Many times in these pages over the last 1300 or so blogs I said that I write the blog for myself, almost as a diary, so I can look back and see where I was and what I was thinking.
Previously, and up until a year or so ago I used to blog about the films that Stuart and I would see at our Cinema Club and then I stopped. I have now realised that I stopped for the wrong reasons.
I was speaking to someone some time ago and they spoke to me about the blog and said ‘I don’t read that cinema rubbish’. That made me think I should stop it because it wasn’t valuable. Then I realised I wasn’t blogging for them, so here we go again with the cinema blogs, and they are back forever.
A short explanation to begin with, for some years now my great friend Stuart Reekie and I have had a concept we call ‘Cinema Club’. We are both great cinema lovers and our wives are not quite as committed, so we decided that once a month the two of us will go to the cinema. For me the idea came from Tal Ben-Shahar’s book ‘Happier’ where he talks about happiness boosters and putting things in as a habit. It absolutely works.
The joy of Cinema Club is that if it’s your turn to choose, the other person doesn’t know which film they are going to see; at least until the classification screen comes up in the cinema (Stuart always hides his face on the classification screen so he never sees what film it is until the opening trailers start).
This concept has brought us many fantastic experiences and some right howlers; that is the joy of Cinema Club. The reason I started to write this blog again is because I realised we had been to see 7 films this year and I can’t remember them all. I want to be able to go back and remember which films we saw and what I thought of them. So the films this year that I can remember are:
• A Monster Calls – the best one of the year and one of the best ones ever (my choice). It is a fairy tale about a boy whose mother is dying of cancer and a tree that comes to life. It is an extraordinary movie. If it is out on Apple TV or Netflix I encourage you to see it.
• Logan – a continuation in the Marvel Universe series and one that I chose for Stuart because he is a massive Marvel fan. Very violent but very good. Hugh Jackman is extraordinary in this film and is an extraordinary size.
• An unnamed film I can’t remember about screenwriters and scriptwriters during the war. Stuart will remind me of this hopefully when he reads the blog and I can blog back as to what it is. It was a wonderful movie, chosen by Stuart. Something out there that we wouldn’t have normally watched.
• Spiderman Homecoming – we saw that on Sunday with our boys. We had to get an extra one in because we had missed June. It is another Marvel movie but a great movie and still in the cinemas. It’s a re start of the Spiderman movie again, Robert Downey Junior is in it as Tony Stark if you have ever watched any of the Marvel movies, it’s a cracker and much more light hearted than something like Logan.
I’m missing another couple, I will try and remember for the next time I write about Cinema Club, but the main point of the blog is that on Monday night we went to July’s and this film is still out. I said above that Stuart always misses the classification screens but that is the part where I choose to see which film we are watching. When we sat down together with our Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and our packet of Minstrels in the fancy seats at Showcase cinema, the screen flashed up, it was Baywatch!
Let me say that again, it was Baywatch!
So I turned to Stuart and said “WTF?!” and then settled down for what I expected would be perhaps some of the worst time in the cinema I have ever had only to be turned around and flipped on my head. I laughed more than I have done since we saw Dead Pool. Baywatch is a little bit of a guilty pleasure and a little bit of an unexpected gem. Dwayne Johnson is great, extremely funny and Zac Efron plays his role really well with reoccurring jokes all the way through the film. The outtakes at the end are hilarious and I promise that you will laugh and laugh. If you want a bit of fun and a no brainer then Baywatch is a must see.
Hopefully I will be off to see Cars 3. Long Live Cinema Club!
Blog Post Number - 1341
Leave a comment