"Ratatouille" is full of interesting characters.

My Beautiful Memories.

beautiful pictures

It was pretty good.  Technically beautiful; and details are flawless.   I maybe too tough a critic, but I don't think it's as great as the 90- plus Rotten Tomato score though.  Very enjoyable nonetheless.  

The new Point Break also opened today.  The original Point Break has become one of my favorite action movies.  I discovered it only about 3 years ago when I saw it on TV.  As I watched the opening scene of Johnny Utah doing the FBI shooting test, I said to myself, "Where have I been?"     It is a fun movie and the first to showcase the potential action superstar -- Keanu.  Then I realized what a cult following Point Break has.  There has been a long-running stage show...  Lots of the lines have become classic quotes...  Anyway, I felt it would be almost sacrilegious to watch the new one, since I loved the original so much.  
I think Keanu and Takeshi are the only two artists I truly am a fan of.  I have watched and collected almost all their works.

Saw it recently.  What a great script! It is not easy to make a romantic dramady on a couple of people dealing with mental illness.  The young man is bipolar who cannot control his anger.  But on his mostly manic stage, he is determined to be positive and to find the silver lining, even though he just got released from a institution after severely beating his ex-wife's boyfriend and currently have no job. The young woman recently just lost her husband from a car accident.  She deals with her grief and loneliness by sleeping around.  She obviously has major self-esteem issues...  Such a pair of "losers" who are just bumbling along from one disaster to another...  Yet both characters are smart and perceptive about the other.  They also speak frankly, or very sassily (the young women) to each other.  Their first conversation was about the medications they had taken.  A very funny scene actually, but in retrospect, I realized that they were open and honest with each other, not hiding their shortcomings.  This is a much more promising beginning than many well rehearsed first date.
de Niro plays the father with OCD and is obsessed with betting on football games. The mom is the only sane person in the family who had obviously been dealing with the OCD and bipolar behaviors all her life.  She handles both gently and lovingly, but she knows when to say "don't do it!"
The script is so skillfully funny, it is sympathetic to all the flawed characters, and never feels like it's making fun of the mentally ill.  Really it's another movie about the redemption of love, about flawed people finding the right other half, but the story is refreshing.  It reminded me a little of the Secretary (2002).  
So I highly recommend it.  
But I do feel on the more rational side, mental illness is not so easily dealt with, as the movie shows.  However, The movie has a great point of  the importance of Honest  relationships and a tight-knit community to the mentally ill.

How about injecting some randomness in our lives...

It's been a long time since I wrote.  The beginning of the year has been hectic, and suddenly it's the end of Jan!  We had a huge snow storm, got about 2 ft of snow.  And what do you know, the heater stopped working.  Engineers couldn't get to our house  in the storm, so we rusticated by building lots of fire in the fireplace for 2 days.   Work has been stressful, but stimulating.  I hope the stimulating part cancels out the stressful part, when it comes to impact on health.  
Now I am going home late on Friday evening, I thought I've done this commute the same way everyday.  When routines don't change much, days could blend together and fly by even if they are interesting, only punctuated by events such as the snowstorm which is the first thing I recall about Jan.  
Have you sometimes just decide to try some random things, and find something new and interesting?  How about randomly picking out something from a menu?  Or randomly pick up a book in the library?  I thought about the Movie Turn Left Turn Right.  One of my takeaways from the movie is that it does not hurt to mix up one's routine.  If you always turn one way, you may miss an important opportunity or at least something interesting.  
More later about the movie...

Thank you so much!  I am trying my best to relax!  

Saw Man From UNCLE (2015) last night.  It was very enjoyable.  Really liked the style used in the movie.  The bold yellow subtitles, the Cold War news reels, together with a beautiful 60s inspired wardrobe, and deliberately over-the-top slideshow of split screen cut gave it a unique energy and humor.  The movie was able to carry a consistent humorous tone throughout, from action scenes and teasing kiss scenes that never happens for Armie Hammer's character.  So the comedy did its job for me, and I liked it much more than a predictive romantic comedy.

Mr. Barbieri, the composer of Europa passed away.  This piece of music sums up the mood of 70s so well in Tempting Heart (1999). There are feelings better expressed through music than words.  Whenever I hear the song now, I can see Ho-Jun playing the guitar, sometimes pensive, sometimes melancholy, outwardly cool but filled with longings.  
I saw the movie only about 3 years ago.  Really loved it! It's a masterpiece of real life love.  The amazing part is that the realism of average persons' love was told so masterfully that the most mundane activities and smiplest gestures leave indelible marks for the characters and the audience.  In deed, that is exactly how first love is.

Greetings!  just want to drop in and say:
Saw Jungle Book last weekend.  It was a crowd pleaser.  The audience clapped at the end.  I liked it and liked the ending which is different from the original book.  (Won't give it away here).  Technically amazing.  There were a few great musical moments.

Recently I caught up with a few movies.

Bridge of Spies, 2015
Great old fashion movie making.  Tom Hanks is simply great at playing a good upstanding man who has a very strong inner compass.  At the beginning, there was a scene about insurance coverage, because he is an insurance lawyer.  It sounds like a pretty boring job, right?  But the script is so well written. The legal arguememts were entertaining right at opening to establish Hanks as a competent lawyer who is good at negotiation, and surprisingly likable even when he did not give an inch.  

The rest of the movie is well paced.  In retrospect, the story line is actually pretty simple about legal defense and the ensuing prisoner swap. The movie succeeded in building tension without deploying over dramatic speeches, violences or demonized characters.

It was very enjoyable, but also appeals to the better senses of audiences: the importance of due process, rational dealings between competing powers, and acting ethically.

Recently saw it in the cinema.  Some of my movie friends had doubts about it because the title sounds like a similar adventure odyssey story line as the original Finding Nemo. And it's hard for a sequel to top a perfect original...  But I thought it's as good and maybe even slightly better than the original if that's possible...  In short, loved it.  Plenty of funny moments and moving moments, exquisite animation.  And the Octopus is a new star!  I saw a nice octupus pin in a jewelry store on vacation earlier, now I wish I had bought it, since I just loved that character Hank!  
The critical reviews are filled with many moral merits of the storyline. My takeaways are (for fun):  1) Courage and optimism sometimes are better than planning.  2) Parents never give up on their child.  3) Octopus is truly a very amazing animal, and likely the most intelligent invertebrate.