As a break from heavier stuff, we watched Jerry and Marge Go Large on Amazon and really enjoyed it. We love coming across a hidden gem that both of us lik.e
I love Waking Ned Devine!
We watch a lot of British shows because we have a Scot in the house. Banshees of Inisherin is on our watch list so I’ll let ya’ll know what the Scot thinks (compared to a southern American LOL). Hopefully we’ll get to it in the next few weeks.
I just watched The Swimmers on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Oh yes, Waking Ed Devine. That, Local Hero, Calendar Girls, Billy Elliot… that was what I was expecting from Banshees. That was not what I got! I’m not trying to scare you off, just a warning about expectations!
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We finally saw Avatar, 1 hour of plot followed by 1 hour of gorgeous scenery followed by one hour of fighting and of course major set up for the next movie! It’s certainly not a great movie, but I enjoyed it anyway. It will deserved all the special effects Oscars it gets. We saw it in hi-frame rate 3-D. I wasn’t quite as wowed by the effectiveness of the 3-d this time, but I think on the whole still the way to go.
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We watched “The Pale Blue Eye” - a very atmospheric movie about a detective investigating murders at West Point in the 1800s - assisted by Cadet Edgar Allen Poe. Sounds odd but it was really engaging (based on a book). Slow and a little dark but great acting (Christian Bale, Harry Melling) and intriguing plot.
milgymfam - you might enjoy!
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Local Hero is Scottish, Calendar Girls and Billy Elliot are English. Not expecting Banshees to be a light fun movie. With Brendan Gleason and Colin Firth, I’m not expecting Banshees to be like Darby O"Gill and the Little People!!
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We watched The Pale Blue Eye last week and sort of enjoyed it. We knew it was fiction so anything goes, but it was too hard to detach ourselves from the setting and suspend disbelief on certain elements. The acting was good, but not a plot that drew either of us in. I’d give it 3 stars at most.
Based on a recommendation here, we watched The Guard tonight and enjoyed every minute of it. We also found Blue Miracle (based on a true story) fun and uplifting. We enjoyed The Swimmers as well.
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Oh good! I’m glad to hear The Guard was enjoyable. Our friend with the ties to Ireland highly recommended it.
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Oh we watched the Pale Blue Eye because we have a connection to the author. I loved the production and costumes. I thought the acting was great too. A little dark and creepy but we enjoyed it (although could be due a little to being biased).
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Good thing I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once or I would have seen almost nothing with a nomination! Otherwise one Adapted Screenplay and one Animated feature. I do want to see two more of the Best Picture nominees when they come to the little screen. I did better when they were releasing most of the new movies on streaming during the height of the pandemic.
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I’ve seen Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and Avatar. That’s it on the list of nominees. Most either haven’t been here at all or I missed them.
TBH, I often don’t like films that get nominated so tend to wait for them to come on Netflix if I’m curious.
I enjoy a different style of film, mostly fun and escapism. Otherwise I like nice dramas or historical films, either deep or interesting. Those rarely do well in today’s Oscars. They used to do well in the “old days,” but times have changed for the most part.
I’m among those who never watch the show on TV any longer.
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We watched The Menu, largely because of the cast (Ralph Fiennes, John Leguizamo, Anya Taylor-Joy, et al) and the acting was terrific. Sure, there were some holes in the plot, but Fiennes does creepy/evil so well.
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I’ve seen Avatar, Everything.… and Top Gun. Top Gun was fun, but not Oscar worthy IMO. Avatar only deserves Oscars for the production stuff.
I’m shocked that The Woman King didn’t get any nominations, a terrific cast, and an interesting story.
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Thanks for recommending Sing Street! I was only going to watch part of it and go to bed and ended up watching the whole movie. Reminded me of those 1980s coming of age movies. Can it count as an Irish movie that’s not odd or depressing?
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A Facebook friend from high school mentioned the 1977 movie, “Outlaw Blues” with Peter Fonda and Susan Saint James. It was filmed in Austin, so I loved it. One location was the Soap Creek Saloon, which was within walking distance from my house and the middle school. In 8th grade, two years before this film, some of us got permission to shoot a short movie in the saloon.
It was fun seeing the UT campus and downtown as I remembered it from high school. It’s a light, fluffy movie but fun. I found it on YouTube for $2.99. DH agreed it was worth seeing. But no, it didn’t win any awards. 
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LOVED A Man Called Otto which we just returned from seeing. For a Thursday afternoon matinee there was quite the audience - more than any movie we’ve seen in a long time going back to Pre-Covid days. We try hard to get few people in a movie by waiting for it to have been out for a little bit and choosing times when few people go, but if this was “few” I’d hate to see “a lot.” Those around us were saying, “so and so told us to go see it,” perhaps being the reason it’s more popular now than most movies that had been out for a couple weeks - needed word of mouth for advertising?
Anyway, if I were nominating/voting for Best Picture, this one would have it. The actors were all very believable, the story was well interwoven, there were a lot of tear jerker moments (for most of us in the audience), and a little bit of comedy was tossed in to keep it fun. H loved it too, and I suspect two of our three kids would. The third has very few movies he feels are worth watching.
I know it appealed to us because it revolves around a happy marriage. If someone can’t relate, it might not appeal to them at all. If one doesn’t like dramas it won’t appeal either - no superhero scenes in this one, or other fantasy stuff.
We watched Avatar last week and left thinking, “eh, good scenery/great CGI - ok story - decent date, but nothing super special for us.” We also had that theater 100% to ourselves - no one else in there for the matinee. We watched Otto really, really glad we took the time to see it. We had mistakenly thought we might have seen it “all” in the previews - not so.
Pending your views compared to ours with movies, it could be worth your time.
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Have you seen the Swedish original?
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No, but I’ll be looking for it now… thanks for the info!
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The book is a family favorite, so hard for us to see either movie - would love to hear from
someone that read the book and saw the movie ???
We have not read the book, but on the way home were talking about how the book could go into so much more depth. Like any movie/book, I’m sure some points had to be cut out or modified.
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