Recently Watched

We like to save movies to TIVO that catch our eye and we finally watched The Emperor and the Assassin on Sunday night. What a great movie!

We had no idea what it was about. The Spousal Unit had a vague idea it was something Hong Kong action-y and having just watched Big Trouble in Little China for the umpteenth time, it seemed like a good way of rounding out the evening. Oh boy was that impression wrong. The Emperor and the Assassin is a beautiful epic tragedy.

If you're the sort of person who will watch and enjoy "the Scottish play" or *Richard the III, you should watch The Emperor and the Assassin, it completely sucked us in within five minutes.

*Even though Gandalf's evil and that's so wrong.

Also, a few days earlier we finally watched a TIVO-ed copy of the orginal Cat People. This movie has a well-deserved excellent reputation, it's a subtle, psychological thriller with a bit of the supernatural thrown in.

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will observe that the hero is a classic Lovecraftian type. He's a sensible modern American tangling in matters that are beyond his ken and woefully ill-equipped to deal with sinister secrets originating from Old Europe.

Although that makes me wonder, how did this movie got produced during World War II? I wouldn't have thought that'd be an approved message for the times.