Whenever I watch TV, I try to avoid watching previews of movies. I like to be surprised by movies and that is impossible to do if you’ve seen all the good bits in the previews. I also try to avoid hearing anything about the plot or any opinions on the show other than whether it is worth seeing or not. That way I can watch the movie and come up with my own opinions. I managed to do that quite often when I was living in Japan because I didn’t have a TV. It’s a bit harder to do here in Canada, but I managed to do it for this movie. I knew that it had Russell Crowe in it (not one of my favourites) and that’s about it. And my clean-slate opinion? It’s not a bad movie. It’s rather long, and I thought it was about to end several times, but having seen it all the way to the end, I can see why most of the scenes were left in. I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. (***)

The animation in this movie is incredible. And I had heard that the plot was lame, but it isn’t really that bad. I quite enjoyed this movie and hope that we will see more like it in the future. (You have to like science fiction to enjoy it, and you have to remember not to be too critical about the plot — it’s not about the plot.) If you see the credits at the end, you can see that that it was a U.S./Japan team effort. I would be interested to see how the two cultures worked together on a project like this. (***)

(English Title: Legend of 1900)

I don’t remember this movie ever being out the theatres, but I was in Japan when it was released, so I might have be tuned out at the time. I enjoyed this movie immensely. It was recommended to me by my friend Kazubo who is notoriously bad at liking good movies (and good at liking bad movies), so I was extremely sceptical from the start. I was very pleasantly surprised by this movie, and have even decided to upgrade Kazubo’s status to “not completely unreliable in movie taste” as a result. As soon as I finished watching it, I went out and bought the soundtrack. And I even paid top price for it, which is something I VERY rarely do. (I am very good at finding bargain CDs.) The movie is about a pianist, so the soundtrack is, not surprisingly, piano-based. Very good all around. The movie is touching and leaves a lasting impression. (*****)