Another fantastic month of viewing - two trips to the cinema - one amazing, one okay. A TV series finished and a couple of new seasons of old favourites started. A few decent films watched on the small screen that were on the whole much more enjoyable than I had expected. One more film watched - a repeat, but still enjoyed. A couple of films started but not finished - one to get back to, the other not decided yet.
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| Last episode and a half of the penultimate series of this hard-hitting British drama - highly recommended. |
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| Last series of the amazing This is England - 1990 edition. Excellent cast, superb acting, brilliant writing with difficult themes explored - love, marriage, racism, friendship, infidelity, parental abuse and revenge, drugs and growing up. Hard-hitting. Haunting music throughout from Ludovico Einaudi, with a back-drop of British music from the 80s. I'd watch it all again in a heart-beat. |
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| My daughter found this one on NetFlix. Really enjoyable drama about a group of pipe-layers in Alaska surviving a plane crash only to be stalked by a pack of wolves. Neeson on a bad day is really watchable and he's not having a bad day in this one. Great scenery - fantastic climax. Recommended |
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| Watched against my better nature - but really enjoyed it. A lot more than I expected to. Married couple going through a difficult period and resorting to some unorthodox counselling. I like Tommy Lee Jones but have been a bit lukewarm to Meryl Streep; ever since watching Out of Africa - 30 years ago. I think it won an Oscar for the most boring film of all-time. I still doze off when thinking about it.........zzzzzz |
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| A bit of a conundrum this one. Ferrell is a man hell-bent on ruining his life through drink. Job goes, marriage crumbles, wife leaves and he's reduced to living on his lawn and selling off his possessions. Hard to sympathise with the character when he's such a dick for a lot of the movie, but some food for thought. Not especially uplifting at the end, but he is trying to pull himself together. |
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| Seen about a dozen times when the children were growing up, but my youngest (17 now) had a hankering for it and so.... once more unto the breach my friends......worse ways of spending an hour and a half! |
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| Started late on Saturday evening and managed half an hour before my eyelids started drooping. Not sure about it to be honest. Southern Gothic eccentrics don't do a lot for me on screen and I'm undecided on whether we will continue to watch it or not. Anyone else have an opinion? Watch or not... |
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| First episode of Season 11. I'm sure some of the scenarios are based around actual procedure, just hard to be convinced by a team cracking it ever time in 40 minutes or so. Still watchable - this time around our male team members are intact, but we've dropped a couple of the female leads from last time around, which was a shame as I like watching Jennifer Love Hewitt. My daughter's favourite series, so we will be continuing to watch. |
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| Boom - night out at the cinema with my wife and 25 other hardy Leighton Buzzard souls. AMAZEBALLS! Nominated for an Oscar last year - Best Foreign Language film. Argentinian-Spanish in origin - subtitled obviously. 6 vignettes based on the theme of revenge and retribution. A fantastic opener, with a plane ride that's a one-way ticket. Road rage is another scenario. A local gangster meets his match at an out of the way diner. A common working man with some demolition skills is tired of getting shafted by the city and its thieving parking policies. A wealthy family and an errant son involved in an RTA - a sleazy lawyer tries to put the fix in. A bride and her husband and a few difficulties at their wedding reception conclude our amazing ride. Highly recommended - dark, brutal, violent, funny - if I did a pick of the month this would be it! Catch it if you can. |
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| Fourth or fifth season of this OTT American series. The rest of the gang love it and I'm slowly coming to appreciate it. We watched episode one when my son popped back from Uni. Lady Gaga stars in this series. Kathy Bates also. TO BE CONTINUED. My take a while to get through as after this week, he won't be home until Christmas break. |
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| SCREAM.......I got the 3 movie DVD set for my birthday and I can safely say I'm not a massive horror film fan. I have never seen any of this trilogy. I get too nervous and jump at everything. I'll watch with the kids if press-ganged. We managed 20 minutes before the sleep monster took us. Unfortunately we lasted a bit longer than Drew Barrymore. (I love Drew - when we play snog, marry or avoid - I'd insist on marrying her every time!) TO BE CONTINUED! |
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| Another trip to the cinema and a kind of birthday outing.(The day after the big event and a night out with my good lady.) Our local library screens new films maybe two or three months after they go out on general release with the added advantage that the ticket prices are roughly half those of the large multi-screen cinemas in Milton Keynes. Decent cast, based on a book by Bill Bryson - an author I've enjoyed on and off over the years. Okay - a bit underwhelming really. I know Redford hasn't made many films recently - the last one I saw Out of Afric......zzz........oops sorry nodded off again.... bored the backside off me. Nick Nolte is good, Emma Thompson ok - a bit under-used, Redford - a bit boring, or is it Bryson who's the boring one! A night out, a few chuckles, but glad I didn't pay top dinero for this one. |
My viewing was a lot more successful than my reading!
