Filmography
Frozen
Yes, I've finally seen it. It has jolly good tunes and a prince who turns out to be wicked. It also deliberately places the sister-sibling relationship at the heart of what true love means rather than BOYZ, although this point is made rather too explicitly. When we can get to that being shown on screen without having to point it out with the big thematic pointing hammer, I'll be happy.
There were all sorts of other lovely touches too, but I wasn't quite as bowled over by it as many others seem to have been. But that's OK.
Philomena
Based on a true story, this made me cry. It's about a woman who gave birth in one of the Irish nunneries and whose son was adopted, taken to America and who never found out what happened to him. It's heart-breaking, really. The story rotates around the journalist (recently disgraced politico) who helps this woman find out what happened to her son, albeit with an editor at the other end of the phone who's keen to squeeze the story even when it gets emotionally difficult and ethically messy. There are all sorts of issues delicately touched on here, but the fundamental story remains Philomena. I shed a tear. Also, I am more impressed with Steve Coogan the more I see him in where he's being serious. Judi Dench was, of course, marvellous.
Thor: The Dark World
Not as good as the first Thor, I'm afraid. I mean, not bad - I enjoyed it in a silly sort of watching a film on a plane sort of way, there was lots of running around and shouting, and the settings were pretty gorgeous. But it was one of those films where you worry more about the architecture being smashed up (bits of Greenwich in this case) than you do about the characters getting through intact, and that's never a good sign. You're basically looking at a question about whether the love story sort of started in the first film can survive the human being infected by a baleful primordial substance that wants to destroy the world with its wicked space-elves. Seriously, wicked space-elves. There was a lot of Tolkein-esque echoes going on with all of this which I rather enjoyed, but it didn't give the film a great deal of individual voice. But never mind.
Yes, I've finally seen it. It has jolly good tunes and a prince who turns out to be wicked. It also deliberately places the sister-sibling relationship at the heart of what true love means rather than BOYZ, although this point is made rather too explicitly. When we can get to that being shown on screen without having to point it out with the big thematic pointing hammer, I'll be happy.
There were all sorts of other lovely touches too, but I wasn't quite as bowled over by it as many others seem to have been. But that's OK.
Philomena
Based on a true story, this made me cry. It's about a woman who gave birth in one of the Irish nunneries and whose son was adopted, taken to America and who never found out what happened to him. It's heart-breaking, really. The story rotates around the journalist (recently disgraced politico) who helps this woman find out what happened to her son, albeit with an editor at the other end of the phone who's keen to squeeze the story even when it gets emotionally difficult and ethically messy. There are all sorts of issues delicately touched on here, but the fundamental story remains Philomena. I shed a tear. Also, I am more impressed with Steve Coogan the more I see him in where he's being serious. Judi Dench was, of course, marvellous.
Thor: The Dark World
Not as good as the first Thor, I'm afraid. I mean, not bad - I enjoyed it in a silly sort of watching a film on a plane sort of way, there was lots of running around and shouting, and the settings were pretty gorgeous. But it was one of those films where you worry more about the architecture being smashed up (bits of Greenwich in this case) than you do about the characters getting through intact, and that's never a good sign. You're basically looking at a question about whether the love story sort of started in the first film can survive the human being infected by a baleful primordial substance that wants to destroy the world with its wicked space-elves. Seriously, wicked space-elves. There was a lot of Tolkein-esque echoes going on with all of this which I rather enjoyed, but it didn't give the film a great deal of individual voice. But never mind.