Three films and a book reading.

In the last two weeks I've seen three films and attended another book reading so I thought I'd give you a quick summary in case you fancy going to any of them, the films, obviously, not the book reading because that was a one-off and it's happened. Don't read on if you don't like spoilers.

Darkest Hour

Winston Churchill is fat and old and nearly always drunk but nevertheless manages to take over the reins of war from lily-livered Chamberlain and begin his bumpy ride to victory. That's pretty much it. Halifax and Chamberlain are ghastly cowards, Winston's wife is ball-breaking Kristin Scott-Thomas (who I still can't look at without thinking of her up against that wall with Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient) and she bullies and mothers him by turns (Winston, not Ralph Fiennes). 


Lily James is at first a simpering goose but later a jolly sport and she and Winston have a charming father/daughter or slightly creepy Humbert Humbert/Lolita relationship, depending on how you look at it. It all seems plausible until there's some whimsy on a tube when Winston canvasses public opinion, which kind of spoils it.

Molly's Game

There's this woman except before that she was this girl and when she was a girl she was a skier, and really good at it, except it all went wrong so she had to get involved in high-stakes gambling instead, as you do, not that you really care because she's so unsympathetic as a character she doesn't elicit one jot of emotion one way or another. People play cards a lot and then she and Idris Elba talk really fast at each other in his office, a lot. Kevin Costner is ludicrously cast as her father and they have an important chat on a bench in Central Park near the end when she realises he was only mean to her when she was a kid because he loved her, not that you realised he was mean to her as a kid anyway. Terrible film. Nul points. I watched it at a friend's house because he had an advance copy and we all thought it was boring except for the fabulous cleavage all the way through. Go if you like tits.

The Post

Some journalists decide to publish something. It's set in America. Meryl Streep is in it and she's great but my goodness hasn't she gone broad across the beam since she was a delicate wisp of a thing back in Kramer vs Kramer? So sad how people age. Still, she really can rock a gold lame kaftan and tells all those fellas she's going ahead Goddammit and has tears in her eyes and everything so we know it's a big deal. She and Tom Hanks have an acting face off in a restaurant at the beginning which is great except you never forget for one second that he is Tom Hanks and she is Meryl Streep. Oh, and it's about the Vietnam War, which I did kind of forget after the first ten minutes perhaps because I'd had a long day and a boozy supper with girlfriends and briefly nodded off. A good film to snooze to.

From Aleppo Without Love, by Amir Darwish

The darkest hour for real. Amir Darwish read from his autobiography From Aleppo Without Love - a true story of anguish and despair by a boy from Aleppo as part of the Goldsmiths Arabic Poetry Festival on Saturday night and a group of us students went along to support him (this is my life now, I go to Arabic poetry festivals). Amir was physically and sexually abused as a child growing up in Aleppo. At the age of sixteen he began writing poetry but when this attracted the attention of the secret service and men with guns turned up at his house one too many times he decided to flee Syria. He ended up in Middlesbrough after hitching a ride under a lorry from Belgium and stowing away on a container ship. Kind of puts all of the above film nonsense into perspective along with any of your own problems, such as they are. He's on my M.A. course and it's a privilege to know him.

Love E x

@DOESNOTDOIT

P.S. Nothing can follow that.