Category Archives: My Week in Movies

My Week in Movies, 2018 Week 6

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I did it! Two weeks in a row with a weekly post! They said it couldn’t be done, but it’s here for you to enjoy. This feels like far too much hubris for what is my third weekly post in six weeks, but screw it, I need to celebrate something. This has been a relatively uneventful week for me; I’ve mostly spent my time being annoyed at my local cinema chain for scheduling the films in such a way that there seems to be no chance I’ll get to see Phantom Thread before it leaves theatres (it seems a spiteful choice to only schedule it at 4:50pm every day, given most people round here finish work at 5:00pm), but hey, I’ll find a way. Speaking of finding a way, why not let your eyes find a way to glance further down this post to check out the films I’ve watched this week:
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My Week in Movies, 2018 Weeks 2-5

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Isn’t this going well? I successfully managed to keep up my regular weekly posts for a grand total of one whole entire week before failing miserably. In my defence, it’s been a busy period, with Aisha off gallivanting around the world on business (specifically Arizona and Germany), leaving me to look after not just our dog but also her parents’ cockapoo puppy (her favourite thing: waking me up by jumping on me in bed and cleaning out my ears with her tongue, also urinating in my office, the only room we’ve re-carpeted since moving in) and walking our neighbour’s god every day. Regardless, normality has now resumed so I get on with covering four weeks worth of movies, a time period that has included me attempting to hit some of the bigger Oscar nominees in response to the nominations announcement (WHERE IS THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE? WHERE? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS AGAIN! THE OSCARS ARE DEAD TO ME!) as well as watching almost every M. Night Shyamalan movie in preparation for the regrettable decision to host a retrospective podcast on him. So, let’s get on with it, shall we? Here’s all the movies I’ve watched recently:
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My Week in Movies 2018 Week 1

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When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, I don’t tend to bother. What makes January 1st any more of a life-changing moment than any other date on the calendar? Also, I have absolutely terrible will-power and lack any traditional source of self-motivation, so resolutions of any kind were often left forgotten and neglected before the leftover Christmas turkey was finished. However, 2017 saw a great many changes occur within my world, not the least of which was me turning 30 and becoming engulfed in an all-consuming sense of my own mortality. As such for me 2018 shall be a year of re-evaluation; a year of assessing just what it is in life that I enjoy, and what brings joy to those around me, and how can these things be experienced more. I’m also taking steps to becoming a little more healthy, mainly by sleeping more and running now and then. The first run, which took place on January 1st at approximately 8:17am, last all of 18 minutes and covered a little under 2 miles. I could attribute this dismal performance to the fact that the skies were dispensing torrents of icy cold rain and I was wearing just a t-shirt and shorts, but ultimately it’s my own utter lack of fitness that is to blame. Since then I have wrapped up considerably more warmly and embarked upon two more 4+ mile quests, and returned home chilly, exhausted, but proud of having taken meagre steps towards a better way of life.

Ordinarily you might expect a post around about now with a title along the lines of “Life Vs Film in 2018” wherein I’d lay out my goals for the year ahead. Alas there will be no such post. I’ve set goals before, and failed to achieve them – just last year I endeavoured to watch-and-review a measly fourteen films throughout the entirety of 2017, of which I ultimately watched two and reviewed neither – so this year I’ll be taking a more devil-may-care let’s see-what-life-throws-at-us approach, and I hope to end the year significantly less stressed and disappointed than in the past. Speaking of the past, here’s what I watched in the first week of 2018:
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My Week in Movies, 2017 Weeks 33-52

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Oh jeez. It’s been… holy hell it’s been months. I’m sorry. Really I am. Things just got away from me and kept on going. That’s the past now though, let’s celebrate the here and now. If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to for the past half a year, well:

I designed, made, wrote instructions for and recorded a video of an origami Blade Runner unicorn for Total Film magazine, which can be seen here. I used to read Total Film a bunch growing up, so this was kind of a bucket list item, even if it wasn’t really in a movie capacity.
Built a Lego Millenium Falcon (the one from The Force Awakens, not the new giant one) and a Lego First Order Heavy Assault Walker.
Started watching E.R., and finished series 1 & 2
Met up with fellow LAMB friends from America and the UK – some for the first time – and found many snarky things to bond over
Archived a bunch of Lambcast shows, though still not up to date
Made 1,000 origami cranes
Spent a solid 10 hours making fudge
Spent a solid 6 hours making brownies
Watched a bunch of Harrison Ford movies
Planned an extended James Bond marathon
Failed to accomplish said James Bond marathon, instead just watched two movies over a period of a month
A new 1001 book came out and I’ve barely even looked at the new additions.
Became an uncle
Saw Jurassic Park on the big screen for the first time, at my first outdoor screening, and still found new details even after all these years.
Attended my first funeral (my partner’s grandfather passed away) and gave a reading at it, despite probably being the person there who knew him the least.
Attempted to write this post at least 26 times.
Visited Canada, specifically Victoria, Tofino and Vancouver, where we saw bears, whales, otters and raccoons, and I tried a bunch of new food including poutine (I know it’s just chips, cheese and gravy, but I really thought it’d be more than the sum of its parts), fish tacos and artichokes.
And oh yeah, I went and got married, no big deal. That’s what the cranes, fudge and brownies were for.

