I’m way behind in my movie reviewing, so I’m just going to pop some quickies here about the movies I’ve seen this year.  But first, what I haven’t seen and don’t intend to.

I haven’t seen Hamnet.  First of all I was put off by a review which said that the interesting main storyline – how the death of his only son may have influenced Shakespeare to write Hamlet – kind of collapses halfway through into an extended wallowing in over-the-top grief scenes marked by way too much screaming on Jessie Buckley’s part.  Then I listened to a long interview with director Chloe Zhao who described the making of the film largely in terms of her relationship with Jessie Buckley, relating how the two of them used ‘dream work’ to achieve….something or other.  It was hard to make out in the fog of all that Jungian psychobabble.  Apparently there’s a suggestion that Anne (or Agnes, which may have been her actual name) Hathaway was some kind of faery creature.  I don’t mind creative licence being taken with a true story, but this kind of supernatural woo-woo is against my rationalist religion.  I’ve heard more than one person say Maggie O’Farrell’s book is better, but I note that Zhao co-wrote the screenplay with her, so I’m not going to read that either.    

Nor have I seen ‘Wuthering Heights’.  The trailer alone was enough to put me off.  ‘The greatest love story of all time’?  Bollocks.  It’s a tragedy about class injustice, warped sexual obsession and vengeful violence.   Note the inverted commas around the title.  At least director Emerald Fennel had the decency to do that to make it clear her movie was not meant to be any kind of adaptation of Emily Bronte’s novel.  And how.  There’s Margot Robbie in lush Valentino-ish gowns showing off an unlikely amount of decolletage for the cold windswept Yorkshire moors.   And what’s with all the sex?  Upwardly mobile young ladies in early Victorian England didn’t shag before marriage, even if they did fancy their handsome, brooding foster brother.  The consequences of unwanted pregnancy were dire.  It’s not an adaptation of a famous novel, there’s no historical authenticity, so what’s the point of it?  Soft-core porn in period costume, by the looks.