CRUMBLIES… Some films try too hard. They may be inventive, fun, flighty and kind of clever, even charming in their forced eccentricity, but it is forced nonetheless. Not cynical, don’t … Continue Reading This Beautiful Fantastic (2016)
CRUMBLIES… Old men need to take on the new world, let go of their prejudices, and live in the energies of the present. So there. Now, who fancies a light … Continue Reading Three Summers (2017)
CRUMBLIES… Now here’s a fresh angle on the mid-life household: the white-heat days of early parenting. Charlize Theron‘s Marlo and Mark Duplass‘s Craig have made the classic mistake: a third … Continue Reading Tully (2018)
CRUMBLIES… Oh, now this is fun. Old Jack here and every woman in the building gathered in the TV room, macaroons, posh tea and an air of affection for a … Continue Reading Book Club (2018)
CRUMBLIES… Oh, now this is gorgeous. Young Steve brought it in. He can talk again these days and rasped out the excellence of this comic-Gallic insight into one man’s journey … Continue Reading The Sweet Escape /Comme un avion (2015)
CRUMBLIES… Mad Maud had found the perfect movie at the cinema. She’d ranged back through the streets, jumping onto bins and gazing meaningfully into the distance, buoyed by the film … Continue Reading Edie (2017)
CRUMBLIES… You know how sometimes you watch a feel-good film the hour after a particularly huge meal and have to put no small effort into keeping down your own vomit? … Continue Reading Once More / The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
CRUMBLIES… There’s a thing goes through the head of Nurse Stabby-Fingers, I’m sure. Apart from the vindictive quality of her bed-baths, a legend in an A Wing stuffed full of … Continue Reading The Leisure Seeker (2018)
CRUMBLIES… Robin Williams. Always funny, sometimes brilliant, sometimes inaccessible, every so often utterly telling, every so more often utterly mawkish. Here, middle-aged, stressed, scowly and stuffed full of grumpy old … Continue Reading The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014)
CRUMBLIES… My grandson made me watch this. Young Steve, my son, had made him watch it. And… No. Just…no. This is a relive-the-1980s-like-you’re-still-there movie. About teens. Ugh. Steve had assured … Continue Reading The Karate Kid (1984)
CRUMBLIES… Ouch. Vibrant Vinay, Mad Maud and I watched this on a long afternoon. And we seemed to be watching three wildly different films. Vinay was basking in a touching, … Continue Reading Chennai Express (2013)
CRUMBLIES… Sometimes the TV room offers up something so gentle, good-natured, surprise-free and a bit meh that you can’t help but get swept along by it. Nothing unexpected, every comedy … Continue Reading Like Father (2018)
CRUMBLIES… Old Jack here watched this with Mad Maud. I’m not sure, but she may have found a way to project her mind onto a TV screen. Loosely coordinated, full … Continue Reading The M Word (2014)
CRUMBLIES… Okay, look, as a follow-up to the joys of I Got Life! / Aurore (2017) and its take on the menopause, we gave a second film a go. It promised much: … Continue Reading The Hot Flashes (2013)
CRUMBLIES… Mad Maud had been waxing critical on the weakness of men. An extra shot in her morning caffeine intake and she’d got on to worrisome prostates and erectile dysfunction … Continue Reading I Got Life! / Aurore (2017)
CRUMBLIES… Wry schmaltz for crumblies everywhere, with a mighty dash of wish-fulfilment (and the emptiness of eternal life, when you get to thinking about it), a specious romantic sub-plot and … Continue Reading Cocoon (1985)