Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

It’s that time again: MONTHLY FAVOURITES. Succinct favourites across my consumption of film, television and novels, as well as what I’ve been up to creatively.

FILM 🍿

I had quite a few re-watches in July, as is the way when you’re out voted on movie night because you’ve seen everything. However, I did enjoy Netflix new release The Old Guard and reignited my interest in Pierce Brosnan. However, when it comes to my favourite movie in July, it goes to a late entry; MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. I didn’t know anything about this movie when I pressed play, just a vague knowledge that it was very well received when it came out a few years ago. It was light and appealed to my creative soul, and that’s all there is to it.

TELEVISION 📺

I have been thoroughly enjoying my rewatch of sitcom Last Man Standing on Amazon Prime Video, I’ve started a new Spanish series that I’m slowly getting into, and I’ve started a new procedural drama and I’ve finally pressed play on the 16th series of Grey’s Anatomy. But the favourite has to of course go to I MAY DESTROY YOU. It’s layered, it’s fresh, it does so much with so little and it’s honest… too honest sometimes if you ask me, but remarkable never the less.

DOCUMENTARY OF THE MONTH 🎥

Recommended by a friend, I watched the Channel 4 documentary; THE SCHOOL THAT ENDED RACISM. It was a two-part doc that took a classroom-sized sample of Year 7 children in a South London school and got them talking openly about race. There is something so honest and simple about children and it is truly powerful using them to shine a light on hard-hitting topics.

Realising how young some of the ethnic minority children were when they were first unconsciously or otherwise treated differently because of their race. The white kids going from silent to uncomfortably questioning to open in their discussions of unconscious bias. They picked some fantastic characters to follow which really brought it all to life.

It was an effect experiment that showed how important and necessary it is to have these talks about race in order to unpick and highlight unconscious bias and systematic racism.

BOOK 📖

I only got through three books this month, but my favourite was also the most dense. Clocking in at 626 pages was A COURT OF MIST AND FURY BY SARAH. J. MAAS which is the second book in the A Court of Thornes and Roses series. It’s a high fantasy series, and I will start by telling you that I did not like this book. But then 20% of the way through things took a drastic turn for the better. I gave its predecessor 2 stars out of 5. I gave this 4. If you want to read something with incredible development both story-wise and character, then you need to invest time in reading ACoMaF…. though if you want it to make sense you should probably start with ACoTaR.

OTHER ⌨️

In July I began working on my feature film script – the first one I have written seriously (we won’t talk about the others). It’s a slower process than I envisioned for myself but that’s okay, fingers crossed I have a solid first draft by the end of August.

In other news, I’m trying to maintain writing two articles a month on Medium which I have begun using as a way to just free-write whatever is on my mind, and then come in and make it make sense. My favourite is probably ‘It’s Time You Got Comfortable Being Alone‘.

Find me on Twitter, Letterboxed and Medium

Roll on August