Hi, it is Bill and Teddy the Chihuahua and time for our February 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….
BARKING MAD ABOUT HOME VIEWING
This month, amongst the films we watched, we did a rewatch of both the Night at the Museum Live-Action trilogy and the Kung Fu Panda trilogy.
Ahead of Dune Part 2, we rewatched Part 1 as well as the first attempt to bring it to the screen from Director David Lynch.
We watched Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day.
We watched a few romance films with the month containing Valentine’s Day, a special mention to the wonderful Rye Lane, which we gave the full 5 stars to on our Letterboxd account.
We also had first time watches of two 80’s family films, one much loved in The Never-Ending Story and one often on the worst films of all time lists, Mac and Me, yes it looked very cheap, and clearly took a lot of inspiration for E.T. and featured blatant advertising for McDonalds. Coke and Skittles but we certainly have seen worse.
In January, we rewatched the movie adaptation of One Day based on the best-selling book starring Anne Hathaway.
We really enjoyed it, but it now pales into insignificance by the far superior Netflix TV series adaptation.
But the biggest inspiration for our February watches came from the return to form of True Detective, season four came closest yet to the brilliant first season, and in part confirmed why we have always considered Jodie Foster, one of, if not the best actresses of all time.
The series has sent us on a ‘Fosterthon’, as we have revisited a lot of her previous films, any excuse for us to rewatch Silence of the Lambs we will take.
It has though created a backlog of other films we want to watch, so we may reduce our viewing to just a Foster Friday now, for her movies.
As always you can see our watches on our Letterboxd account.
BARKING MAD ABOUT THE CINEMA
We managed three visits to the cinema in February.
We started the month with Argylle, this was a mixed bag for us, the first half we loved, but after the big reveal it just seemed to go downhill fast with ridiculous but unique set pieces.
It was a fun ride, but we have to say on our expectations, we did leave feeling a bit disappointed.
However, following that we saw the magnificent wresting family biopic, The Iron Claw.
We are still actually scratching our heads to how Zac Efron did not get a best actor Academy Award nomination for it.
At the time it was probably our favourite cinema release of the year so far, but it was beaten a week later by the fantastic Wicked Little Letters.
The trailer had made it out to be a fun foul-mouthed comedy, but it turned out to be something far more, with a strong story about equality.
However, it still had the foul-mouthed comedy within it, so you’ll get plenty of laughs from it as well.
Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley both gave outstanding performances and one we would recommend adding to your watchlist.
.
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 read The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, it is about a robot who ends up isolated and though helping animals, makes some friends and even becomes a mother to a baby gosling.
It was announced it to be the next project for Chris Sanders, director of Lilo and Stich and the Harrison Ford starring Call of the Wild.
We also read It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, a woman thinks she has met the perfect man, but what happens is heartbreaking as she becomes a victim to domestic abuse which he always regrets, it brings up memories of her parent’s relationship growing up and a chance meeting with someone from her past offers her help.
The film adaptation is soon to be released starring Blake Lively.
After that, we went with a graphic novel in Kill Them All by Kyle Starks, which is to be made into a film from Sam Hargrave, director of the popular Extraction films.
It sees two people using the day to rebuild their lives by going through numerous floors of bad guys and well killing them all, it feels like an action film of the 80’s and The Raid, yet with the need to get to the top floor to get the big bad guys, it also feels like a type of Donkey Kong game, it really is a great read.
We have seen many films inspired by the works of H P Lovecraft, but never actually read any of his works.
When it was announced James Wan was to adapt his short story, The Call of the Cthulhu, it seemed a great place to start.
We definitely enjoyed it and will look forward to reading more Lovecraft in the future.
Finally we read Big Bad by Chandler Baker, a werewolf story which is now to be the next project for Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon, having been the latest name to leave the next Scream sequel.
If you are a fan of the TV series, Wolf Like Me, we think you would especially enjoy it.
BARKING MAD ABOUT REWATCHES
We still want to revisit the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy ahead of the fourth film coming to Netflix.
We will also be looking to revisiting the Ghostbusters movies ahead of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
A few posts have turned up on social media about the merits of Starship Troopers, we recently picked up the trilogy set and that will also be a rewatch for us soon.
We also feel inspired with The Fall Guy out soon, to revisit some other movies based on TV shows, it was an idea that came to us when we revisited the Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson starring I-Spy that was based on a TV series.
BARKING MAD ABOUT MUSIC
We still can not stop playing the Mean Girls musical movie soundtrack, so nothing has really changed from last month =)
BARKING MAD ABOUT THE RADIO
We are currently enjoying on the BBC sounds app an audio retelling of Peter Benchley classic book, and the source of our favourite film of all time, Jaws.
BARKING MAD ABOUT MARCH
Our hopeful March film visits will include Dune Part 2 (out March 1st) Imaginary (March 8th) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (March 22nd) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (March 29th)
On TV, we will be checking out Adam Sandler in Spaceman on Netflix as we really enjoyed the book it is based on.
Also on Netflix, we are looking forward to the TV spin off to the Guy Ritchie film, The Gentlemen.
We enjoyed the documentary Next Goal Wins but missed the film adaptation at cinemas over Christmas, so we will be wanting to watch that when added to Disney+ on March 27th.
BARKING MAD ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
Film on social media has been dominated by three things that we have seen.
The Good: as a Dune Sandworm popcorn bucket is bringing lots of joy to social media from memes to reactions from the film stars and director.
Sadly, UK cinemas never seem to be really inspiring with their merchandise ideas.
The sad: No one likes a bad film, but Madame Web is being ridiculed on social media, we are very tired of comic book movies, so this was never on our watchlist, but it has been a shame to see so much hate towards a film.
The trait seems to join a long list which from our memory, seemed to start with Ghostbusters: Answer the call and been followed by the likes of Morbius, Solo and The Marvels.
The Angry: The internet has come alive with anger at Warner Brothers, after it made the decision to not release Coyote Vs Acme, for the same reasons as Batgirl, seemingly to be done as Tax write-downs.
It has been heartbreaking as animators, the film’s composer and more have shared their memories of making the movie and the sadness that it will be unseen to an audience.
Much like Batgirl, had it been released I would definitely have seen it, as who doesn’t love the characters known as the Looney Tunes.
It is still not known if this film will find a home at another studio or never be seen, which is a real shame.
BARKING MAD ABOUT OUR BLOGS
A recent article shared that 28 Days Later was not available to stream anywhere, it inspired us to write a blog about Physical Media which you can read here:
https://barkingmadaboutfilms-com.stackstaging.com/why-there-is-still-a-place-for-physical-media/
What have been your February highlights and what are you looking forward to in March?
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 February review 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