What We’ve Been Watching – July & August

I can’t believe it’s actually September, time is absolutely flying by this year, it won’t be long until it’s December. It’s time for my bi-monthly update of the TV & Films we’ve been watching (and a play!) over the past few months. We had a good start to our 100 movie challenge at the start July, but August definitely switched in favour of TV Shows.

Television

Game of Thrones
I can’t not mention Game of Thrones first, GOT is something that I’ve watched semi-reluctantly for years with Ben, if Ben didn’t watch it, I wouldn’t bother, but this series I felt like it was way more interesting, both in terms of action and story line it was all way more up my street. The final two episodes were probably my favourite in the show’s history, here’s hoping I don’t forget what happens (often my problem) in the rumoured 18 month until the final season begins.

The Office
Right at the start of the year we started watching the Office (US one) in bed and kind of stopped watching TV for a bit. So we had several months without watching an episode, the boxset is migrating downstairs and we’ve ploughed though a season and a half in about a week!

Riverdale
One I watched rather than the both of us – I was off for a couple of days at the end of August with some kind of fever cold and decided to give Riverdale a try. I watched the whole thing in two sittings and it definitely filled a PLL shaped hole in my viewing schedule. I think if I’d watched it over a series of weeks I would have found it quite slow paced, however my condensed viewing meant I got to the point quite quickly. I’m hoping the next series which starts in October is a bit faster on getting going.

American Gods
We’ watched quite a lot of this in a short space of time and seem to have forgotten about the last two episodes thanks to a re-discovery of the office. This is a great show, Ben read the book whilst we were on honeymoon and was keen to watch the series. It took me an episode or twof for it to become fully, “Yes I like this” status but I’m now keen on remembering to finish it off. Essentially it’s about Gods (I think based a lot on ancient Gods…but not entirely sure) in modern times. I really like Ricky Whittle in this, hasn’t he come a long way since Hollyoaks.

Handmaid’s Tale
We’ve still not quite finished this – we still have a couple of episodes left. It took me a long while to get around to the fact that this isn’t the same as the book which was tough right after reading the book to admit that it was just going to start to become entirely different.

Films

Arrival
I was really looking forward to watching this as I’d heard a lot of hype around this and heard it was almost genre redefining. I really liked the acting in it, I liked the mix of timelines in the film, but I didn’t find the crux of the story anything particularly wow. Starring Amy Adams as a communications/language expert who is enlisted alongside Jeremy Renner by the government to help when seven extraterrestrial  ‘heptapods’ land around the earth to try and work out what their business is. I think maybe beacuse I’d heard it was so good, I was waiting for something major to happen, and it just didn’t.

Big Hero 6
This is one of my favourite Animated movies – definitely in my top 10 and it’s not one which is spoken about any where near as much as it deserves to be. What I like about this is for a Disney movies it’s a bit different, it surrounds Hiro, a child prodigy who ends up at a technology college – who finds an invention created by his brother called Baymax, a caring health care Robot, queue adventure and a funny inflatable. Thoroughly enjoyable, watch if yuu haven’t

Mr Right
I had to remind myself what this is which is never a great sign. Starring Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell. Anna Kendrick is at a life crossroads when she meets and immediately starts dating Sam Rockwell, a hitman. It’s bascially them running about trying not to get killed/killing with moments of ‘awww new relationship’ in between guns and shooting. Big Anna Kendrick fan, but this one can be skipped.

Pixels
After a lot of disagreement and Netflix watching we settled on Pixels, and what a bloody terrible decision that was. 16% on Rotten Tomatoes is a generous score. Adam Sandler and Childhood best friend, now president Kevin James have a dilemma on their hands when the world becomes attacked by aliens who take the form of 1970s video games. Not good.

Avengers Civil War
One of my least favourite Avengers films and yet again another one I’d forgotten we’d watched (even though it was a re-watch, we had seen it a the cinema). Of course if you’re into Avengers you’ve probably already seen this. Okay, but not in the top ones for me.

Spiderman Homecoming
I absolutely loved this film, I found it entirely different from other the Avengers. I loved the youthfulness of this character it had a sense of innocence about it without as much ego surrounding the character. I also did not see the twist about the bad guy coming and I’m already looking forward to Ben buying this the day it comes out (as he always does with the Marvel films) so we can watch it again1

Jack Reacher Never Look Back
I don’t even recall watching this, it’s a good job I kept a list. I loved the first Jack Reacher and it’s one we’ve watched several times – but this one is clearly more forgettable. I asked Ben his opinion and he said “It wasn’t as good as the first, but wasn’t as bad as the reviews”, so maybe worth a watch if you liked the first.

