At the Movies with B.E.

Welcome to At the Movies with B.E.  This week, I'm going to try adding a ranking system using a 😻 (smiling cat face with heart-shaped eyes emoji) or a 🙀 instead of stars.  Hokey or not?  :shrug:  Anyway, let's get on with it...

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1986) - starring George C. Scott, Val Kilmer, and Rebecca De Mornay.  I remember watching this when it was on TV way back when, so I loaded it up for watching.  It's a little "80s" but still a good treatment of the story.  😻😻😻😻

Ladies in Lavender (2004) - starring Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.  I found this while searching through various Roku suggestions.  I admit I was a little hesitant, but we went ahead with it, hoping it didn't turn out to be shitty.  I'm so glad we did.  This is a lovely little movie about two spinster sisters in Cornwall in the 1930s and what happens after they find a young man washed up on the beach.  They take care of him until he's well and care for him afterwards, until he becomes a part of the town.  The ending was awesome and we really enjoyed the movie, despite the fact that they never really delve into why he washed up on the beach.  I think he was trying to get to America, but the exact nature of his problem was never addressed.  :shrug:  Oh, well, I can live with that.  I can always make something up in my head to cover that.  😻😻😻😻😻

Toast (2010) - has Helena Bonham Carter, but she wasn't the star.  The only other person I recognized was the guy who was in that one series about the young surgeon with Asperger's.  This movie started out okay and then got tense and then was okay and then got weird and then sucked.  We didn't finish it, but we watched most of it, which was enough of it to adequately give an opinion.  I was really bummed because it held the promise of being a really good movie and with some tweaks, it could've lived up to that promise, but it didn't.  :sad trombone noise:  🙀🙀

My Family and Other Animals (2005) -  this is based on a book by Gerald Durrell (as was a TV series called The Durrells on Corfu - which we watched on PBS years ago).  It's a goofy and funny show about a family who leaves dreary, rainy Britain for the sunny life on the Greek island of Corfu, and all the things that happen to them.  It was fun to watch, even if it did star the gal who played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter movies.  Definitely not a movie with anything major to say about anything, which is a nice change. 😻😻😻😻😻

I found several more movies to watch that I'm really looking forward to.  One in particular is called The Hippopotamus.  It looks like loads of fun, so fingers crossed.

At the Movies with B.E.

It was a slow week for movies, so I'll add in some other stuff.

Murder by Death (1976) - with all-star cast, this pokes fun at all the major sleuths of the early twentieth century - Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, & Hercule Poirot - but in an almost homage kind of way.  There's still a mystery to solve and a surprise ending, so loads of fun.  Hubs hadn't seen this before and he seemed to enjoy it, despite its occasional camp and cheesiness.  Me, I'm all about camp and cheesy sometimes.  ;o)

Here are some non-movies we've watched or are currently watching:

Emily of New Moon (1998) - I added this to my save list because we really enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, and this was also LM Montgomery.  What could go wrong?  OMG, this was so sad - first her mom dies and then her dad dies, she's forced to live with a nasty aunt who kicks her cat out of the carriage in the middle of the woods.  I hoped in other episodes the story would get better, but I went through the first season looking at each episode's synopsis, and nope.  Every episode was tragic.  We vetoed watching anymore.

A Touch of Frost (1992) - We are super enjoying this series.  I love DI 'Jack' Frost.  The writing is good, the characters are awesome, the plots are thrilling. Good stuff all the way around.

The Last Detective (2003) - Also super enjoying this series.  DI 'Dangerous' Davies is the nice guy who finishes last.  He gets all the nothing cases, but he's a good man and a smart detective, so he manages to solve each of the nothing cases that ends up being a something case.  Smart and funny, with heart.

Life (2007) - this series stars Damian Lewis (who played Dick Winters on Band of Brothers).  I'd seen this advertised way back when it was on TV but, at the time, I didn't want to see this actor on a show like this.  I'm glad I got over it.  So far, it's been a pretty good series.  I was afraid they were going to insert a romantic thing, but from the last episode we watched, I think they kyboshed that.  We'll see.

I'm still watching too much TV, but it's getting better.  What things have you watched lately?

At the Movies with B.E.

It wasn't the most jam-packed week for movies*, but this is what we watched.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) - starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.  I love Shakespeare, but this is particularly good.  If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend it - even if you aren't that into the Bard.

Death Wish (2018) - Okay, so I swore I wouldn't watch this because I'm generally against when Hollyweird remakes old favorites. Then I saw that it starred Bruce Willis and I love Bruce, so I gave it a whirl.  I'm glad I watched.   It was awesome.  This movie was definitely not harshing on the Charles Bronson version and it was also totally not-woke.  I liked the juxtaposition of Bruce as a mild-mannered, peaceful surgeon before his family was attacked and the man he had to become to gain justice.  The end was satisfying and cool.  Yay.

I tried watching a couple other things, but they were duds, so I stopped.  Nothing worth mentioning here, even to pan it.

Have you seen either of these?  Did you watch anything awesome this week?

*we ended up watching several new-to-us TV shows instead.  If you want to hear about those, let me know and maybe I'll add those to the ends of these posts.

At the Movies with B.E.

Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) - This is THE definitive Sherlock Holmes movie.  So good, even after all these years.  