Anyway, in all that time I have also watched a bunch of movies, so let’s get down to business. Here’s everything I saw since the last one of these posts:
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My Week in Movies, 2017 Weeks 31-32

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It was my birthday this past weekend, during which I turned 30 and have been reliably informed that my life has peaked, and everything past this point is just sorrow and pain, so hurrah for that. As I have been occasionally known to do on my birthday, I gave my self a gift that will make my life harder in the form of another list to wade through upon this very site. It’s another list by Empire magazine, who have once again taken a poll of their readers and compiled a voted-for list of the top 100 movies of all time. It’s not terribly different from the last time, with only four added movies, all of which I’ve seen and some I’ve reviewed. However, they spiced things up by approaching a heap of active directors and requested their personal top 10 lists too. Some took it seriously and gave their top 10 film lists, many of which contained films I’d never heard of but look forward to seeing at some point, but other directors went a bit nuts. Edgar Wright, for example, gave a list of 40 movies including Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Last of Sheila and Phantom of the Paradise. Adam Wingard’s top 15 includes Dick Tracy, Gerry and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Matthew Vaughn submitted a list of ridiculous length, separated into genres, with the action section regrettably containing Rocky I-IV, and comedy including an entry that reads “A melange of the Pink Panther movies”. Most annoying is Garth Jennings, who took the top 10 in a different direction by just naming films with the numbers one to ten in the title. Some are great – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Three Amigos, Seven – but then there’s also Four Brothers, Five Children & It, Nine, etc. Thanks Garth, now I like Sing even less! Anyway, that’s enough of that, let’s get into the movies I watched this past fortnight.
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My Week in Movies, 2017 Week 30

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Despite having a Cineworld Unlimited Card that entitles me to see as many films as I like for a very reasonable flat monthly rate, I still don’t see as many as I really want to. To make the cost of the card price-effective I basically need to see 25 movies a year at the cinema, which may not sound like many to a lot of readers, is a pretty daunting task for me, due to external commitments. However, last weekend my fiancee went away to visit family and have a small hen party with some friends from school, and she took Murphy, our dog, with her. There was plenty I could have done at home – lots still to make for the wedding, the house was in dire need of a clean, the garden is rapidly becoming a woodland, and I’ve got a stack of reviews to write and LAMB duties to admin, but sod it, these opportunities don’t come along often for me, so I jumped on my bike and saw five films in a row on Saturday. Do I regret this decision? Completely. But was it a great day? Yes, yes and yes! Here’s what I saw: Continue reading →

My Week in Movies, 2017 Week 28-29

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Given my most anticipated TV show of the year, Game Of Thrones, returned this past week, it seems an opportune moment to talk about television, and what I’ve been watching recently, or rather, what I’ve been trying to not spoil for myself. As you should probably know by now, I live in the UK, and we in this country do not receive media at the same time as other countries. I know we have it better than some and worse than others, it’s a worldwide thing. Anyway, two shows that we got significantly later than the US are Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale. Fargo is in series 3, and Handmaid is a new show, but they have both been finished in the states for over a month at this point, yet we are only on episode eight for them both. The problem here is that most episodes for these shows end on a cliffhanger, leaving me dying to know what happens next, and the information I crave is a mere Wiki-click away, or I could just listen to the podcast episodes covering them that I already have downloaded (Aw Jeez and Bald Move for Fargo, All Flesh for The Handmaid’s Tale). It’s taken every inch of my almost non-existent will-power to not plough through every episode of those shows and just find out what happens and who survives. It’s unbearable. Then again it goes both ways, as we in the UK saw series 3 of Broadchurch early in the year (granted I’ve only recently caught uup on all three series, the first and third of which are fantastic, and the second is merely OK, falling into the trap of trying something different but not having enough to do to drag out to a full series length but trying anyway). I’m also dipping a toe into American Gods and toying with the notion of catching up with Legion and Preacher, we’ll see how my time goes.

So that’s TV, but what movies have I seen recently?
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My Week in Movies, 2017 Weeks 7-27

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This has gotten really out of hand. I mean, it’s just gotten silly, right? I’ve not posted a weekly update for months, and still have movies from February that haven’t been covered, and I can’t take it any more. So what I’ve gone and done is written a mini review for every damn movie I’ve seen in the past 5 months and stacked them all in this post. That’s 70 movies, by the way. Read it, don’t read it, I don’t mind, just know that my brain is a little less stressed over it.
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My Week in Movies, 2017 Week 6

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrhhhhhh – gasp – aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgghh! Life has gotten away from me recently, but I still want to keep writing these things. I have thoughts on movies, dammit, and how will I know what order to write my Best of 2017 films into (but never actually get around to posting) if I don’t have these handy reminders? Thoughts this week/fortnight/month/eternity [delete as appropriate] will be brief as dammit I just want to post this fucker and move on with my life, alright? Sheesh.
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My Fortnight in Film, 2017 Weeks 4-5

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We’re five weeks into the year and I’ve still not gone to the cinema, clearly something is wrong with the world. However tomorrow sees the UK release of The Lego Batman Movie, so my streak will be over in a matter of hours, hurrah! I meant to write one of these last week, and in fact I had a whole introduction revolving around my latest expedition to the barber (possibly the worst I’ve ever had) but then I realised quite how dull that idea was, and that writing nothing would be preferable to tosh, hence why I’ll be stopping this introduction and getting on with the films I saw in the past fortnight right about…now.
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