Watched: The Housemaid 🎬 Completely camp, schlocky, soapy and ridiculous but in a knowing (but crucially unironic) way. Absolute filth but absolute entertainment. Can see why it’s a box office hit and will totally watch the sequel that’s been announced.
Watched: Die My Love 🎬 (Streamed on Mubi.) Great performance from Jennifer Lawrence, excellent cinematography, and well directed, which is why this gets 3 stars even though I couldn’t engage with the film fully and in no way ‘enjoyed’ it. One of those I feel like I would rate 4 if I were still of an age where I cared what people thought of me and my tastes. I know I should like this film more but would I recommend it or watch it again?
Finished reading: The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman 📚 Another rip-roaring read in the Thursday Murder Club series. There was almost too many characters to keep track of but as it’s such an enjoyable read, you kind of get swept up in it all and read it quickly enough that you don’t get into that situation I sometimes do where I’ve paused reading a book for so long I have to go back and re-read a few bits just to remind myself who’s who and what’s what.
Watched: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 🎬 Very different vibe for this instalment of the trilogy, with more emphasis on the evil of the non-infected but also, crucially, the humanity and compassion that still exists. Jack O’Connell is outstanding as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal. The Jimmy Savile stuff isn’t overplayed and not knowing anything about him – which I expect would apply to a fair majority of a US/non-British audience – doesn’t get in the way of the story.
Watched: Hamnet 🎬 First things first: Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley are brilliant in Hamnet, it’s well worth the two hours' run time and keeps you engaged throughout, and the sound design and photography is amazing. However… based on all the articles and previews I read, I was expecting to be sobbing and ugly crying throughout the film, but it wasn’t as weepy as I was expecting. I’m someone who has a good cry at films and books and there were moments when tears fell during Hamnet, but not torrents like I was expecting.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Rewatched for the first time in ages and even better than I remembered it, which is saying something since I’ve always loved this film. The ending was longer than I remembered. For some reason, I thought the film ended with Joel and Clementine meeting on the train – this does not count as a spoiler, even if you ignore the film being more than 20 years old – but I guess there’s a nice irony to my memory of the film being imperfect!
Song Sung Blue 🎬 Another solid 4 stars from me, following on from yesterday’s 4 star for Marty Supreme. Very different film to Marty Supreme in that it’s way more conventional and feel-good while – mild spoiler alert – not being completely feel-good. But also similar in being biopics. That said, Marty Supreme, while ostensibly a biopic and based on an actual person, is clearly taking liberties with the story and is more fiction than fact.
Watched: Marty Supreme A solid 4 stars from me. For the first act, I was utterly gripped and enchanted and thought this was heading easily for a 5-star rating, but I felt it sagged a bit in the second act and could have done with a bit of editing. There’s one particular strand of the story I believe could have been excised without losing anything. That said, it picked up marvellously in the third act.
Hello, world.
It’s a new year, so of course I’m going to start a new blog.
Lesson learned from previous attempts: not to overthink the first post; just lance that boil with a quick post like this one, and crack on.