Year One
Ben put this on. I can’t believe I managed to sit through this absolute shit for a second time. I won’t make it a third mistake. Michael Cera and Jack Black as idiots in Year One.

Dirty 30
Starring Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart & Mamrie Hart (Youtubers if you didn’t know), I’d heard this spoken about on Grace’s Podcast which I listen to on an off, and was kind of intrigued as it came on the movies package and I didn’t think it would be something they would put on. It was okay, not fantastic it centers around a 30th Birthday Party with characters who were only semi-likeable so I didn’t end up warming to the story that much.

Popstar: Never Stop Popping
An entirely ridiculous Fly on the Wall style documentary about a politically incorrect popstar, played by Andy Samberg, who goes from rags to riches and back again after an awful flop of an album. Comical and was okay for when being in the mood to not watch anything heavy.

La La Land
We finally got around to watching La La Land and I’m kind of glad we waited until the hype died down. We both loved this, the film itself is beautiful, I loved the songs and the music and I’m itching to watch it again. I also liked the ending – it’s not the ending you want, but I kind of enjoyed that you didn’t get the ending you wanted or expected.

Hackshaw Ridge
We went to my sisters for the weekend and my sister told us she’d bought ‘That Leonardo Di Caprio Film he won an oscar for’ for us to watch, she didn’t they’d bought Hackshaw Ridge. We’d already had plans to go and watch Dunkirk the next day with them so it was a bit of a film war-fest. This came as quite a surprise as I’d never heard of it, but this was incredible. It was a very detailed tale of a true story of an American Soldier in WW2, I don’t want to spoilt too much about it, but it starred Andrew Garfield who was so good in it. Well worth a watch. At the end it had some clips of the Soldier talking (and other people who also featured) at the end, something I always like as it always sticks with me more as a real thing.

Dunkirk
Following on the war-fest was Dunkirk and of course we had high expectations. Cinematically it was fantastic, the story was good but it was a little anonymous. What I liked about Hackshaw Ridge was the personal touch and what I learned about this was none of these stories were 100% real – they’re kind of ‘inspired by’ real events, but they didn’t 100% happen as shown. It was really good, but I couldn’t help compare it to Hackshaw Ridge, and out of the two I preferred Hackshaw Ridge.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
We watched this last year at the cinema and got around to watching it again. There was so much I’d already forgotten about this, but man I love this film even more the second time round. The magic of Harry Potter’s world set in one of my favourite eras for style and fashion. Even if you’re not a fan of Harry Potter you might like this, it’s not a school tale of children so a different angle on the same world.

Frozen
Ben loves this bloody film, we’d probably be watching this once every six weeks if he had a chance (exactly the reason I put in the 100 movie challenge in the first place as I was fed up of Ben watching the same films over and over!). We hadn’t watched this in a while and I let Ben pick, I’m 99% sure there’s nothing to worry about. Jokes aside, I like this film as it’s a story about family as much as it is about love and I like that disney are starting to move away from fairy tale type Princess and Prince fall in love stories.

Storks
This was okay, it was picked because it was short an we were starting to make a movie quite late.. In a world where Storks no longer deliver babies, but instead deliver for some kind of Amazon type company called cornerstone, there’s a weird amount of hiring and firing for a kids movie but hey, teaching the importance of HR early is a new approach.

Pitch Perfect 2
A rewatch for us, we’re both huge Pitch Perfect fans! We watched the last one in June and decided to round off the series. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack to both of these ever since, I wish I had the singing talent to be in a Accapella group ha! I’m looking forward to the final one coming out.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Our first Harry Potter film of the year, we watched them all at the end of last year so it seems a bit of an odd choice to start at the penulitmate one, but it was on the television and we were 30 minutes into it before we’d realised it and decided not to change the channel. My second favourite HP movie behind the Half Blood Prince!

Keanu
We had to watch this as the trailer looked so ridiculous.. Keanu is a kitten stolen from a house by a drug gang, two friends go on quite the rampage to get the kitten back.

Miss Peregrines Home for Perculiar Children
This sounds like a kids movie but it definitely is not, at least not one for young ones – 10+ at best! This features a boy who goes to Wales with his Dad after his grandfather dies to try and discover his Grandfather’s past. He discovers a house full of Perculiars – children with powers stuck in the 1940s, I won’t go too far into it as it will spoil the plot but I’m not sure I enjoyed it all that much. Ben and I both said the ending (that involved travelling through time to get back to a particular point) would have made a more interesting story!

Keeping up with the Joneses
I actually watched this on the plane whilst we were on honeymoon and quite enjoyed it and suggested we watched it when it came on our Movies package. Starring Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher as a suburb couple left with too much time on their hands when their children head off to camp for the summer, they end up getting caught up with the new neighbours, the Jones’. It’s an action comedy and we found it enjoyable and a good easy watcher.

