Beauty and the Beast (2017)

I thought it was good. I had thought Emma Watson would be a bad match for the movie, because it's all about magic and she looks sort of like a naturalist, and she probably is one because she's intelligent and went to college and got a degree. But she really did fit the part well, and at points I could even see the magic in her eyes, which is rare/sublime. I also found out that she's been in love with Beauty and the Beast since she was like 6, and her heart was bursting on the ceiling when she found out she was going to be doing this movie, which means it's not at all like she just did it because of the prestige and the pay, etc. while not really resonating with it.

I also thought the graphics were nice and stunning, especially the clock and the candlestick, thought the CGI for the beast sort of looked like CGI, like all living beings made with CGI do. It's a shame they didn't do it with makeup like I've heard the director actually wanted to.

I also liked that they changed a couple of things in the movie from the first one that surprisingly actually made it better rather than worse, such as making the reason Belle takes her father's place in prison be that the whole reason he was in there was that he was getting the rose that she had asked for, and also supposedly there were lyrics that were added to the song "Gaston" that were originally written for it but didn't make it into the 1991 film and are more mature-themed.

Oh, and the acting was pretty good in general—Gaston's, Belle's, her father's, everybody's. It's especially impressive that Gaston's acting was good since he's also good-looking in a way that fits the part.

One notable thing was that I had "a moment" when the movie showed Lumiere's (the candlestick's) life slipping away from him as he gradually turned back into an inanimate object after the last petal of Beast's enchanted rose fell, but only for a moment, as soon after he was revived as a human being (his original form before the castle became enchanted). This turn of events really put me in "the zone" of understanding life and death in the universe and how, albeit tragic, death is a relative thing, and one will always find themselves back in the context of life somewhere in the world at some time... again and again.