This is a Really, Really Good Movie, Really

Rating: 10/10 (28 April 2013)

This is a spectacular movie, and those are rare these days.
How could anyone not like this movie and its story? The special effects are almost seamless and the fitting together of "real" moments and moments that must be fantasy (the lake-like calm clear ocean in a dreamlike sequence, the floating island, as examples).
So, it borrows a bit from "Castaway" with the storm, the sinking vessel, the whale, landing on an island, to name a few examples, it still holds our attention throughout and does everything else superbly.
And of course the zinger is the twist at the end when we learn that the entire story we just watched may be a metaphor for what really happened, and we are given the choice of which story to choose. That's a nice bit of Twilight Zoniness that adds a great touch.
I didn't know what to expect from this movie. I knew it had gotten a lot of good press, but that is no guarantee of a good movie. This one earns all of the good stuff people say about it.