Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

As it's been Pride month I have been rewatching a few old favourites - so starting this month’s roundup with some suggestions:   Heated Rivalry -  award winning, classy, complex romance set in a toxic environment. Crafted as if it was a 6 hour movie, with fabulous writing, cinematography, soundtrack and performances which absolutely deliver on its carefully structured story arc. It chucks the traditional male gaze out the window in the beautifully shot intimate scenes, and if episode 5 doesn't have you standing on your sofa cheering, there is something wrong with you*.  You do need to put your phone away though, trust that the first few episodes are worth the later payoff, and properly watch, otherwise you will miss so many of the subtle layers (s eries, streaming on Sky/NowTV)   All of Us Strangers - A reworking of a Japanese novel, this atmospheric thriller/ghost story/romance explores grief and loneliness alongside all sorts of love between families and love...

Smashing together some of my favourite TV and film  here's a fairly short list of my best of the year.  As always, they are things I have seen this year, rather than when they first appeared.   If you want to see my fuller comments you can follow the links. Best film drama Putting all the different genres together this year, the nominees are: Past Lives: A story about missed love, what might have been and hope.   Understated performances from the two leads as the characters meet at various times over the years Poor things:  This was such an original film with fantastic performances, particularly from Emma Stone, but from all of the supporting cast too.  The set design and costume was fantastic too, and the whole thing was strange in a good way. A Real Pain:   A quietly funny and moving odd couple movie with Jesse Eisenburg and Kieran Culkin as two cousins meet to join an Auschwitz tour and visit the home of their Grandmother in Poland....

Fantasy/Sci-Fi Agatha All Along:   A spin off from Wandavision, I was interested to see this for a couple of reasons; firstly, Wandavision was genuinely original and so I was keen to see what they did next.  Secondly, with Joe Locke and Kathryn Hahn leading I thought this had a lot of potential.  I wasn't at all disappointed.   I really enjoyed the opening episode with Agatha as a character in a police procedural, enjoying making a bit of fun of the various detective tropes whilst also taking it pretty seriously and still moving the narrative along.  This time I was looking out for the tricks though, and spotted the bleeding through of the 'real world' and discrepancies quicker than if I had come into it cold.   I understand that this is the first properly queer Marvel project and that was also presented as an integral part of the characters and their storylines, rather than something remarkable, so much so that I hadn't even noticed until I read ...

Another year another season as this small and perfectly formed but big-hearted love story continued on the journey based on Alice Oseman's webcomics.  One of the great strengths of the webcomic and the TV series is that there is so much here apart from the central love story, all woven in and never feeling gratuiously squeezed in for the sake of plot.  Having said that, Oseman, who writes the series too, does talk about the need for a different beat and higher stakes being required in the show, leading to the introduction of new characters and storylines.   The core stays the same though, the story of Nick and Charlie falling in love and navigating their final years in school, and true to the source material to the extent that many of the scenes in the webcomic are lifted straight onto the screen as if by magic.   I have written here and here about the earlier series and for season three there are again multiple story lines, the primary ones being Charlie's...

This isn't everything I watched last year, but I wanted to call out some of the things that have stuck with me in different ways.  There might be minor spoilers but I have tried to avoid giving away any big plot secrets  The Woman in the Wall A gripping thriller with Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack set in Ireland and digging into the horrors of the Irish laundries scandal and the ongoing impact.  I will watch pretty much anything with Ruth Wilson and as Lorna she plays a woman who has lost a child in the system and has never recovered.  The layers of secrets still being held in the community, and the tensions and secret kindnesses are beautifully drawn. The blurring of the lines between delusion and reality are played so cleverly, partly for keeping us on our toes about what is really happening, and then also to mirror the delusions vs reality that still exist within families, friends and the wider community. Makes for an addictive narrative too.  And there is a...