Jacey Bedford's Journal

With quarantine our moviegoing fell off a cliff and it wasn't until August that H & I began to cautiously creep back into the cinema on quiet Tuesady Afternoons, wearing masks, of course, even though the majority of people we saw in the foyer were not. Sometimes we were the only people in a showing. This is what we saw (though not necessarily in this order - and I might have forgotten some):

• Black Widow - Pretty much a storytelling mess. Very disappointing
• Jungle Cruise - Good fun. Dwayne Johnson has excellent comic timing.
• Free Guy - surprisingly entertaining
• No Time to Die - Excellent Bond movie. I wasn't sure about Daniel Craig at first but his take on Bond has grown on me.
• Dune - Pretty damn fine splendid. Looking forward to the other half of the first book.
• Ghostbusters Afterlife - Much better than I expected.
• Eternals - Yes, good, and obviously leading into a sequel
• West Side Story - I'm a big fan of the original (Natalie Wood as Maria) from the 60s, but this is probably on a par.

We'd like to see The Green Knight, Spider Man, No Way Home, The Matrix Resurrections, and The King's Man, but with Omicron on the rise we might have to wait until they are available on streaming services.

In addition I saw The Dig, The Sisters Brothers, and The Harder they Fall on streaming. The Dig was delightful, The Sisters Brothers quirky, and The Harder they Fall was too grim for me (and I have a fairly high grim tolerance level).

 I wrote this movie up once and then my computer locked up and I lost it. Bummer.

Anyhow... Did I enjoy it? Yes, mostly. I'm not a great fan of the book, but anyone who is will probably like this movie. They've added backstory for John Thornton's character. Storyline? Big dog is kidnapped from his easy family life and shipped to the Yukon to be sold as a sled dog during the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s. He passes through several hands before coming to a good place. Harrison Ford (Thornton) is delightfully grizzled, and basically saved the film for me. Omar Sy and Cara Gee are also excellent as the couple who cover the arduous mail route by dog sled and who give Buck his first taste of kindness and responsibility. Pity about Dan Stevens who portrays the main antagonist as a pantomime villain. The cinematography is lovely; It was actually filmed in the Yukon and British Columbia, which is a bonus.

What troubled me was the dog, Buck, who was played by several million pixels. He was totally CGI, and though mostly fine, was just a little bit too 'uncanny valley' for me. I do wish they'd had a real dog and integrated CGI rather than relying on it completely.

I had to check for Disney involvement (there wasn't any) because the dog was totally anthropomorphised, to the extent he could have been a cartoon character interacting with real people. The animators conferred too many human emotions on to the dog, and also too much understanding of human speech and intentions. How many dogs do you know who would give their dinner to a deprived pack-mate? I'm afraid that kind of altruism simply isn't in a dog's skill set. Maybe only those of us who have big dogs in the family would clock that. For me that made the whole thing feel just a little bit off.

I saw a few negative reviews about this, but to be honest I enjoyed it. Doctor Dolittle, having lost the love of his life to a shipwreck, has isolated himself in a manor house with only his animals for company. Polly the parrot (voiced by Emma Thompson) is his translator for ordinary humans. When Dolittle is summoned to the palace to attend the young Queen Victoria he tries to get out of it, but he gets drawn in, partly by his new self-appointed apprentice, Stubbins, and partly by his animals. They set out on a quest to find the cure-all for the young queen's malady. Expect a shady doctor, a duplicitous Lord, a battleship. a pirate king (an unrecognisable Antonio Banderas) and lots of CGI - naturally. You couldn't make a movie like this without on-screen magic. Robert Downey Jnr. is charming - if you can get over the cod Welsh accent that only scores slightly higher than Dick van Dyke's Cockney in the first Mary Poppins. That apart I thought this was fun.

What a good hearted movie! Every minute was a delight and the (completely colourblind) casting was perfect. Yes, Dev Patel was unexpectedly good as the title character, but the supporting cast was also brilliant: Tilda Swinton as the eccentric Aunt Trotwood, and Hugh Laurie as the utterly bonkers Mr Dick, with Peter Capaldi as Micawber, and Ben Wishaw as the suitably creepy Uriah Heep. Young David is well played by Jairaj Varsani. It's a visual delight, both for the settings and cinematography.

