weekend watchlist: a couple of treasures for Pride Month
Plus a lovable English crank and a put-upon Texan mom. (First published June 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Andrew Scott
This Beautiful Fantastic movie review: this ordinary normal
An ostensible fairy tale of the creative life in London that tries too hard to be eccentric, while also trying too hard to be grounded and realistic. This is one of those idiosyncrasies that you really can’t have both ways.
Denial movie review: a film for the resistance
A terrific legal procedural about defending factual truth and smacking dishonest sowers of doubt. An essential film for our era of “alternative facts.”
Swallows and Amazons movie review: a free-range kiddie adventure
Behold a time before helicopter parenting, when children roamed free, ate cake for dinner, and played with fire. A delightfully old-fashioned treat.
Victor Frankenstein movie review: monster mush
A riff on the Hollywood conventions of a story we know very well already, with little new to say. James McAvoy’s mad scientist is fun to watch, though.
Spectre movie review: Bond goes backward
After a truly spectacular and fresh opening sequence, everyone might as well be enacting a Bond puppet show, which is sometimes unpleasantly retro-icky.
Pride movie review: hanging together rather than hanging separately
One of the rare movies that gets absolutely everything right, bursting with happy-tears emotion about solidarity, friendship, and smashing bigotry.
Sherlock blogging: “The Reichenbach Fall”
There are a lot of ways in which this was 90 brilliant minutes of television drama, but the first way in which it’s brilliant is the opening moments…
Sherlock blogging: “The Hounds of Baskerville”
There’s little resemblance to Arthur Conan Doyle’s story here, apart from the lashings of creepy atmosphere…
