My girl gang went to the movies this week to see Rocketman, the biopic of Elton John, and we really got our money's worth. Encouraged by how much we enjoyed Bohemian Rhapsody we expected a spectacle just as great. It was a bit of a surprise when, a few minutes into the movie, the child Reggie Dwight pulls off to the side and sings a song. So, be clear, the movie is a musical, not just a movie about a musician. Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of musicals (even though…
To be honest, I really wasn't a follower of Freddie Mercury and QUEEN so part of my reason for going to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody was to educate myself. QUEEN rose to fame just as I was passing out of my rock n' roll phase—by then I was well into my thirties. As one of the early-born boomers I'd certainly heard of QUEEN but by the seventies I was listening to Meatloaf, ABBA and other musicians. I'd seen Rami Malek who portrayed Freddie Mercury interviewed earlier on The Graham…
There's a reason I haven't posted any movie reviews lately. That's because until now there was only one movie in the entire year of 2018 that I thought was worthwhile for baby boomers to see and that was The Book Club. This is not to be confused with The Book Shop which I saw a couple of weeks ago and wasn't worth the price of admission. I went to see The Book Shop is because it starred the wonderful Bill Nighy and was obviously about books so it offered two…
It's been eight long months since I've been to a movie theatre as there's simply nothing I've wanted to see. And boomers are traditionally big movie fans. We have so many memories of wonderful Saturday afternoon matinées as kids watching westerns, Looney Tunes and The Bowery Boys. Our movie memories probably also include steaming up the car windows at drive-ins or covertly holding hands with high school crushes in a dark theatre on Saturday evening. Sci-fi, monsters, violence and super heroes are just not my thing. So, I was delighted…
If you're a boomer like me, you probably remember the sensational newspaper coverage of a brutal kidnapping in the early seventies. Paul Getty, the sixteen-year-old grandson of the world's richest man J. Paul Getty, was snatched off the street in Rome and held for ransom of $17 million. The drama played out for several months. Getty Sr. refused to pay the ransom while the Calabrian organized crime ring who kidnapped him grew increasingly desperate. I clearly remember the universal shock and horror when we read that the kidnappers amputated Getty…
We watched Dunkirk on opening day in an IMAX theatre where the sound system vibrates your seat and unless you're sitting in the back three rows it's difficult to take in the entire panorama. The only thing missing was the sprays of water like you get in the Pirates of the Caribbean theatre in Disney World. In retrospect I wish I'd watched it in a regular movie theatre as my head kept bobbing around trying to take everything in and the volume level gave me a headache. According to the reviews…