The story is well kown. From Copperfield's birth and a few good years, to his turn in fortunes when sent away by his new stepfather, to rebellion and an eventual upturn thanks to Aunt Trotwood. It's fresh and funny. And it has donkeys. I can't really say any more. Go and see it for yourself.

I don't know why so many people took against this so thoroughly. It's pretty much what I expected from the trailer. The music is well done and the dancing is superb. As for the story, well, there really isn't much of one. Just like the stage show it's a loose excuse to sling together some song and dance numbers based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's aettings of poems from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Francesca Hayward, a Principal Ballerina at The Royal Ballet, is the lead female dancer, but the whole company is excellent. I particularly liked Robbie Fairchild's Munkustrap. Special mention for Judi Dench who steals every scene she's in as Old Deuteronomy, and Jennider Hudson as Grizabella.

The costuming is clever, and the only slightly weird thing was that the setting seemed disproportionatrely large (or the cats seemed disproportionately small).

Stylish whodunnit with a star-studded cast including Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Craig and Chris Evans.

When popular author, Harlan Thrombey (Plummer) commits suicide, the family gathers. It's shocking, but fairly straightforward until private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) arrives on the scene, saying he's been hired by someone unknown to determine whether it is a genuine suicide or whether something more sinister is going on.

It's the old adage of: 'Where there's a will, there's a family feud,' though in this case the whole family is outraged when the beneficiary is revealed at the will reading. Some nice twists.

Classy and smart, though I couldn't quite get to grips with Daniel Craig's southern American accent. Cuban actress Anna de Armas is excellent as the central character, Marta Cabrera, the deceased's nurse/carer.

Well worth a watch.

I didn't see Downton on TV the first time around, but bingewatched it on Netflix or Amazon, or one of those catchup services, and I'm glad I did. It's easy to like, and the characters are interesting, both the upstairs and the downstairs ones, from Maggie Smith's redoubtable dowager to Jim Carter's turn as Bates the butler.

The whole cast returns for the movie, centred around a royal visit to Downton which puts the household in a flap, and sees crises both internal and external. The Downton staff get irate when the palace staff move in on their territory, but they find a somewhat ingenious solution. There are a couple of sub-plots which play out alongside (and because of) the royal visit.

Very enjoyable if you're already a fan. My cinebuddy, H, also enjoyed it as a standalone, having seen nothing of the TV series.

Brad Pitt in Spaaaace. I've seen reviews that criticised this as a movie full of talking heads and no action. In a sense there is a lot of that but it wasn't boring. Brad Pitt plays an astronaut going on a mission to search for his long lost father, an astronaut who supposedly died a generation earlier. But did he? It's about two different kinds of space, the space 'out there' and the space a missing parent leaves in the heart of a child. maybe that's where Roy's android-like detachment originated. Tommy Lee Jones plays Dad, so I guess that answers the dad he question.

This was a really sweet movie. Jack is a struggling singer songwriter playing gigs to three people and the landlord's dog. His manager (schoolteacher and long time friend) is still driving him to gigs and they are both hoping for the big time - though neither knows how to make it happen. While Jack is cycling home one night, all the lights (all over the world) go out for a few secoinds and Jack is hit by a bus. When he comes round in hospital it seems as though he's sideslipped into an alternate reality. No one has ever heard of the Beatles or their songs. Jack, accidentally at first, capitalises on this, becoming famous in the process, and feeling ever more guilty about it until he meets someone special. No, that's not the love of his life, she's been there all along. He just needs to open his eyes.

So yes, it's a musical, and a love story, and a love letter to the Beatles/Lennon-McCartney.

And if you're sitting on the back row amidst an audience of ladies of a certain age, then why shouldn't you sing along with the end credits. Oh, yeah!

What a delight the Toy Story movies are. Something for adults as well as children, and I must admit that Pixar really know how to get you in the feels. Woody and Buzz and the rest of the toys are currently with their kid, Bonny, but she's about to start kindergarten and she's scared. So on her first day she makes a new toy out of a plastic spork and a couple of pipecleaners and a lolly stick, and that toy, Forky, becomes so important to her that the rest of the toys take on the duty of teaching Forky how to be a tou and protecting him (mostly from himself) when they go on a road trip. Buzz Lightyear is is delightfully dense self. Woody is reunited with Bo Peep. They meet some pretty scary ventriloquist's dummies and a ruthless doll determined to get a kid of her own.

