Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

Is it still acceptable to wish you all a happy new year as we enter the second week of February?

I have finally emerged from hibernation, and though I slacked slightly in my movie watchage for the month of January, I did excel when it came to Television and Books.

Here are my favourites.

FILM 🍿

Of the very measly nine movies I watched at the start of the year – as tempted as I am to cheat and dub Pride & Prejudice (2005), (one of my favourite movies and a frequent re-watch) in the top spot, I will resist. Instead FROM UP ON POPPY HILL takes the prize. This Studio Ghibli movie was delightful from the characters to the story to the soundtrack. You can rarely go wrong when it comes to Studio Ghibli.

TELEVISION 📺

I watched a whopping 114 episodes of television in January… well that’s according to my TV Time app, and I tend to be relatively on the ball with logging. I was on a mission to catch up on everything I was behind on and watched Season 4 of The Last Kingdom (Netflix), Raised by Wolves (Sky Atlantic/HBO), Industry (BBC Two/HBO), Lupin (Netflix), Fate: The Winx Saga (Netflix) and all three seasons of Januarys favourite: COBRA KAI (Netflix).

I was pretty much obsessed with how they ‘flipped the script’ and subverted norms by showing villainy is sometimes due to perspective, nature verse nature, and how kings can fall and devils rise in the eye of the viewer.

Lets just say there may very well soon be a whole article dedicated to this on Medium.

BOOK 📖

I am gave myself a very healthy pat on mi espalda for the five books I read in January; I firstly finished the Raven Cycle series with, The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater, switched over to Sadie by Courtney Summers, rolled my eyes through Married At First Swipe by Claire Frost, and found laughter and joy in Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.

Anxious People ended up in the number two spot, loosing out to THE VANISHING HALF BY BRIT BENNETT . I can’t put into words what I enjoyed so much about this book but I consumed it in three days. I love stories about people and how the puzzles of their lives fit together and their narratives stretch and weave over years as we switch perspectives.

Anyway it was great and if my book club knows what’s good for them they’ll feel the same way.

OTHER ⌨️

As reiterated by how late this post came through I was a lazy lump for most of January, so there isn’t much ‘other’ to boast about.

I did make plans for projects I want to finish, tried to feasibly outline how many articles and blog posts I could write a month oh and I baked – cookies and a two carrot cakes (we don’t talk about the first carrot cake).

As per usual you can find me on Twitter, Letterboxed, Goodreads and Medium

I know we’re already here by it has to be said….

Roll on February