02MAR23: The Wedding Party 2 (Akinmolayan, 2018) -- Netflix( Read more... )

03MAR23: What's Love Got to Do With It (Kapur, 2022) -- PictureHouse( Read more... )

09MAR23: Troll (Uthaug, 2022) -- Netflix( Read more... )

12MAR23: Orlando (Potter, 1992) + Look at Me (Potter, 2022) + Sally Potter / Tilda Swinton intro -- PictureHouse( Read more... )

16MAR23: Okja (Bong Joon Ho, 2017) -- Netflix( Read more... )

17MAR23: 65 (Beck & Woods, 2023) -- PictureHouse( Read more... )

23MAR23: We Have a Ghost (Landon, 2023) -- Netflix( Read more... )

25MAR23: Ruddigore (Gilbert and Sullivan) -- Wiltons Music Hall( Read more... )

29MAR23: Ursula Le Guin's Space Crone: So Mayer, SF Said and Kate Hardie in conversation -- Barbican Library( Read more... )

30MAR23: Akhenaten (Philip Glass) -- English National Opera( Read more... )

31MAR23: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Daley & Goldstein, 2023) -- PictureHouse( Read more... )

In November I read no fiction and wrote no reviews. (Did you miss me?) I did write 50,000 words of protonovel.
Belatedly, October!

01OCT22: Candide (Bernstein) -- Blackheath Halls Opera
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14OCT22: Werewolf By Night (Giacchino, 2022) -- Disney+
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23OCT22: My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988) -- Netflix
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27OCT22: The Good Liar (Condon, 2019) -- Netflix
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28OCT22: My Neighbo(u)r Totoro (Royal Shakespeare Company) -- Barbican
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also She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (various, 2022) -- Disney+
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02JUN22: Space Sweepers (Jo Sung-hee, 2021), Netflix
Initially confusing but, after that, immensely good fun: a diverse, polyglot solar-system-based space story( Read more... )

11JUN22: Starcrossed (Rachel Garnet / Shakespeare), Wiltons Music Hall
A reimagining of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet focussing on Tybalt and Mercutio, and positing a tragic love story between the two. ( Read more... )

16JUN22: A Futile and Stupid Gesture (Wain, 2018), Netflix
Fictionalised biopic of Doug Kenney, co-founder of National Lampoon, and his oscillating friendship with Henry Beard. ( Read more... )

23JUN22: The House (de Swaef / Roels / von Bahr / Baeza, 2022), Netflix
Three surreal, stop-motion animated shorts, made by different directors / artistic teams, centred on a single house. ( Read more... )

24JUN22: Lightyear (MacLane, 2022), Greenwich PictureHouse
I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I hadn't known that Lightyear was voiced by Chris Evans: as it was, my hindbrain kept comparing the character and his arc to Captain America( Read more... )

30JUN22: Tove (Bergroth, 2020), BBC iPlayer
Finnish-made biopic of the early life of Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins, covering about a decade (1944-54) of her life( Read more... )

04MAR22: The Batman (Reeves, 2022) (Greenwich PictureHouse)
Far too long, but more enjoyable than I'd anticipated. Beautiful use of colour, a credibly filthy and run-down Gotham (where the sun never shines), echoes of Hopper's New York paintings, and a soundtrack that mixed Nirvana with some interesting variations on Schubert's Ave Maria. Pattinson was surprisingly good in the title role, and Zoe Kravitz' Catwoman rocked, as did Andy Serkis as Alfred.

12MAR22: Paradise (Kae Tempest / Sophocles) (NT@Home)
Kae Tempest's take on Philoctetes, with an all-female cast. Saw this live at the theatre last year: it made more sense when I could appreciate the blocking and the stagecraft. Still an interesting take on the source, with emphasis on the masculine performance (performative masculinity?) of war. We found the Cockney accents out of place and puzzling: was Philoctetes pretending to be commoner than he was?

17MAR22: William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Luhrman, 1996) (Netflix)
Incredibly, I had never seen this, and enjoyed it a lot. Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) is characteristically awesome; di Caprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet both surprisingly convincing young teenagers. Fantasy sleazeball America, all glitz and grime: ditto the cast -- Pete Postlethwaite as stoner friar! Paul Rudd as Paris! Miriam Margolyes as the Nurse! And a Nineties soundtrack that made me quite nostalgic. Noteable that the crew and cast were predominantly male, something I'm less accustomed to these days.

18MAR22: The World of Stonehenge (British Museum)
Beautiful exhibition, very highly recommended: so many axes! parts of Seahenge! I was moved by the bones of a mother buried with a baby-sling decorated with dog teeth; impressed by the precise dendrochronology; intrigued that ancient artefacts were venerated (some of the items buried in graves were already over a thousand years old); saddened by the fact that there were seasoned fighters, scarred and damaged by multiple battles, even in prehistory; fascinated by the multiple changes (upgrades?) to the Nebra sky disc.

