Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I reviewed the movie version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Tina reviewed The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, a World War II story. Sim's fantasy walk through London took us on a boat ride this week - the Tate to Tate, plus a visit to the Globe Theatre. Jean reviewed The Hobbit (the book, with a brief mention of the movies). Becky reviewed The Pilgrim's Progress, Darcy's Hope at Donwell Abbey (part of a re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice in a WWI setting), and Nutmeg the Guinea Pig.
Did anyone else have trouble falling asleep after the twist ending of the Academy Awards on Sunday night? We watched Moonlight this week and thought it was a great film that told us things we didn't know about our world. La La Land is still on our list - we're expecting more pure entertainment and less enlightenment.
That all reminded me that I forgot to pay attention to the BAFTAs this year. Last year, I added several films to my Netflix queue based on the BAFTA nominations. In most categories, all films screened in the UK are eligible - La La Land won Best Film at the February 12 ceremony. Different timings of film release dates, plus a couple of British-only categories, means there are some films I haven't heard about yet lurking in the BAFTA nominations.
Here some films I'm adding to my To Watch list from the BAFTA nominations:
I, Daniel Blake. A British-French-German film about a carpenter whose life goes haywire after a heart attack and his encounter with a young single mother dealing with similar red tape.
The Girl with All the Gifts. A zombie apocalypse movie that seems to hold some cross-over appeal to those of us who prefer science fiction over horror.
Under the Shadow. A story about the Iran-Iraq War featuring a mother, a daughter, and the looming peril of an un-exploded missile.
Notes on Blindness. A documentary about John Hull, theologian, who recorded a diary on audio tapes after losing his sight.
American Honey. A road movie about an Oklahoma teen who embraces the life of traveling magazine sales.
Denial. A based-on-a-true-story drama about a Holocaust scholar who has to defend herself in a British court to a Holocaust denier.
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
