Before I tell you about the movie hubby made me watch 🤔😉 I’ll start with the newest book on my TBR. I went to a talk by Dominic Smith yesterday at the Byron Writers festival. The Electric Hotel is his latest book and it’s about the birth of the silent film industry, high is truly the birth of the film industry as we know it.
They said Netflix would be the end of the film industry and before that I’m sure they said television would kill the movies. Neither has proved true. I go to see on average 3 movies a month and watch more on Netflix etc. some good, some notsomuch both at the cinema and on streaming services.
Previous to this, I have watched exactly one Fast&Furious movie. I went, on purpose, to see the one where they very believably drove a car from one high-rise to another. To be fair it was a fast car and gravity helped a smidge. In my defence, your honour, I only went to see it because I had created hundreds of artworks for said buildings and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of one. I didn’t so it was 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
I ended up at Hobbs&Shaw in purpose too. I’d been high-browing all day at the Byron Bay Writers Festival and needed to get a little low brow before coming back up to my regular brow height.
I went in expecting lots of explosions and silly carrying on and that’s what I got, but it was fun. I love Jason Strahan and The Rock but the real star of this one is Vanessa Kirby (Seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown – Princess Margaret.) She kicked ass and had some great lines and only when she fell from a burning helicopter did she look a smidge fed-up with carrying a deadly virus that would wipe out the weak leaving the strong to be genetically enhanced and create a master race.
Right. Well, no, Shakespeare it isn’t but who cares? Apart from the inherent silliness it has a flaw that I can’t really get past. Kirby is treated by Statham as this ‘kid sister’ but is shown in flashbacks as roughly the same age. The actors are about 20 years different in age so I can only think that it’s statham’s ego that wouldn’t let him play the age gap realistically. It would explain why they constantly referred to Kirby as ‘the girl’. Unfortunately it also fails the Bechdel test but there’s no surprises there. We did see what I will describe as the bare minimum amount of sexy women in skimpy clothes – for an F&F movie I mean, so there’s that.
With Idris Elba as the ‘black superman’ and cameos from Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds, there’s a lot to love here, but keep your tongue in your cheek and you’ll come out with a smile on your dial. Just don’t go in expecting Shakespeare and you’ll be okay.
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