Hi, it is Bill and Teddy the Chihuahua again and time for our July Barking Mad About Films Newsletter.
In our newsletter, we will aim to share some of our thoughts and watches of the month and what we are looking forward to in the next month.
So, without any further ado, welcome to our JULY update….
BARKING MAD ABOUT JULY
This month was another one full of rewatches, mixed with first-time views.
We started the month with a rewatch of Hugh Grant romcom, Music and Lyrics, it was one we had been planning as we kept seeing the clip of the boy band he performed in on social media.
It’s a lot of fun, with both Hugh and Drew Barrymore being excellent in the will they, won’t they get together role.
We also had our annual watch of the greatest film of all time, Jaws (our opinion, over opinions may differ).
We revisited the Blair Witch Project trilogy, and we love all that it achieved, but we really are not a fan of the original movie, we don’t think it’s the film, more we really can’t engage with found footage as a medium for movies.
We had our first time watch of the sequel, which whilst not fantastic, was daft enough to be watchable.
The most recent entries, Blair Witch was probably the best of the 3, but its director Adam Wingard earlier films, You’re Next and The Guest are far better watches, as ever, in our opinion.
We also did a double bill of the two Get Carter movies, and as much as Sylvester Stallone has made some great films, his Get Carter is not a patch on the original.
It feels like a lot of films, whereas it would probably have been accepted better had it not been called Get Carter, as it is certainly an acceptable action film.
We also did Willy Wednesday’s, where we watched all 4 of the Free Willy movies.
We also watched the two K-9 sequels, we love dog films, and it fitted in with the gap in our viewing as the latest series of Hudson and Rex finished.
They are also enhanced by James Belushi, the star of the original returning for both.
With July having both the Wimbledon tennis championships and the European football finals, we watched Match Point about tennis and Danny Dyer football romcom The Other Half.
We had some first-time watches of some classics in Syfy time travel film The Philadelphia Experiment.
Other classic first-time watches which we had included The Conversation; The Last Temptation of Christ; Talk Radio and Mulholland Drive.
Ahead of seeing Longlegs, we caught up with a couple of recent Nicolas Cage films with Sympathy for the Devil and The Retirement Plan, both felt like straight to DVD movies, but as always enhanced by a committed Cage performance.
We also revisited the two Deadpool movies ahead of Deadpool and Wolverine.
We also fitted in a first time watch of Angel, an inspiration for Maxxxine, one of our July cinema visits, starring Donna Wilkes, he we know best as Jackie, from Jaws 2.
And as we planned a watch of the sequel to Twister, we decided to revisit some disaster movies, and we used it as an excuse to watch The Swarm, a silly disaster movie with the population in danger from bees.
Maybe we look at B-movies differently to others, but we didn’t think it was bad as it is always made out to be.
As ever, you can see every movie that we watched on our Letterboxd Account.
BARKING MAD ABOUT TUBI
The UK got a new free streaming site, and it is full of some great watches, and compared to Plex and Pluto, at present it feels like it has less adverts as well.
It helped with our Jodie Foster rewatches as we saw her in the Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
We enjoyed the family adventure Oddball, a true story about a dog who protects a penguin sanctuary, with Sarah Snook from Succession.
We have a massive watchlist on it right now, it is well worth checking out, especially if a fan of older movies.
BARKING MAD ABOUT THE CINEMA
We managed four visits to the cinema in July and it was mainly a scary time.
We started the month with A Quiet Place: Day One, we really enjoyed this one, a lot more than the sequel, although with star of the show, Frodo the Cat, I wondered how long we would last in this situation, given as Teddy likes to bark at anything that makes a noise or moves.
We finished Ti West’s trilogy with Maxxxine, following Pearl and X, we think we may have enjoyed this one the most with its modern day setting, but we do seem to be in the minority.
We also saw Longlegs, we loved the marketing campaign which gave very little away, and we did really like it, but sadly by the time it came out in the UK, it was plastered with reviews like the best serial killer film since Silence of the Lambs and we may have got our hopes up to high, as for us it certainly wasn’t.
We did, however, manage to see Deadpool and Wolverine on opening day thankfully, as it was only the day after that spoilers seemed to be everywhere for it sadly.
It was definitely our favourite of the three, but time will tell if it holds up to repeat viewings.
BARKING MAD ABOUT BOOKS
We once again had a few books in our read list that have been inspired by forthcoming films or films recently announced.
The first was Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, a historical tragic tale, and whilst we would normally not have chosen this to read, we actually very much enjoyed it and look forward to the forthcoming film adaptation with Jessie Buckley.
We also read The Killer’s Game by Jay Bonansinga, a very John Wick like action tale that will soon hit cinemas starring Dave Bautista, and if it is as good as the book it will a great ride.
We also read Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, a dystopian future sees all at 16 getting corrective surgery to become pretty, those who don’t are known as the Uglies of the title.
the film will star Joey King and we are hopeful it will do as well as The Hunger Games, but it could be another failed attempt to start a franchise from the other books in the series.
And we read The Radleys by Matt Haig, about two children learning they have vampire blood, in this family based romantic vampire comedy drama, that will star Damian Lewis.
BARKING MAD ABOUT HOME VIEWING IN THE MONTH AHEAD.
We are looking forward to seeing Trap in cinemas, so we may revisit some M. Night Shyamalan movies.
We have created a list of BritComs to watch, so we will try and watch a few of those.
We will work our way through some of our new Tubi watchlist.
The more we see from the remake of The Crow, we think we may just stay at home and watch the Brandon Lee original.
BARKING MAD ABOUT ALIENS.
With Alien: Romulus in cinemas in August, we will definitely be doing an ALIEN franchise rewatch, if you want to, it will be worth knowing that Romulus is set between Alien and Aliens so you may not want to race ahead.
BARKING MAD ABOUT TV.
July saw the return of our favourite TV show, Will Trent on Disney+ and we look forward to new episodes every Wednesday.
We also ended up getting a deal which saw us get Apple TV, so we have been watching some of their shows, we loved Dick Turpin, and are liking Sunny, Presumed Innocent and Time Bandits at present.
We also watched two great BBC dramas in The Jetty and A Good Girls Guide to Murder.
We are also currently doing a rewatch of Continuum, which is now on Amazon Freevee.
August has a few things coming with the highlights being a new season of Only Murderers in the Building and the last season of The Umbrella Academy.
BARKING MAD ABOUT CINEMA
Our August cinema visits are undecided with a few films out but Alien Romulus will definitely be a must see for us.
BARKING MAD ABOUT OUR BLOGS
A blog about some disaster movies we watched as we planned to see Twisters, the sequel to Twister.
https://barkingmadaboutfilms-com.stackstaging.com/bmaf-face-a-rewatch-of-many-disasters/
So, what were your July highlights and what are you looking forward to in June?
We would love to hear from you.
You can always keep up with what we are watching by following us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/barkingmadaboutfilms/
Or you can follow us on Letterboxd to see all the movies we watch: https://letterboxd.com/Bill626/
We hope you enjoyed our first newsletter and if this has given you inspiration for films to watch or you want more ideas for what to watch then why not check out our digital calendar full of ideas and dates in movies https://barkingmadaboutfilms-com.stackstaging.com/introducing-the-bmaf-film-club-calendar/
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