To Rome with Love

(If you like Woody Allen, I suggest you not read any further.)

I liked Midnight in Paris and recommend it. I believe it is the only Woody Allen film that I have liked and he maintained that status in To Rome with Love.

This is, without a doubt, one of the worst films I've seen, ever (right up there with Cowboys and Aliens, that not even Harrison Ford could save...).

There are nice performances (I think, and worth a half *) by Ellen Page (Juno) and Penelope Cruz (whom, to my surprise, I've only seen in Captain Corelli's Mandolin) (sorry Joss...). And the brief glimpses of that great city, Rome, were nice.

Otherwise, eminently forgettable.

The Amazing Spiderman

A good action movie with some good acting by Andrew Garfield (Social Network) and Martin Sheen (The West Wing) with an honourable mention to my 'fave' Emma Stone (The Help and Easy A, both of which I highly recommend).

A good story, with 'an edge' rather than what I recall is an 'evil' take in the previous version(s). Not totally sure why a re-make needed to be made so soon (unless it's just $?), but it's an interesting version.

Worth seeing if you like this sort of thing but I'm not sure I'll rush to see again.

Casablanca

Is this a classic photo (by Yousef Karsh), or what? And this is a classic movie which I'd never watched all the way through. Thoroughly entertaining and well acted by Humphrey Bogart (African Queen 1951)(good year!) and Ingrid Bergman (a wide ranging career whom I must have seen in Murder on the Orient Express 1974). My wife and I lost count of the number of phrases that have crept into our everyday vernacular ('Play it again Sam', '...round up the usual suspects...', 'Here's looking at you, kid'  etc). And to my surprise, Claude Rains, who had played the corrupt Senator in Mr. Smith goes to Washington (1939 - a great year for movies), also has a leading role.

Very watchable (with 1/2* deducted, in my opinion, for sets that looked like sets).