Some film thoughts

A lazy, lazy Sunday (in which my main activity was a walk to the local Oxfam book shop where I bought The Kingdom by the Sea for £2.50), was complemented by a few films watched.

Johnny English. Is this film good? I can't decide. I've seen it before, of course, and only watched the last 45 minutes of this before I headed out (as mentioned, lazy day, hungover and very tired from much sport playing on Saturday). It's sort of funny, and Malkovitch is brilliantly over the top . But then some of it is so over the top and stupid and obvious that it seems quite lazy. I guess it doesn't matter really.

Brighton Rock (original). I thought this was terrible. I know it's from a loonnnggg time ago (maybe 50 years!) but I just didn't get it. There was so much random cackling from characters, often weirdly out of sync with their lips (it seemed to me), the acting was mostly pretty lame and I still don't buy the plot (book or film) of lame thugs and stupid girls. The remake is out later this year, so I look forward to seeing if that makes an improvement. 

Frequently Asked Question about Time Travel: Strange one this. Some of the plot was quite clever and nicely linked together, but then again some of the piece were really stupid ( the future party of people dressed like them / the "editors" who come back and kill people). A pretty cheap film, the kind of film that in 30 years will have the same heavily dated, cheap British film look that 1970s films have to us know.

Also, I finished Birdsong last week. I enjoyed it, but also thought it was a touch overrated. It has such a high standing in literature from the last twenty years, and Faulks is seemingly so revered, but I found the writing pretty average, but in a good way. It wasn't bad, but I had imagined it to be better. Still, it was a strong narrative, but then again anything about WWI is always moving. It really was the most ridiculous war, in which human's really did show their innate stupidity through and through (at least from behind the front lines). I digress.