, but something about the whole thing just felt off to me. Maybe it was was the whole alien storyline, but honestly, I think one of the biggest things that disappointed me was the obvious CGI that they used for the special effects. I'm of course not naive enough to think that they wouldn't use CGI, but the difference between the feel of the "normal" shots and the CGI ones was starkly different. The rest of it was fine, but I wasn't put into dumb grin at any point during it. Three stars out of five.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I will caveat this by saying that we saw this in Kansas City after a long day of travel and with Connor in the theater. I loved this movie. I thought is was at least as good, if not better than the first one. And it was little things that really made this movie for me. Peter having trouble adjusting back to the "real" world from Narnia where he was not only a grownup, but also the High King. I loved Edmund's more mature and slightly snarky nature. I LOVED the scene in the cave where the White Witch was brought back for just a moment. I knew how that turned out, of course, but even during it, it was well done. This was a really good movie and I can't wait to see it again when it comes out on DVD. 4 stars out of 5

The Godfather

Somehow, my movie education has missed out on watching this movie completely through. I'm not sure how that happened. I feel like I've seen a lot if not all of it through broken bits watched in various forms on TV. I've enjoyed it and Sheryl said I needed to see it, so to the Netflix queue! I finished watching it last night and I really liked it a lot. I thought that the characters in the movie were well portrayed, both from a writing standpoint as well as acting. The scope of it seemed so constrained and almost quiet, minus the multiple murders. I started Part II last night as well and am only about 30 minutes into it, but I can already tell that it seems more ambitious than the first, which I like, but I'm also curious about how it gets pulled off. I'm looking forward to it. 4.5 stars out of 5