Bookworm (2024) - a weird little movie with Elijah Wood as an absentee father who suddenly shows up and takes his daughter on an adventure.  It's set in New Zealand, so there are some amazing scenes, but yeah, the story was definitely weird.  Good weird, but weird nonetheless.

A Month in the Country (1987) - starring a young Colin Firth and young Kenneth Branagh.  Plus, Natasha Richardson (who died way too early, in my opinion).  It was just a nice movie.  Not much to it, but nice.  Two men after WWI, struggling with their own horrific memories of war and striving to accomplish their own goals.  Set in the beautiful English countryside.

And Then There Were None (1945) - I thought I'd found a later version of this with Oliver Reed that I remembered enjoying, but it ended up being in another language with subtitles, so I searched again and found this.  I don't remember ever seeing this one.  It was pretty good.  It had a bunch of lesser actors I remember from several other old movies (the maid from Rebecca, Uncle Willie from Philadelphia Story, etc.) and Barry Fitzgerald (he was the matchmaker in Quiet Man, among other fine roles).  Definitely an enjoyable adaptation.

In the hopper are a WWII movie and a veterinarian movie set in Devonshire, plus we still have a couple Sherlock Holmes movies to watch.

At The Movies with B.E.

Time again for another trip to the movies.  This past week, I watched:

All of Me (1984) - Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin.  If you haven't seen this, you're missing out on a hilariously fun movie.  Lily plays a rich lady who's dying and has plans to put her soul into a beautiful young woman, but the vessel falls out a window and hits her lawyer - played by Steve - in the head.  So, now she's in his body with him and he has to get her out.  Comedic genius on the part of Steve Martin with some cute verbal bits by Tomlin.

Swallows and Amazons (2016) - this was a sleeper I found when I was just looking for something nice to watch.  It's about these kids in England on holiday in 1935.  They go to a home on a lake and get permission to take the boat out to this island, where they stay the night, but there are other kids who have already claimed the island and they have a 'war'.  It all works out and they become friends, and they defeat some Russian spies, too.  We really enjoyed this one.

Death on the Nile (1978) - Peter Ustinov as Poirot.  Need I say more?  Personally, I prefer David Suchet as Poirot, but I love Peter Ustinov, so I couldn't really go wrong watching this. It's a pretty good adaptation, if you can get past the '70s kitsch. 

The Mirror Crack'd (1980) - this had a star-studded cast, including Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.  Angela Lansbury made a fine Miss Marple.  (Margaret Rutherford was the best Miss Marple, but that was a longer time ago.)  I've never seen another adaptation for this book, so I guess this would be the best one.  Not the best Agatha Christie based movie I've ever seen though.  Fun, but I'm not a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor.

Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt (2012) - Another awesome Jesse Stone.  Although this one did kind of leave things hanging that weren't addressed in the next and final movie of the series.

Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise (2015) - This was the final Jesse Stone movie.  It was a pretty good one, even if it did start out a little sad.  I was sorry to have finished this series of movies and I definitely know we'll be revisiting these at least once a year from now on.

Murphy's Romance (1985) - a cute little romance between a divorcee (Sally Field) and a older pharmacist (James Garner).  She moves out to a small town in AZ, I think, to start her own ranch and escape from her life in CA.  She meets the pharmacist and over time they become friends.  Then her ex shows up like he's trying to win her back, and it's clear to everyone but her that Murphy 's tossed his hat into the ring for her.  Anyway, it all works out in the end.  HEA abounds.  Yay.

That's it for me... I know, it was a lot.  It'll taper off this week, as I'm running out of movies and watching more shows.  Eh, maybe I'll start talking about those, too.  We'll see.  Did you watch anything good lately?

At the Movies with B.E.

Okay, twice in a row.  This is a trend.  Anyway, here are the movies I watched in the past week:

The Name of the Rose (1986) - I hadn't seen this one in a really long time, but I remembered liking it, so when I found it, I slapped it on my Save list.  I still liked it.  Hubs totally didn't.  To each his own, and perspectives, etc.  It's rare that we differ on things, but when we do, the thing is entertainment.  :shrug:

Jane Eyre (although strictly speaking this was a mini-series in 1983) - this is the version with Timothy Dalton as Rochester :swoon:.  I saw this one back when I was living in Illinois, so it had to be 1992.  There's a lot cut from this to make it short enough for TV, but all in all, a pretty faithful adaptation of the book.  And did I mention Timothy Dalton :swoon:?  Hubs enjoyed it, but he had a completely different and interesting perspective on the whole thing, which actually made the discussion of it enjoyable.  He really didn't appreciate Rochester's treatment of Jane.  I never thought about it that way before.

Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2010) - this was #6 in the series.  It was pretty damn good, too, like the others.  Something about Tom Selleck in this role makes me happy.  I really need to pick up the books.

Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (2011) - another good installment of Jesse.  

Invitation to a Murder (2023)  - searching through all the things to watch, I stumbled across this.  The blurb for it sounded interesting, and it delivered.  It seemed like it was going to be a knockoff of And Then There Were None, but ended up as a nice, all around nod to Agatha Christie.  Not a thrilling movie, but a good one.  

Have you watched anything good lately?  Got any good suggestions for things I might want to watch?