One of the things that I've written about in these pages more than any other is probably the cinema club that I have once a month with one of my longest and best friends, Stuart Reekie.
Just for a reminder, Cinema Club has 2 members it's been running for 15 years. It has an unlimited waiting list, I'm happy to put you on it, but you can only get into Cinema Club if one of us dies!
The rules of cinema club are quite simple:
Number One, we never talk about cinema Club, (broken here).
Number Two, if it's your turn to choose the film, the other person doesn't know till after the classification screen comes up and goes away.
Number Three, if it's not your turn to choose, you buy the snacks.
There are no other rules really, that's it.
And we've been doing 12 films a year, (pretty much consistently) for 15 years.
And so that would add up in my book to something in the region of 180 films or thereabouts, and so I guess by the time we get to the end of next year, we'll be heading to our 200-film anniversary.
It's interesting because this week it was my choice, and because of domestic circumstances and the fact that the films in the cinema were all terrible, I asked Stuart if we could have a cinema club at my house, (from time to time we have special dispensation to do this). I made Stuart some chicken and chorizo pasta, we ate that, we had a great catch up and a chat, and then we settled down under blanket each like two old men with tonnes of snacks to watch In Bruges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Bruges
In Bruge stars the two stars of the Banshees of Inish Sheeran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Banshees_of_Inisherin
The two stars of the Banshees of Inish Sheeran only something like 15 years before the Banshees of Inish of Sheeran. It's a film that lots and lots of people have seen but not one that I had seen, and it was great, but it was not the best.
It was not the best cinema club film we've ever seen, (3 out of 5). But it was not the worst (1 out of 5).
The best film I've ever seen in Cinema Club was either Dallas Buyers Club or Captain Fantastic (I think Captain Fantastic was Cinema Club), those are my two favourite films that I list to people all the time.
The point of this blog though, and the point of Cinema Club, is I'm just searching for a film that's better than those. I might never find it, and that's totally cool, because cinema club in itself is one of the joys of my life, and the searching is part of the process.
If I find a film that I think scores higher than either of those two films, I won't stop, I'll just continue to search for another one.
There is no end point here, apart from the time when one or both of us can no longer watch a film together, wherever that might be. I would expect we'll do this for the rest of our lives and when we're stuck in separate nursing homes in different parts of the country, we'll watch the film and then talk to each other on the phone about it, even though we won't be able to hear.
As I've said so many times when I've talked about cinema Club, it's not exclusive. You can start your own. You can start your own any club you want, but just start a club.
It's fabulous, create a habit.
It makes you happier, I promise.
Blog Post Number - 4240
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