Hi, it is Bill and Teddy the Chihuahua again and time for our January 2025 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 January review….
BARKING MAD ABOUT JANUARY
A New year has seen lots of new and rewatches, new TV shows and books to read, we started the year by rewatching the Bridget Jones trilogy ahead of the 4th film.
With talk also of a 4th film, we rewatched the Johnny English trilogy.
Some first-time watch highlights we watched included Civil War; comedy drama And Mrs, and a real highlight was Indian film, Kill, which is best described as The Raid on a train, but feels that doesn’t quite do it justice.
We also watched two films based on books we enjoyed, Nightbitch was a faithful adaptation thanks to a great Amy Adams performance.
We also watched Killers Game with Dave Bautista, which was sadly a massive disappointment compared to the excellent book it was based on.
BARKING MAD ABOUT CINEMA
We returned to the cinema this month to a very mixed bad, we really enjoyed the romantic but very sad drama, We Live in Time.
We then saw the Robbie Williams musical biopic, Better Man, we wouldn’t really call ourselves big Robbie fans, but we will be quite surprised if this doesn’t make our end of year top 10 films.
We also very much enjoyed Nosferatu and Flight Risk.
We loved Leigh Whannell’s previous films, Invisible Man and Upgrade but his latest film Wolfman was unfortunately not for us and sadly a disappointment.
BARKING MAD ABOUT MUSICALS
Randomly we watched a few musicals this month, we saw Tick, Tick, Boom starring Andrew Garfield, knowing we were going to see him in We Live in Time.
We also saw Take That musical, Greatest Days knowing we were going to see the Robbie Williams biopic, Better Man.
We also saw Romantic Musical 80s jukebox comedy Walking On Sunshine.
BARKING MAD ABOUT ROBIN WILLIAMS
When scrolling social media, we often stop when we see clips of Robin Williams shared from awards ceremonies or interviews, stealing the show.
We have been a Robin fan since childhood, being a big fan of Mork and Mindy, and then following his journey to cinema.
We have therefore decided on Wednesdays, we will call Williams Wednesdays as we work our way through his back catalogue.
What Dreams May Come and Awakenings to name just two we watched last month.
Do you have a favourite Robin film?
We would say ours is Good Morning Vietnam, and will definitely be on our rewatch list.
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.
We really a couple of books that are heading to the big screen.
Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston, which will star Austin Butler and was a great read.
Another great read was R.L. Stine book, Prom Queen which is being adapted by Netflix.
We also read quite a few books headed for TV adaptations:
Patricia Cornwell book Postmortem, the first in the Scarpetta season;
Things We Never Get Over by Lucy Score;
The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances;
Murder before Evensong by Richard Coles
and The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter.
We also read two books that have been turning into films which we have not got round to seeing yet:
Conclave by Robert Harris and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
BARKING MAD ABOUT TV.
Despite being not huge fans of reality TV, we did get fully immersed in The Traitors again, but for new shows.
We loved Patience on Channel 4; the ITV adaptation of Playing Nice, which whilst not as good as the book, was a great watch, we also enjoyed political drama Party Animals on ITVX.
Another good adaption of a book we loved, was The Crow Girl on Paramount+ and their two adaptations of Beth O’Leary books, The Road Trip and The Flat Share.
We are only a couple of episodes in but we are enjoying High Potential on Disney+
BARKING MAD ABOUT FEBRUARY
The stand out for us will be the return of our favourite TV show, Will Trent on Disney+.
We are also looking forward to The Monkey basde on a short story from Stephen King found in his anthology book, Skeleton Crew.
We are also lookign forward to Heart Eyes at the cinema, a new horror from the creator of Happy Death Day.
We are also intrigued by The Gorge film that is coming to Apple TV, but other than that we will be going on what we are drawn to watch.
So, what were your January highlights and what are you looking forward to in February?
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 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/
Leave a Reply