Disappointing movie weekend

Little Ashes.  About Dali and his contemporaries in 1920s Spain.  A truly beautiful, affecting movie, but not as involving as it could have been. About halfway through the movie, I turned on the subtitles, because I was having a hard time following what was happening because I couldn't always understand what the actors were saying (I'm hardly an expert on Spain or surrealism). Once I had the subtitles, that helped a lot, but it also made me realize what they did in the film, which was regularly throw in a French or Spanish word or phrase without any translation. I suppose a really sharp person could get the meaning from the context, but I thought it created a strange barrier between the audience and the film. I liked the movie a lot and I thought Garcia Lorca's and Dali's relationship was shown in a very honest and heartfelt way, and the artistic expressions were also wonderfully portrayed, especially the painting and the poetry. But the movie was unnecessarily confusing, and I was left with the feeling that I needed more history on  the characters and the period to really enjoy it (like Cache and The Secret in Their Eyes, the Foreign Film Oscar winner last year).

Legend of the Guardians, the Owls of Ga'Hoole.  I was very frustrated at this film because the marketing campaign made it look like a family-friendly movie and it really isn't.  It's way too intense and mature for Alana, who loves animals and expected something quite different - the ads say  "From the producers of Happy Feet"!!!  That's a cheat right there.  She sat on my lap throughout the movie and hid her face several times.  The movie was lovely and well-made, but I never would have taken her to see it if I had known more about it than I got from the very pretty trailer that I saw while attending other family films. I don't think parents should be hoodwinked in order to bolster the box office receipts!!  The trailer certainly didn't show battle scenes and young owls being kidnapped etc.  It just showed beautiful owls flying through beautiful skies with a peppy song playing, laughter and cuddles, etc.  Not a fair portrayal at all.  Next time I need to find out more about a movie before I spend over $20 on it!