Life Highlights: Day With the Family

My family at Chen's, the local Chinese place

Today I spent the whole day with the family. We spent the morning getting ready at my house before we went into town to run a few errands. My cousins are spending the night at my house, so we met my aunt and uncle at my grandparent's.

Once we got here, we ended up chatting for a bit before playing the classic family game: Rummikub. I won both rounds (and quite smugly, I might add), and we had a great rainy day in eating pizza. Although while we were playing, I must admit that it brought into sharp relief how melodramatic and sarcastic we can be as a family. So much saltiness and shade was thrown across the table, it was rather insane.

Then we decided to go to the cinemas. I forgot how lovely the renovated theatre is - all themed around Old Hollywood with concessions that include liquor and flavoured popcorn toppings. We split up into two different groups to watch separate films. My cousins and uncle went to go see Justice League, while my grandparents, aunt, mom, and I went to go see Murder on the Orient Express.

I enjoyed the film well enough for the genre and director. Like most Branagh films, it focused more on a whimsical, romanticised aesthetic than a gritty realism. A suspension of disbelief is definitely required, and an understanding that theatre takes a large role in everything from the blocking to shot decisions in the visual narrative counterpart. The ending of the film was surprising, but it stayed true to the original novel, which I liked. It was surprising because rather than go with a typical, "interesting" solution to a murder mystery, it went with a cliche, or "cop out" ending.

However, as my mom pointed out, the real conflict was exposed to be the internal one of the main character - the famous detective - rather than in having a more "acceptable" ending.

Then we went to dinner at the local Chinese place and had a lovely family style dinner before going back to my grandparent's house. Overall, a great day with the family, and I'll be sad to see my cousins go tomorrow morning.