V E Day 80 Fly past

It was Bank Holiday yesterday so a bit of a day off. We went down to central London and saw the flypast (courtesy of my son the above). We also saw a film in the cinema (more on that later) and watched some TV and I finished reading C S Lewis's Great Divorce, which I started on Saturday.

 

Films on the plane

During my recent visit to S Africa and back I took advantage of the abundance of films available and watched a few. I enjoyed Bohemian Rhapsody as a simple recap on the seventies with regard to Queen. Can't understand why the surviving members of Queen were willing to have themseves presented as such bozos. They were one of the most popular groups in our class as a teenager. I still remember Bohemian Rhapsody coming out and what a masterpiece it seemed to me to be. 

Sometimes, always, never is a quirky little British film with Bill Nighy and Jenny Agutter that explores grief and sibling rivalry from an odd but charming angle. Green Book has been much talked about and it was good to see what the fuss was. It is a road movie where two highly unlikely characters are thrown together (an Italian American hoodlum and an African American musician with classical training).

Can you ever forgive me? has also been much talked about and is an interesting story based in true events but I find it hard work to enjoy films about horrible people. The fifth film was Mary Queen of Scots. Lots of problems with this - unrealistically positive about Mary, John Knox caricatured (David Tennant!), gratuitous sex scenes, etc. The best bit in the film never happened in reality but that is not such a bad failing in some ways.

Airplane Movies

On my journey to and from Nigeria I took opportunity to watch some movies. I watched

The Wizard of Lies

The Circle

Brigsby Bear

Norman: The moderate rise and tragic fall of a New York fixer

I did try one other but abandoned it. These I enjoyed, although the first (The Wizard of Lies starring Robert de Niro) cannot be recommended because of the bad language, etc, throughout. It is a chronicle of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, which defrauded his clients of billions of dollars and sent the stock exchange crashing. It is interesting as Madoff appears not to have thought of himself as a bad character despite hiss crimes and their devastating effects.

The Circle, with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, is an interesting take on the whole Internet world we find ourselves in. A silicon valley company proves to have cultic tendencies and a lot to hide. The film rather ducks out of the case it has built at the end. Hard to get sponsors otherwise I guess.

Brigsby Bear (Mark Hamill) begins rather weirdly but then gets into more recognisable patterns as it progresses. Having thought about it for a while now I would guess it is a sort of parable in which the people who kidnapped the Mark Hamill character as a baby but gave him an enjoyable but limited life where he loved watching Brigsby Bear's adventures stands for the old studio system in Hollywood. The characters return to his true parents and the making of his own movie helped by friends is perhaps a plea for independent film makers.

Norman (Richard Gere) is a typically Jewish story based in New York among Jews. The Norman character is interesting enough and the plot is very neat. Lovely film.