H and I saw this on a Wednesday afternoon, and since it isn't school holidays yet, the kids in the audience were mostly pre-school age. The one in front of us was in a cinema for the first time with his granny. It shows how the movie engages youngsters because there was hardly a peep out of any of them, except occasionally an excited comment on what was happening on screen.

I think that speaks for itself.

All that plus a wholly suitable but emotional ending, so even if you can't find a kid to take, go and see it anyway. If you've seen the previous Toy Story movies and enjoyed them, this will certainly not disappoint. (And if you haven't start at the beginning because you don't know what you're missing.)

I confess I didn't even know this was a DC comic book, but it looked intriguing so H and I did our usual Wednesday afternoon twofers thing. I wasn't expecting much, but it was actually much better than I thought it would be. The basic premise is a kid becomes a super-hero in an adult body when he says the magic word - Shazam. Of course, his hunky adult body hides a child-sized brain, which is where the humour comes in.

Zachary Levi is the adult super hero, pitching his performance just right as a boy in a man's body. Asher Angel does well as the schoolboy with a big secret, and Jack Dylan Grazer is the schoolfriend who becomes Shazam's sidekick. Mark Strong is delightful as the scenery-chewing villain.

Being an unashamed folkie I wanted to see this - not because i thought it was actually a true account of how Fisherman's Friends - a shanty group from Cornwall - were actually picked up by a major label, but - well - because I wanted top see what the movie had come up with. It says it's 'based on a true story' and i think the 'based on' is probably the most important part of the phrase.

Yes, OK, it's a feelgood British film about the undersogs making good. The charactyers are lovely, the story is sweet anhd there's some good shanty singing (though not too much to the non-folkies need not worry).

James Purefoy makes a good grizzled fisherman. I've never been that keen on Daniel mays, but he comes good as the intruder into a closed society, eventually learning to do the right thing.

I'm not sure what to say about this movie. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I like to watch it again? Not particularly.

Don't get me wrong the visuals are stunningly good, though I'm not that fond of manga. The future setting has a floating city above and a dog-eat-dog world down below.
When a prosthetics/robotics specialist finds a deactivated cyborg in a massive junk dump he takes her home, gets her working and treats her as his daughter, even giving her his daughter's name. Alita wakes with no knowledge of her past life. Christoph Waltz is the 'dad' and Rosa Salazar is the cyborg, digitally enhanced to give her enormous eyes. It's very manga, but also a bit uncanny valley.

The storyline is Alita finding out who she is and what she's capable of and then kicking ass. There's a lot of chasing about without an enormous amount of character development. The CGI is brilliant, though, as you would expect from James Cameron and Weta Workshop

I'm a sucker for the How to Train Your Dragon movies with Hiccup and his Night-fury dragon, Toothless, and a whole host of recurring characters voiced by a plethora of recognisable actors from Gerard Butler and Cate Blanchett to Kit Harrington and David Tennant. This is the third outing for Hiccup and co. This time Hiccup's Viking settlement is overrun by the dragons they've rescued and they are attracting the attention of dragon catchers and, in particular, dragon hunter, Grimmel, who speciales in killing Night-furies. Hiccup is now the leader of their small but expanding community and he has an understanding with Astrid (but they aren't married yet). He's desperately trying to shoulder the burden of leadership alone. As the dragon population increases and the bad guys get closer, Hiccup dreams of finding the Hidden World his father talked about, where humans and dragons will be safe together, but he has some tough choices to make as Toothless falls in love, and things change. It's a sweet story with some nail biting action and tense moments which lead to a satisfying resolution. The moral of the tale? We are stronger together. As usual the animation is superb.

This whole franchise is particularly noted for having an amputee hero who grows past his disability and never lets it slow him down. Great for children and pretty darn good for adults as well.

And just in case you haven't seen this Jon Snow/Toothless 'audition on Youtube, take a look. It makes me laugh every time. https://youtu.be/pXCpc2Bcirs

A perfect children's film. Emily Blunt makes an excellent Mary Poppins. She admits no one can out-Julie Julie Andrews, but she makes a very creditable showing and you're certainly not left making comparisons. She owns the role in this Poppins iteration. Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Jack the lamplighter in the Dick van Dyke type role as the honest, cheerful salt-of-the-earth Londoner, and manages it without the excruciating Dick van Dyke cockney accent. Let's face it, the standard of Hollywood dialect coaching is way higher than it used to be in the 1960s.