19MAR22: London Assurance (Dion Boucicault, dir. Nicholas Hytner) (NT@Home)
Early farce first produced in 1841, weirdly reminiscent (to me) of the funnier bits of Georgette Heyer. Simon Russell Beale plays Sir Harcourt Courtly; Fiona Shaw is the marvellously-named Lady Gay Spanker, with Richard Briers playing her hapless husband. There is a young bride-to-be and her ageing fiance, a sharp young con-man down from London, a profligate son pretending to be either dead or somebody else, and a surprising amount of sexual ambiguity. Some splendid performances, though in some (mostly indefinable) ways this 2010 production feels slightly dated: exuberant, though, and great fun.

24MAR22: The Constant Gardener (Meirelles, 2005) (Netflix)
Based on the Le Carre novel: Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz), Amnesty activist, is murdered in Kenya after uncovering bad practices by big pharma. Her husband Justin (Ralph Fiennes), a diplomat (and gardener), investigates and to some extent avenges her death. Danny Huston as villainous Sandy is legitimately scary: ditto Bill Nighy as Pellegrin, the corrupt civil servant. Also features the ubiquitous Pete Postlethwaite -- and Lupita Nyong'o was a production runner!
Some truly harrowing scenes of conflict in Sudan. An engaging story, perhaps spoilt by too many flashbacks to Tessa and Justin's romance.

26MAR22: She's the Man (Fickman, 2006) (Netflix)
Teen comedy based (loosely) on Twelfth Night. Features Vinnie Jones as a high school soccer coach, Channing Tatum as Duke Orsino, and Amanda Bynes as Viola, who pretends to be her brother Sebastian so she can play soccer. Malvolio is played by a spider. Often very funny, but I was watching through a haze of COVID so did not follow it as well as I might have done.

31MAR22: Your Name (Shinkai, 2016) (Netflix)
Beautiful timeloop anime romance, with a comet strike and body swaps and beautiful skies. Lovely, poignant, suspect it will lose a lot in the forthcoming US live-action remake.

06JAN22: Don't Look Up (McKay, 2021) (Netflix)
A cheerful movie about the end of the world, which in this instance is delivered via comet, spotted by scientists whose warnings are ignored. No metaphors here, honest guv.
I liked this a lot, and was reminded of Ben Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy -- especially at the climax of the film, with the non-villains gathered for a last supper. Some of the plot didn't quite work, especially Elon Musk's Peter Isherwell's predictions about characters' deaths: but overall, it hung together pretty well. Excellent performances all round, including diCaprio, Lawrence, Streep, Rylance, Chalamet. A great way to start the year.

08JAN22: Hedda Gabler (Ibsen: Ivo van Hove, 2017) (NT At Home)
Ruth Wilson as Hedda and Rafe Spall as Brack in a modern production of Ibsen’s masterpiece. The modern setting does not make it less bleak.

13JAN22: The Lost Daughter (Gyllenhaal, 2021) (Netflix)
Based on the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante, who insisted on a female director: it's Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut, and there are a lot of women on cast and crew. Olivia Colman is, as usual, splendid. Dakota Johnson is good, too. But it is not a cheerful tale.

15JAN22: War Horse (Morpurgo: Elliot, 2008) (NT At Home)
The puppets are great and thoroughly believable as horses; the accents a little overrustic; the story very sad though, of course, happy (ish) ending.

20JAN22: Passing (Hall, 2021) (Netflix)
Based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen; directorial debut of Rebecca Hall; starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as two young Black women, one of whom is married to a man who thinks she's white. The tensions between the two women, Irene and Clare, are expertly depicted: the film is beautiful, shot in black and white with an 'old-fashioned' 4:3 ratio. And again, it is really not very cheerful.

22JAN22: East is East (Ayub Khan Din: Iqbal Khan) (NT At Home)
Also not 100% cheerful -- tensions in an Anglo-Indian family in Salford, 1971; father is Indian and expects his children to obey him absolutely, children do not accept his rules, mother (English) is moderating influence. Some distressing elements, but this was also very funny indeed, well-acted and with an excellent soundtrack: highly recommended.

27JAN22: Suffragette (Gavron, 2015) (Netflix)
Concluding a month of mostly not very cheerful viewing! This was good at dramatising the situation and the arguments: Ben Whishaw is unsympathetic husband, Carey Mulligan a good protagonist, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep awesome as ever. I looked away during the force-feeding scene. And the scene at the Derby seemed awfully ... sanitised.

03SEP21: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Cretton, 2021) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
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11SEP21: Paradise (Sophocles / Kae Tempest) -- National Theatre
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16SEP21: The Aeronauts (Harper, 2019) -- Amazon Prime
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23SEP21: Count Me In (Sommer, 2021) -- Netflix
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28SEP21: Venus and Adonis (John Blow) -- Blackheath Halls Opera
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