AUGUST 2016 - FILMS + TV

A viewing month much disrupted by the 2016 Rio Olympics. We're kind of sports freaks in our house, so most evenings were devoted to watching the Olympics when I could have been reading or watching a few flicks.

That said, I enjoyed what I watched. Shame about the empty stadiums and a shame Ireland only won a couple of  silver medals in rowing and sailing. A bit disappointing boxing-wise, but hey hoh!

Annalise Murphy - Silver in sailing!

O'Donovan brothers - Silver in rowing!

Most of what we watched was in the last week of the month......some good, some ok, one absolutely bloody awful! 

Absolutely bloody awful!

I try and avoid too much profanity on the blog, but I'll make an exception in this case. Macbeth - the biggest load of fucking old shit I have ever watched in my life. I'd rather cut off and eat my own foot that sit through this again.

I do like Marion Cotillard usually, I don't know Michael Fassbender - based on this neither do I want to either. Visually it was ok. I needed subtitles for the affected Scottish accents, and I needed subtitles for the Shakespearean English. Call me a philistine - I don't care. Thought an end to my pain was imminent when he gets it on the battlefield at the end, but fuck me no - he takes about a fucking week to die. A week that seemed like a month.

1961 Western

When a bank heist goes wrong, outlaw Yellowleg (Brian Keith) inadvertently kills a 9-year-old boy -- the son of saloon girl Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara). Plagued by guilt over the shooting, Yellowleg vows to help her bury the boy beside his father in the now-derelict town of Siringo, Ariz. With criminal cohorts Billy (Steve Cochran) and Turk (Chill Wills), Yellowleg embarks on a dangerous journey into Apache territory to lay the boy in his final resting place.

A decent film - best ever? No, but enough here to entertain myself and the wife on a weekend afternoon!

Currently viewing - a 4 part BBC drama.

One of Us is a British drama television miniseries created and written by Harry and Jack Williams. The show is about childhood sweethearts, Adam Elliot and Grace Douglas, who are brutally murdered after returning home from their honeymoon. Their families and neighbours in the remote Scottish Highland village of Braeston are devastated, but things take an even darker turn when a badly injured man arrives at their doorstep after his car comes off the road – a man who happens to be the killer.

1 or 2 episodes watched in August. I'm up to episode 3 now with the climax airing this week.
Highly recommended!

Knight and Day (2010)

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) chats up her charming seatmate on a flight out of Kansas, but she doesn't realize that she will soon land in the middle of an international adventure. The fellow passenger, Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), is a covert operative who claims he has been set up to take a fall. Now his reluctant partner, June must dodge bullets in Boston, leap rooftops in Austria and evade bulls in Spain, while she and Roy learn that trust is the most important survival skill.

Enjoyable enough thriller with Cruise as a spy and Diaz inadvertently caught up with him. Best film ever? No, but easy enough viewing. Not one I'd have wanted to shell out money to watch, but I wasn't bored either.

Netflix series - science fiction if you like.

From wikipedia..... This thrilling Netflix-original drama stars award-winning actress Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, who lives in a small Indiana town in 1983 -- inspired by a time when tales of science fiction captivated audiences. When Joyce's 12-year-old son, Will, goes missing, she launches a terrifying investigation into his disappearance with local authorities. As they search for answers, they unravel a series of extraordinary mysteries involving secret government experiments, unnerving supernatural forces, and a very unusual little girl.

Two episodes into it, six to go. Intriguing so far.

A top film!

From Wikipedia again....

Public Enemies is a 2009 American biographical mob drama film directed by Michael Mann and written by Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman. It is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's non-fiction book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Set during the Great Depression, the film chronicles the final years of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) as he is pursued by FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), as well as Purvis' pursuit of Dillinger's associates and fellow criminals Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff) and Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham).

Given my love for most things gangsterish I'm kind of surprised it has taken my so long to get round to watching this one. Really enjoyable. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale were very good. I can't recall enjoying Depp in a film as much as this one. Best performances though I felt were Stephen Graham as a manic Baby Face Nelson and Stephen Lang (the nasty one in Avatar).  I would say Marion Cotillard redeemed herself after Macbeth, but we watched this one first.

A detective in post-Katrina New Orleans has a series of surreal encounters with a troop of friendly Confederate soldiers while investigating serial killings of local prostitutes, a 1965 lynching, and corrupt local businessmen.

Based on a 1993 book by James Lee Burke, but set here post-Katrina this was a bit better than ok. Not half as good as the book in my opinion. I quite like Tommy Lee Jones and we get to see him in every scene here, but it was kind of pedestrian. In the books Burke and his main man Dave Robicheaux can be quite reflective and lyrical, which in truth must be really hard to portray on the screen. I've seen worse. John Goodman was pretty good as Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni, as was Mary Steenburgen as Robicheaux's wife.

Book over film for me.