Some recent films

Unusually, I've been out to the cinema three times in as many weeks. I enjoyed all three films.

1. A beautiful day in the neighbourhood with Tom Hanks is a lovely quiet film (it even includes a period of silence at one point - rare in films). It is based on the true story of Fred Rogers and the journalist Tom Junod (called Eric Vogel.in the film).  It was particularly good to have someone who prayed and read his Bible as a central character in a film and not to see him mocked. Rogers was  a PCUSA minister I don't know how sound he was or was not. Anyway I was glad I caught the film. Worth checking out on any size screen.

2. Emma was the only one I manged to see with someone - it was Valentine's Day and this was just the film for the day. The film went for every laugh it could muster (having Bill Nighy and Miranda Hart in the cast really helps) but still stuck pretty much to Austen as far as I could see. All the comedy meant that the cringing point when Emma is mean to Miss Bates is very powerful. Great stuff. 

3. Little women is also of literary stamp and this new version I found delectable. I loved every bit of it (themes, actors, costumes, scenery, etc, etc). Of course, it's been presented as a feminist piece but most of the points made in that direction I thought were pretty fair. Louisa May Alcott was of Transcendentalist Unitarian stock so there is a lot missing but on its own terms the book is wonderful and this version just beautiful.

I notice that two of the three films were directed by women (Marielle Heller and Greta Gerwig; I thought Autumn de Wild might be a woman but it is a man).
PS As I initially thought, all three are women. Apologies for the confusion.

Two trips to the cinema

Unusually we have been to the cinema twice in the last few weeks. First, we went to see the Meryl Streep film Florence Foster Jenkins. We went expecting to laugh but there is a bit more to this film than that and we are presented with a sympathetic portrait of a woman with many advantages and many disadvantages. It raises the whole question of how we assess talent and individuals. It is not an easy task.

Then yesterday we went to Britain's oldest cinema, in East Finchley to see the film they are calling Love and friendship based on Jane Austen's Lady Susan an epistolary novella but named for a piece of juvenilia. I was a little nervous about the presentation at first but was won round by the approach where each character was paraded before us before the action. I would like to know if there was an American in the original plot - I have a copy of the book somewhere here but don't recall ever reading it. This is comical, light and perceptive Austen not the deeper stuff but good stuff for all that and well executed.