The plot is fairly simple. Michael Banks (Ben Wishaw), one of the children from the first film, now grown, married, father of three children and recently widowed, is understandably depressed, not keeping up with the family goings-on and about to lose the house to the bank. His sister, Jane, is unable to snap him out of it. He has the soul of an artist but slogs away in the same bank his late father worked at.

Enter magical nanny, Mary Poppins aided and abetted by lamplighter, Jack. Cue a string of entertaining songs and set-piece dance scenes which map onto the original movie. You get the magical song and dance with cartoon characters. The lamplighters have a set piece to replace the chimney sweep scene in the original. But it's all good fun and it all ends happily, of course.

If you have kids in the 6 - 12 age group take them. You (and they) won't be disappointed. A bonus for all grownups who saw the original as children is Dick van Dyke (now well in his 90s) making an appearance, both singing and dancing (without the risible accent). And who doesn't love Dick van Dyke? There's a bonus Julie Walters as the Banks family housekeeper, David Warner as Admiral Bloom, and Angela Lansbury as the Balloon Lady.

This is visually striking and the magical special effects are... well... magical, but as far as storytelling goes it's a bit of a hot mess, and when you actually examine it, it really doesn't move the story far forward from the first Fantastic Beasts movie. I'm not a great Eddie Redmayne fan, which doesn't help (though I admit he's an excellent actor) and they missed a few tricks with Johnny Depp as Grindlewald. I AM a Johnny Depp fan, but his Grindlewald makeup was so unappealing that you couldn't envisage the character being charismatic enough to gather a band of followers.

OK, so what happens? Magizoologist Newt Scamander, due to a misundertanding, now has a strained relationship with love interest Tina (established in the first movie). Grindlewald has escaped from the American Ministry of Magic. Credence Barebone (presumed dead) had reemerged in Paris. So when Dumbledore sends Newt on an undercover trip to Paris, all bets are off. We meet Nagini, a maledictus snake shape-changer, who will later become Voldemort's creature, and there's a guest appearance by Nicholas Flamel and some cute nifflers, but to be honest I'm already losing the thread of what happened when and to whom. Not a good sign.

When their husbands are killed in a heist-gone-wrong Veronica (and therefore the other widows) are pressed for $2m by a crime boss turned politician. Their only way out is to carry out the next heist that the late Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) had meticulously planned.  This isn't simply a caper movie like Oceans 8. It's gritty and there's a twist. Harry's widow, Veronica, is played by the excellent Viola Davis, and she carries the whole thing, with Liam Neeson adding gravitas. Colin Farrell plays a politician who may be slightly less corrupt than his father, but is he really?

It's hard to tell who the good guys are in this - if indeed, there are any - however you certainly know where your sympathies lie. It's an excellent movie, if gruelling.

Ryan Gosling has turned in a tightly controlled, measured performance as Neil Armstrong in what amounts to a biopic recounting his journey to become the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong was, by all accounts, a man who didn't wear his emotions on his face and Gosling manages to convince as he journeys from commercial test pilot to astronaut. It's fascinating with information about the moonshots as well as Armstrong's private life. Recommended.

A sweet film with a mystery and a romance. In the aftermath of World War Two a successful writer, Juliet Ashton (Lily James), visits Guernsey, which is still reeling from the effects of having been occupied by Germans. She's there to write about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for an article she's committed to, but on meeting the society's members she realises there's a mystery that no one is willing to talk about. She's corresponded with farmer Dawsey Adams (Michael Huisman) who turns out to be not what she expected at all. Juliet nibbles away at the mystery (what happened to Elizabeth McKenna?) until all is revealed. In the meantime she and Dawsey develop a relationship, which is somewhat unfortunate, since Juliet is engaged to (pushy) American Mark Reynolds. It's probably no great spoiler if I say it all works out in the end (after all, it's that sort of film). It's not just Farmer Dawsey who draws Juliet in,  the rest of the cast is very engaging, too. Kudos to Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay for their excellent contribution.