I saw no films in the cinema in October – a particularly horror-obsessed month. But in late November, I went to see Blitz, and as the reviews said, it was somewhat old-fashioned, except from a Black British perspective. There’s also modern FX bringing the scale of the Blitz to life, and some handheld camera work that is sometimes immersive, sometimes baffling. It focuses on one family, as 9-year-old George decides to jump off the train evacuating him from London to go home, which starts off as a Boys Own adventure, then goes a bit Dickensian. His single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan, as good as you’d expect. Also, she sings. I didn’t know she sang!) tries to carry on without him, until she finds out he’s gone missing. The kid has a presence.
Mark Kermode said he thought this was aimed at adolescents, which explains the broad characterisations. You’d want to have a think about how your twelve year old would react to seeing a film about a child facing things no child should experience, I imagine, because much of this really happened (and similar is happening in parts of the world now.)
I only heard about at the end of last week, but I badly want to see Your Monster (it sounds idtastic in a way that would appeal to me, but with emotional intelligence), however it wasn’t showing anywhere near my neck of the woods.
Instead I went to see Wicked part 1, I haven’t seen the show (nor read the book), but I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge about it over the years, and heard a lot of various versions of the songs. Take a bow, Jon M. Chu and everyone involved, I expect production and costume design to get nods at the Oscars. I loved the scale, the old-school nods to ‘The Wizard of Oz’, but the translation from stage to screen was really good,
( tl:dr spoilers )In short then, this is pretty great – Erivo is brilliant, Grande good (heh) and the number of good songs are pluses. I can see myself trying to go to see it in the cinema again, and I haven’t felt that pull since Dune part 2. Also, nobody sang in the screening.
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