Hi, it is Bill and Teddy the Chihuahua again and time for our September Barking Mad About Films Newsletter.
So, without any further ado, welcome to our August review….
BARKING MAD ABOUT AUGUST
We continued our quest to watch at least one film a day, so included may classics as well as new titles.
This month was a real mixed bag for us, with all sorts of watches, from new films, repeated viewings and discovering old films…
Some highlights of our first-time watches
Heart Eyes, which didn’t show at our cinema so glad to finally catch up with it, a great fun horror rom com.
Also on the horror rom com theme, F Marry Kill was another great first time watch for us.
We also watched the most watched Netflix film of all time, Kpop Demon Hunters and the soundtrack will definitely be added to our playlists.
Eenie Meanie was a great crime caper that was well worth a watch and would make a great double bill with Baby Driver.
A great first time watch of a babysitting nostalgia double bill of Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead and Adventures in Babysitting.
We had been watching the Dennis Lehane written Smoke on AppleTV and that inspired us to revisit Shutter Island also written by Lehane.
Also inspired by Smoke, we also watch firefighting drama Backdraft.
Hollywood Shuffle, a great comedy by Robert Townsend, struggling as an actor of colour, with lots of film parodies was a great first-time watch.
E.T. was a revisit inspired by visiting aliens to earth, after watching Alien Earth and it is still as entertaining.
Another revisit was the truly great This is Spinal Tap and are curious to check out its forthcoming sequel.
Also, music and comedy played a part in our rewatch of South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, which we felt inspired to revisit after rediscovering the tv show.
We had to fit in a rewatch of Nobody before seeing the sequel.
And ahead of the series Alien Earth, and a new Predator movie, we watched the two AVP: Alien vs. Predator movies, which sadly do not get any better for us on repeated viewings.
Seeing the trailer for its sequel, we watched the original Sisu movie again.
We also enjoyed Netflix adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s great book, Night Always Comes.
And after watching the new Naked Gun movie, we felt inspired to watch great comedy, National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1.
Other than that, it was a mixed bag of watchable movies, as ever you can find every film we watch by following us on Letterboxd.
BARKING MAD ABOUT CINEMA
Our August cinema visits.
We went in with low expectations on all of them but enjoyed them all.
We personally liked The Fantastic Four: First Steps but didn’t really do anything new with the superhero genre, and honestly, we preferred Superman.
We really enjoyed the slow burn to ‘that ending’ Weapons, a film that the less you know about it, the more you will enjoy it.
A film that if we were honest, didn’t really enjoy whilst watching it was The Life of Chuck, yet upon leaving the cinema, it has really stuck with us, as we reflect on the message of even small moments can play a huge significance in our lives.
Finally, despite a lot of mixed reviews, we absolutely loved Nobody 2, the action and increased comedy over the first, it will almost certainly be in our end of year top ten.
BARKING MAD IN MEMORIAM.
Following the death of director Jonathan Kaplan, we watched his film Unlawful Entry which was a fantastic tense thriller.
And we had wanted to revisit The Adjustment Bureau for a while and following the sad news of Terence Stamp, it gave us the perfect excuse.
We had read Christoher Reeve autobiography so in looking for one of his films to watch we watched Street Smart, with a great early role from Morgan Freeman.
With the passing of Stamp, this also feels a perfect excuse to revisit Superman II.
BARKING MAD ABOUT BRINGING IT ON.
We had a random binge of Bring It On films, having always loved the original.
We watched Bring it on Again; Bring It On: All or Nothing and Bring It On: Fight to the Finish, which all were watchable and didn’t really deviate too far from the story of the original.
Sadly, a horror twist on the theme, Bring It On: Cheer or Die was the poorest of those we watched.
BARKING MAD ABOUT BOOKS
We, as always read a few books in our read list that have been inspired by forthcoming films or films recently announced.
We loved the latest Emily Henry book, Great Big Beautiful Lie.
We also loved Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon and look froward to its movie adaptation.
Also soon to be a movie, we read Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, which is like One Day crossed with High Fidelity.
A great mystery book also headed to the screen, was Death in her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh which saw a woman find a death note, but no body and tries to find who wrote the note and where their body is.
We are in the waiting for a new series of Will Trent, so we returned to the source material by Karin Slaughter by reading Genesis.
We also read Edge of Normal by Carla Norton, in which the survivor of an abduction many years later is asked to consult and help a new survivor and is to be a film starring Chloe Grace Moretz.
We loved Don Roff’s book, Clare at Sixteen which is about a girl who is a cross between Wednesday Addams and Dexter Morgan, and will definitely check out Saint Clare, its recent movie adaptation.
On the subject of Wednesday, watching the first part of Season 2, we read the second A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder book, Good Girl, Bad Blood, by Holly Jackson which will be the source of Season 2 which will star Wednesdays’ Emma Myers as Pip again.
Inspired by Untamed on Netflix, we also read Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr, about a ranger, who tries to find the real killer, after believing the lion accused of the murder is innocent.
This if the first in a series which will be the basis of a new TV show, Anna Pigeon.
Eruption, written by James Patterson with Michael Crichton which also heading to the screen is a volcano about to erupt, with a secret inside.
This felt like it could be a great disaster movie, and the book brings back memories of films Volcano and Dante’s Peak.
We read our first Harlan Coben book, I Will Find You, which was just as twisty as the TV adaptations of this other books.
Finally, we read the inspiring Still Me by Christopher Reeve, about his coming to terms with his horrific accidents.
Much like the films, we do log every book we read, and you can follow us on Good Reads.
BARKING MAD ABOUT TV.
We watched some great shows in August:
A perfect end was the final season of Resident Alien and also the final season of Upload.
We loved the four episodes of Season 2 of Wednesday and thriller Hostage on Netflix.
We are liking Alien Earth on Disney+
A great finale, we enjoyed Smoke on AppleTV.
And continue to watch Peacemaker; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds & Dexter Resurrection with their weekly episodes.
BARKING MAD ABOUT SEPTEMBER
With movies, there are a few titles we are keen on seeing, The Long Walk having read the Stephen King book, Spinal Tap II should be fun and hoping we can catch Caught Stealing having loved the book it was based on.
TV should be great, The Girlfriend on Amazon, based on the book by Michele Frances which we loved will be on our watchlist for sure.
We are looking forward to The Paper, inspired by The American Office and will feature Oscar Nunez and with Tim Key involved it should be a lot of fun hopefully.
But it is more about returning shows we love, Wednesday on Netflix and Futurama, High Potential and Only Murders in the Building on Disney+.
September we hopefully will revisit the original 4 Superman movies, something we have been meaning to do since seeing the recent film.
We will probably try to avoid horror movies in September, as we always do the 31 days of horror challenge for shOCTOBER so need to save them for them.
Thunderbolts is coming to Disney+ and have been told it is well worth watching, as we didn’t see it in the cinema so we will probably check that out.
The rest is undecided and we wait to be inspired =) .
How about you, what are you looking forward to entertainment wise, this August?
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/
You can also discover what we read, by following us on GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/28908876-bill-boswell
We hope you enjoyed our monthly reviews 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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