Play

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child
I wanted to give a quick mention to this as it is something that we’ve watched in the past 2 months! We headed to London to watch the Cursed Child Play after a year of having the tickets and the anticipation did not disappoint. I went into more detail (although spoiler free) of the play here which you can check out if interested.


And that’s it – a lot this time I’ll admit, but we were on par at 21 movies watched, we’re now at 59 films a little way into august and if we manage to keep up the same pace of the past two months we should be right on par to finish. The problem we’ve got is our Sky Movies package is coming out with a hell of a lot of dud films at the moment and there’s maybe only one every two weeks that we want to watch or haven’t seen. Finding new films we actually want to watch is proving a struggle at the moment! So let me know any suggestions, old or new that we could give a try!

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Helpless Whilst Drying

Email: helplesswhilstdrying@gmail.com

 

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14 Comments

  1. September 4, 2017 / 8:25 am

    You’re doing so well! We haven’t watched a film for four months I think🙈 I’m tempted to include a Netflix series as we’ve watched two seasons of a show together which we never do xx

    • September 4, 2017 / 10:23 am

      I think because we don’t go out a lot in the evenings Monday-Friday because the dogs have been home all day by themselves means we tend to plough through things quite heavily. We’ve also spent quite a lot of time at home DIYing and upcycling furniture so we’ve had a lot of films and shows on in the background so I think we’ve had an overly successful two months! x

      • September 4, 2017 / 12:57 pm

        Yeah I don’t go out much weekdays I just can’t be bothered if I have work. I don’t live with my partner but I imagine when we do we’ll get into more shows etc xx

  2. September 4, 2017 / 11:34 pm

    the office is one of my faves! I haven’t seen many of these, great reviews 🙂

  3. September 5, 2017 / 2:09 am

    I can;t believe GOT is waiting TWO YEARS!!! ugh, I often forget what happened too, feeling your pain!

  4. September 5, 2017 / 4:17 am

    I feel the same way about Big Hero 6, it’s easily one of the best Disney movies ever! It’s so fun but also really emotional and moving, it makes me cry a bit.

  5. September 5, 2017 / 7:37 pm

    I watch GoT fully reluctantly. This season has basically became “Walking Dead of Thrones” for me. 😛 At this point, I don’t even care who takes the throne or if they defeat the White Walkers.
    I loved Big Hero 6! I was hoping there would be a sequel – I heard there would be one but haven’t heard anything lately.
    I refused to watch Dunkirk as I honestly do not care about war films – my SO went by himself and he enoyed it. I’m glad I didn’t go!
    Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 were on a marathon this weekend – I probably saw snippets of each 4 times over. Not a fan of the later Harry Potters – I just felt the sense of ‘other worldly-ness” was lost in them.

    • September 5, 2017 / 7:49 pm

      There’s a Big Hero 6 animated series coming soon. That should be fun.

  6. September 5, 2017 / 7:47 pm

    It’s called Avengers Civil War in the UK? Weird. Here it’s called Captain America: Civil War.

    I love Big Hero 6. It was on cable here again recently. I love when Baymax is low on his battery. “WE JUMPED OUT A WINDOW!” 😂

    And… I hate Frozen. I do. I can’t understand why everyone lost their freaking minds over it. They seemed to break into song every 5 minutes. Only character I liked was Sven. 😂

  7. September 6, 2017 / 10:04 pm

    I just watched Hacksaw Ridge this weekend – have been meaning to see it since seeing the trailer before another movie sometime last year. It was SO good!

    I’ve tried watching GoT and can’t get into it. Too many people and too many names – everyone looks the same. Maybe I’ll try again.

    La La Land is one of my favourite movies I watched this year! A few friends of mine hated it because it didn’t give them the happy ending they liked, but I think that’s precisely part of the reason why it’s good (besides the music and cinematography) – it’s not just cookie cutter “they both get the careers of their dreams AND live together happily ever after”.

    • September 6, 2017 / 11:09 pm

      Ugh wasn’t it! I’ve had many thoughts about that film since watching it, it keeps coming back into my head! can see that being in my favourite picks at the end of the year!

      I don’t know many people’s names in game of thrones, I’ve only just learnt faces. it’s getting easier as seasons go on as more and more characters die haha!

      My sister put me off la la land for that exact reason, I’m kind of glad I waited for the hype to go down as I started with much less expectations than I think I would have done! I loved the ending personally, like you say it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, sometimes happiness comes at an expense of something else! I thought it was pretty perfect!

      • September 7, 2017 / 2:55 am

        LOL, good to know I’m not the only one who gets mixed up about characters on Game of Thrones! 😝

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