Movie night in

Been watching some movies recently.

So, I was finding I had some free time, and watched Toy Story. And the craziest thing was that I've watched this before (at least, I'm pretty sure I've watched the movie at least once), and while the odd scene was familiar the whole movie seemed rather new to me. My mind has obviously forgotten a lot.

I then watched Toy Story 2. And that was even worse. Again, there's the odd scene I remember, but pretty much the whole movie was like something I had never seen before. This is sort of crazy.

As an aside, one thing I did notice was that there's a clear technological shift going on. The original Toy Story seems graphically flat compared to the second film.

Melanie often gets a few pages into a book or movie before she gets this feeling of deja vu creeping up on her. The other night, she couldn't remember whether she had watched World War Z (by the way, I know I haven't), so I found the trailer. It was a long series of yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, finally concluding that in reality, yes she had watched this one before.

Back to the films. There was an absolute classic - The Italian Job. Not that modern remake (which, to be fair, has Minis in it, but that's about all), but the Michael Caine original. It's still pretty good. Again, I had forgotten some of the plot, but it's very much of its time, and there's this British sense of humour that shines through.

White House Down was one of those classic action movies. You know, the sort where hundreds of fully armed professional soldiers are wiped out by single shots from pathetic handguns wielded by the bad guys, whereas our rebellious hero is a total amateur waltzing carelessly around and hardly takes a scratch from literally thousands of rounds aimed straight at him. It's fun, it's silly, it's entertaining, it's the sort of forgettable escapism that makes movies.

Spy Game was a pretty standard for the genre. It's all just an excuse to show someone on the inside beating the corrupt system.

The Grand Budapest Hotel could best be described as peculiar. Dark in places, cartoon-like in others, arty and edgy cinematography. Sort of interesting, and you can see why it won awards, but ultimately unsatisfying.

Art of the Steal continued the peculiarity. It seemed excessively contrived and artificial.

Then there was The Big Bang, which wasn't too bad. There was a theme in several of the movies here in telling the story through a series of flashbacks, which was continued in this one. It sort of flips oddly between between plain and gritty and being very stylish, which is a bit distracting.

We actually enjoyed The World's End. The plot is completely stupid, the characters little better, the idea that the world has been taken over by robots with blue paint for blood is laughable, but the overall effect is surprisingly plausible. The one thing you simply can't believe, though, is that after 20 years all the pubs in the Golden Mile are still in business. No, that's totally out of order.