Another year (more or less), another year of movies. I realy like going to the movies, it’s a nice distraction from the grin of PhD work. And what’s better, being a grad student leaves my schedule flexible enough so that I can go to the weekday matinees for a mere $5 ticket. Not too bad for ~2 hours of entertainment.

In any case, it means that I end up seeing a lot of movies. I figure that I have this blog here, so I might as well use it. One of the webcomics that I follow (Schlock Mercenary) keeps a yearly moving ranking chart (2012, 2011), so I decided to do the same. We’ll see how it goes.

It’s been three months and I finally got to see my first movie of the year: John Carter. I wish they’d kept the “of Mars” part of the title, but it was actually decently enjoyable. There were a lot of nice visuals, particularly in the aliens and their technology. At least for a few hours, I could actually feel like I was on another world (even if it didn’t feel like “Mars” as I know it).

The environmental messages and the “this has all happened before” bits felt a bit heavy handed, but apparently those are part of the original stories as well (which I’ll admit to not having read). It’s something that we need to pay attention to in today’s world, but I feel like it could have been a bit more subtle about it at least.

Overall, it was a good way to spend two hours. If you’re a fan of soft science fiction / science fantasy, you owe it to yourself to at least check this out. Likewise, being the first movie of the year, it’s currently in first place. And in last. We’ll see how the year goes.