Philomena is based on the true story of a woman who had a baby out of wedlock and was essentially forced to give the child up for adoption. Many years later she goes looking for her son, and a journalist tags along. The movie stars Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. According to my review, it is a good film. Honestly, I remember very little about it, but I still have the Blu-ray so maybe I should revisit.
I’m a sucker for British television. The wife and I usually subscribe to Acorn or Britbox – both streaming services focus on British shows. They make great murder mysteries, crime dramas, and comedies. British comedy is its own genre. It is so very different than American comedic sensibilities.
Mapp & Lucia is a very British comedy. I loved it when I reviewed the series out on DVD back in 2014.
In 1992 Columbia Records put together a massive collection of artists to celebrate Bob Dylan’s recording career. As I say in my review, at the time it must have seemed like a capstone to a long career. One that seemed like it was dying (I rather like some of Dylan’s output in the 1980s, but from a record company standpoint it certainly wasn’t his strongest decade).
The concert is pretty great, even if I haven’t listened to it since writing this review in 2014. You can read all of my thoughts from back then here.
While I am a big reader of mystery novels and detective fiction, I’ve never cared that much for Sherlock Holmes. I don’t dislike him, but from what I’ve read his stories are all too often simple setups for the detective to show how brilliant he is with deduction. I like my detectives more hard-boiled, I want them to stumble, to get stuck in the muck, and to solve cases by hard work, not superhuman brain power.
Admittedly, I haven’t read that many of his stories, and I really did enjoy The Hound of the Baskervilles. So consider my judgment reserved.
I do, however, often enjoy the movies that were adapted from the Sherlock Holmes stories.
This leads to me Sherlock Holmes FAQ, a book I reviewed for Cinema Sentries back in the day. My review is favorable which slightly surprises me as I’ve never enjoyed the FAQ series all that much. Maybe I was being generous, or maybe it really is a good book. I really don’t remember. Anyway, my review can be found here.
I grew up watching Sesame Street. Oddly enough I don’t remember watching it at all, but I do have distinct memories of watching Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood.
When my daughter was born Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was no longer on the air (well, there were reruns but in my town, they came on really early), but Sesame Street was still in full swing. My daughter loved it. I loved it. Still do, though the daughter is too old to watch and thus it doesn’t get much airplay anymore.
Obviously, Sesame Street is designed for little ones. But it also works well for adults. They have some very clever gags, and they love pop culture. They’ve made some great spoofs (one of my favorites is a Middle Earth parody called Lord of the Crumbs), and they often invite celebrity guests to do little skits. I especially love when a singer comes on and sings one of their songs but with slightly altered lyrics. Norah Jones once sang “Don’t Know Y” and I still regularly play Feist turning her song “1,2,3,4” into a counting song.
During those days that my daughter watched Sesame Street every day I requested a few of their DVDs and did some reviewing for Cinema Sentries. You can read my review of Elmos World: All About Animals here. Spoiler Alert: Despite me praising the show in the last several paragraphs I found this DVD to be a bit grating. But that’s because it is just the Elmo’s World section of the show and nothing but the Elmo’s World section of the show. And that gets tiresome fast.
Batman is probably my favorite superhero. I love that he doesn’t have superpowers. He can’t fly, he doesn’t have super strength. He can’t shoot rays out of his eyes, etc. He is very strong and well-trained, but he’s still very much a regular human. There have been lots of reiterations of him on the big screen and the small, not to mention all the different comics.
Beware the Batman was a short-lived television series that aired on the Cartoon Network. I reviewed it back in 2014 and now you can read it here.
For several years I wrote a column over at Cinema Sentries where I would peruse all of the new Blu-ray/DVD releases coming out in a given week and then pick one as my…well, pick. Then I’d give a brief mention to all the other releases that sounded interesting to me.
Somewhere in the middle of Covid I got a little overwhelmed and stressed out at my life and I stopped writing it. Someone else picked it up and that someone is now getting a little tired of writing it. So, I decided to start writing it again. As of right now the plan is for me to write one this week and then the other person will write it next week and we’ll rotate back and forth.
I always enjoyed writing the article as it helps me keep up with what’s coming out each week. And now you can, too. Here‘s my article for this week.
I watched 40 movies in April. Thirty-Five of them were new to me. Only four of them were made before I was born. That’s because my theme for this month was the Awesome ’80s in April. I watched 31 movies from that decade and reviewed most of them.
That’s really good for me. It turns out that watching movies from one particular decade (especially a popular one) is rather easy. I mostly didn’t get bored either (as I often do when I’ve chosen a genre for the month’s theme) because the 1980s hold all kinds of different movies. I watched action films, and horror films, comedies, thrillers, and dramas.
I will say here towards the end I got a little tired of it. I missed watching classic movies, and modern ones too. The month didn’t turn out quite as I expected. I really thought I’d wind up watching a bunch of movies from Spielberg or starring Schwarzenneger and the like. I thought I’d watch more of the big blockbusters that I grew up watching as a kid.
But I wasn’t really in the mood for those. Or rather what I really wanted to watch were films from the 1980s that I’d never seen before. And that’s mostly what I did. They weren’t all great, but I’m really glad I got to fill in some gaps.
I haven’t quite decided yet what my theme for May is going to be. I was originally going to go with Erotic Thrillers but that would keep me in the 1980s and 1990s and I suspect I’ll really get to itching for some classic movies if I go with a relatively modern set of films again. Right now I’m thinking about Pre-Code movies (films made from about 1927 to 1934) but I also suspect I’ll get a little bored with those after a bit.
Maybe I’ll split the month up and do both.
Stats for 2023:
Number of Movies Watched: 171
Number of New To Me Watched: 143
Star of the Year: James Coburn, 6 films watched
Director of the Year: Sam Peckinpah, 6 films watched.
Here’s the complete list.
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
Color of Night (1994)
The Sunday Woman (1975)
Hôtel du Nord (1938)
Bound (1996)
A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
Tag (2018)
The Suspect (1944)
The Big Red One (1980)
The King of Comedy (1982)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive (1989)
Tightrope (1984)
Stage Fright (1987)
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Street Smart (1987)
The Final Countdown (1980)
Night Game (1989)
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Pale Rider (1985)
Yes, Madam! (1985)
The Bedroom Window (1987)
Call Me (1988)
Silver Bullet (1985)
Evils of the Night (1985)
Dune (1984)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Purple Rain (1984)
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
2010 (1984)
Chopping Mall (1986)
Monkey Shines (1988)
The Presidio (1988)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Mad Max 2 (1981)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Dead Calm (1989)
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Firestarter (1984)
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