Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

Don’t worry, no spoilers! Wynonna Earp: Vengeance is a follow up movie to the TV show. It’s not a replacement for the Season 5 we were supposed to have but never got, rather it’s a sequel, stand-alone, five years later, kind of thing. I will admit, I had my doubts going into this. Wynonna Earp felt like our shit-show, but it also felt like it might be lightning in a bottle, and once it had escaped, you could never recapture it. Just putting the band back together again might not be enough. There were odd moments when I still felt that was true. Which in a 95 minute film is probably a reflection that, at some level, there were odd scenes that I thought needed a bit of work. Given I could say the same of almost any film, that’s not a bad thing to say about this one. There are many I’m far more critical of too. This one just registered a bit differently with me, because I had different expectations, and worries, compared to most films. But the things I expect from Wynonna Earp were ...

I’ll be honest, normally I wouldn’t have watched Unfrosted . It had vaguely crossed my attention when it first dropped but failed to really register. But when the Discord mob said “shall we have a watch along, this is the movie?” I said yes; I’m not a complete misanthrope. Until we talked about what the film was about, I didn’t realise that I had heard of it, it made that much of an impression! The film is based around a largely true story of the battle between Kellog's and Post to bring Pop-Tarts to the marketplace. What we see is nothing like the true history, instead it’s a lightning fast comedy that very much throws everything at the wall hoping that enough jokes land for you to carry you over the ones that don’t. All of us laughed enough that we have no regrets about watching it. We tended to laugh at the same things so we could have had a better, more focused, film that would have kept us laughing more. That said, for all we’re discord friends and while most of us have never...

Warning: This is not as spoiler-free as my reviews normally are. This is an adaptation of a book that is as old as me. You’ve had a LONG time to read it and get to grips with the story. I largely keep to the elements that we’ve seen in the trailers, but there are some changes made in the adaptation process that changed how the film worked at critical points for me, making it not work. Although I tried, I found I couldn’t write this review without coming back to them, so you have been warned. Dune Part Two starts with a huge challenge but a lot of goodwill, at least here. Just like in the book, the first chunk, the first film, is a huge amount of world building, the second chunk brings that to fruition. Fortunately it faces up to the challenge and largely overcomes it. There are a chunk of big plot arcs, pretty diverse plot arcs too, that have to be kept in air and then nicely resolved. We’re used to seeing that in streaming series, but we’ve fallen out of the habit of seeing it done...

I’m going to start with a criticism that won’t matter to anyone who isn’t British, but if Eloise (Ellie) grew up anywhere near Redruth, or Jocasta near Manchester, then I’m a virgin fresher. (Wikipedia tells me they’re from New Zealand and Glasgow respectively and clearly they need to do more accent work. Although there’s one scene where I almost fell out of my chair because, having just given up on it, Ellie suddenly sounded at least authentically West Country, if not Cornish.) Having bitched about that, I don’t know if the girl playing Cilla Black was lip-syncing or singing live, but she looked and sounded good. Equally, I don’t remember Jack's (Matt Smith) accent slipping. Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) doesn’t say where she’s from, and to me her accent reads like faux-cockney on top of something (I can’t quite place what), but that’s not unreasonable for the time and someone trying to fit in, in London, sound cool, and while her accent meanders a little but stays in that territory wh...