Just like I did for books, I’m giving up on individual posts for movies I go to and such. Instead, going for annual summaries, and seeing if I can catch up that way. Probably not, but hey, you never know. The “Cinema” category is movies I actually saw the old fashioned way, going to a theater with popcorn and all that. Movies we watch at home are treated completely differently…

Anyway, 2011 was not a big movie year for us. As with the books, I backtrack and cover a second time a couple movies I made individual posts on earlier. But here we go:

• 2011-01-17: The King’s Speech – Movie about King George VI and his speech therapy to overcome stuttering. This movie obviously won a bunch of awards, and I liked it too. Highly recommended.
• 2011-01-23: Tron: Legacy – Well, I’m a geek. Tron was an important movie when I was younger. Couldn’t miss the sequel could I? It was a light fluffy movie without too much substance, but it was fun. Worth a look if you remember the original Tron fondly.
• 2011-04-17: Hop – A completely forgettable Easter bunny movie. But Alex liked it. Well, enough to keep quiet during the movie. Unlike movies he REALLY likes, he never really talked about it again.
• 2011-05-28: Water for Elephants – A movie about circus people in the great depression. I saw it with my mom. I enjoyed it. It pulled the appropriate emotional strings. Worth seeing.
• 2011-07-03: Cars 2 – This one broke my heart. I really liked the original Cars. It was a love letter to the disappearing American small town, to Route 66, and friendship, and all sorts of nice things. It was sweet. It was sappy. I liked it a lot. And watched it many many times with Alex. Usually not all the way from start to finish, but in bits and pieces. But I liked it. Cars 2 spit on everything that made the original Cars good. It was a spy movie! It was just a bunch of action packed set pieces to build video games around. There were tons of new characters whose only purpose was to sell toys. I guess it was an adequate action adventure movie with talking cars (I mean, what do you expect), but it had no SOUL. The first one left me with a warm fuzzy happy feeling after watching it. The second one left me cold. Of course, Alex liked it as much or more than the original, and we ended up with a bunch of toys, so I guess that is what matters, right?
• 2011-11-26: The Muppets – It was silly. It was fun. There were songs. There were Muppets. I liked it. The first time since Jim Henson died that I’ve watched anything with Muppets in it that really felt like it captured the original spirit of the Muppets. This one was Muppets done right. If you like Muppets, see it. :-)

And that was it for 2011. Six movies. Two of which were “serious” sorts of movies. Guess that isn’t horrible.