I had intended starting the second season of
Fargo, but stupidly forgot to set the record button on the series. I have recorded from the second episode onwards and have another week or so to watch it via Channel 4's iPlayer.
It certainly sounds as though you saw some good 'uns, Col. This is England really does look like a good series. I hope it comes this way at some point. And I agree: some of Liam Neeson's stuff is quite good.
ReplyDeleteI hope THIS IS ENGLAND (all of it) makes it across to the US as it does deserve a wider audience. NEESON is probably my favourite actor at the moment
DeleteHow did I miss THE GREY, HOPE & SPRINGS, and A WALK IN THE WOODS? Thanks for highlighting these films, Col. Liam Neeson is a favourite with us.
ReplyDeleteTHE GREY is only from 2011 and HOPE SPRINGS 2012. I much preferred both of them to A WALK IN THE WOODS.
DeleteI would like to watch Hope Springs and have enjoyed The Grey. Really good drama. I went to movies to see it when it opened.
ReplyDeleteI must admit, we don't go to the cinema that often - twice was a rarity for us in one month. A lot of new films just pass me by, and unless they are extremely high profile or hyped to the max. I don't keep up with them. There's a weekly film review show on a radio channel that I have the car stereo tuned into, but the two presenters come across as smug and very self-satisfied, so I don't listen.
DeleteI too quite enjoyed The Grey, although I gather the depiction of wolfish behavior sucks bigtime. There was a lot of outrage among the wolf-preservation people about the gross misrepresentation of the creatures as implacably evil killing machines a la Jaws. I can understand their point, actually. You and I know that it's just a fairytale, in effect, but I live in a country where many people are so suggestible that they were, for example, stockpiling food and weaponry in case of an invasion by ISIS, and so might well be led by the movie to believe the only good wolf is a dead one.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I really like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And I've seen some very good Redford-starring movies over the past few years: try An Unfinished Life (2005), The Company You Keep (2012) and All is Lost (2013) -- the middle one is the one you might like most.
I suppose I can see how some people might find the behavioural aspects of the wolf in the film plausible. There is nothing totally outlandish about how they are portrayed in my opinion. So unless you know your subject, you may be led astray. I suppose I hadn't factored in how some communities may take it at face value - particularly if there are some in their environment. The closest I'll ever get to one is if I visit Whipsnade Zoo.
DeleteI take on board your point about certain swathes of the community not necessarily being dunderheads, but misinformed and intentionally so, usually by the politicians to suit their own agendas.
Glad to see Midnight is worth persevering with, so I'll tune back in. And I'll look up the Redford films and see what I think.
What is the Jennifer Love Hewitt programme? It's not ringing any bells.
ReplyDeleteI like the book of Midnight in the Garden... better than the film. And really enjoyed the Scream movies.
Oops - sorry - CRIMINAL MINDS - US crime drama. I think I might have the Midnight book as well, rather unsurprisingly
DeleteExcept for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Criminal Minds, I am not familiar with much of this. I liked Midnight in the Garden.... Glen was lukewarm about it.
ReplyDeleteWe watched several seasons of Criminal Minds and I think it has had a nice core cast and great stories, but the unrelenting torture and gruesomeness just got to much for me... about two seasons before it was too much for Glen. That female agent spot seems to rotate from one new star to another.
The Scream movies are not my favorite movies ever, but we enjoyed them when we watched them years ago.
I haven't yet got back to Midnight or indeed the Scream films. I've not watched much at all during November.
DeleteThere is definitely rotation at play in the female spots for Criminal Minds. Kind of wonder whether the network that produces the programme holds them in less regard than the males.