We, like everyone else, have been making maximum use of our streaming services lately. Here are a few more of our selections, with my brief commentary.
S found XV: Beyond the Tryline, which is a documentary about the 2015 World Cup rugby tournament. I love any rugby movie and anything having to do with England, so this was bound to be a hit. My biggest complaint was having to see the unfortunate choices Johnny Wilkinson has made with his facial hair since he was the ass-kicking English fly half back in the 2000s (there are some excellent dump tackles at 9:30 and 10:50 of the video, but the whole thing is full of amazing shots of a truly spectacular playmaker).
Everyone love a good romantic comedy. Love Wedding Repeat is not great. But it is at least clever, and earned a few giggles.
We got on a kick of searching out 80s and 90s films, starting with Philadelphia. Tom Hanks plays an attorney who is fired when the partners discover he has AIDS. He sues his law firm, and the court battle makes the rest of the movie. [Spoilers follow!] In terms of present-day connections, there is a hospital scene in the movie where Tom Hanks's character is surrounded by his loving family. It made me think of the patients who are sick with COVID-19, in isolation units, who cannot be visited by their family and friends. Some of the most tragic stories I have heard during the pandemic are these.
Philadelphia was followed by The Rainmaker, which we found when S discovered that you could search by actor. Of course he searched for my boyfriend, Matt Damon. It just happened to be another lawyer movie -- this time, the brand new puppy shark goes after the big insurance company, with a terrible love story on the side.
The third movie in our "oldie but hopefully goodie" trio was Urban Cowboy. Holy cow (pun intended), there are a lot of very unfortunate things that happen in this movie which are passed off as though they are nothing -- not least of which is John Travolta's belief that his physical abuse of his wife is somehow less repulsive than her boyfriend's abuse of her...? But, if you can look past all the 40-year-old, out-of-date cliches, it is certainly not the worst movie we have seen of late.
We moved into the current era with Catfish, a movie fully about the creepiness of both the internet and people. There are definitely no innocent characters in this movie, and I was pretty unhappy with everyone in it by about halfway through -- and it didn't change by the end.
One of George Clooney's surprisingly recent movies, Hail, Caesar! also made it onto the list. I say "surprisingly recent," because I hadn't heard of it. That initially seemed somewhat surprising -- it's a Coen brothers film with a star-studded cast. Having now seen it, I know why. It's a commentary on Hollywood and the Red Scare, but not a particularly clever one.
I am not a fan of horror movies. Nevertheless, both S and I had heard good things about 1922, so we gave it a go. First off, I will say that it is not what I would consider a horror movie. There are a few cheap, horror-type scare tactics, but for the most part I found it to be more of a psychological exploration of a man coming apart. Pretty interesting.
With all the cooking we are doing, I've been digging anything having to do with cooking. East Side Sushi was a great find -- a cute, sweet story mixed with the right amount of devotion to food. In some ways, it reminded me of Tortilla Soup, which has long been a favorite.
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