johobbit: you have excellent taste in films. I prefer serious, historically-based dramas to most other genres. I also liked Dunkirk and Hidden Figures. They aren't perfect, but they're a starting point for someone who knows little or nothing about the era/event/person. Personal research can do the rest. For me, historical films are free education. (I rent DVDs from the library.)

As a person who for artistic/personal reasons has never seen any Disney versions of Winnie the Pooh (stories, music, movies - can't avoid seeing the vast amount of merchandising), I can only hope that it will cause some people to go back to the actual books by A.A.Milne, and read them to themselves, and then aloud to themselves and their children.

I have seen The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and the newer one, Winnie the Pooh, and I can't stand either of them! (I watched them when I was making my way through all of Walt Disney's animated features. Otherwise I would have avoided them.) For this reason, I do not want to see Christopher Robin ... I've heard it's good, but I really dislike what Disney's done to the character.

And coracle I am also horrified at the Peter Rabbit film, though I don't agree with your comparison of it to Fantastic Mr Fox. One of the books that changed the most on the journey to film is The Little White Horse whose adaptation, The Secret of Moonacre, is pretty much unrecognisable from the original. It has some nice moments but misses a lot of what's great about the book. When The Princess Diaries came out as a film I was shocked at the changes. For seemingly no reason whatsoever the setting is different, Mia's father is dead, and her cat is black and white not orange. (I've since learned that one of the cats who played Fat Louie belonged to Hathaway, but I didn't know it at the time!) And yet then I love the How to Train Your Dragon and The Princess and the Frog movies despite them being completely different from their books.

I saw Ant-Man and the Wasp and liked it. The film was fun, and a good breath of fresh air after Infinity War, but it doesn't hold up to the first one. I love the premise but I feel it was under-utilised in this film, which was a real shame ...

I've also seen Mission: Impossible - Fallout. I think the last film was better, but it ran at a cracking pace and had some truly excellent chase scenes. My main issue was

This past weekend I watched The Hunt For Red October (1990) with my younger brothers. We had so much fun. I have seen Red October more than a few times over the years and I always have a blast watching it, but I especially enjoyed watching it with my brothers.

SnowAngel

I've always enjoyed that movie as well, it's even one of the reasons why I chose my nickname...

And yeah, the Peter Rabbit movie was a crime against the original novels!

And regarding the Winnie Pooh stories, if you guys can find a subtitled version or speak some Russian, I can recommend you the Soviet Winnie Pooh cartoons... It's definitely something else, but it's a great watch!

SSBN_Dawn_Treader, welcome to NW! This is the first I've heard of the Soviet Winnie the Pooh cartoons! How do they compare to the original stories and to other adaptations?

They... don't compare. It's not supposed to be bad or good, it's just radically different, as if you were to compare a pigeon and a pair of headphones. I don't think there's a link to the original stories apart from most of the cast, instead it depicts "Soviet folk wisdom" in a comedic way.

I don't really find how to describe it, so here's the first episode :

https://youtu.be/bEwE4wyz00o

This past weekend I watched The Hunt For Red October

Well done war submarine movies are favourites of ours: we just watched Red October, as well. Even though it was not an historical event, it sure is realistic. Ryadian, I hope you can take time to watch this at some point. It is so worth it!

We saw U-571 awhile back, which is based on the true stories of disguised American submariners attempting to capture the Enigma cipher machine by boarding a German sub. Terribly intense, with hardly a let-up. This particular film was inspired by historical events, 'though the historical U-571 was never captured and was later sunk by a torpedo.

K-19 is another favourite—the tale of the malfunction of Russia's first nuclear submarine on its maiden voyage.

I got U-571 from the library last week, it's currently sitting by the TV waiting to be watched. I haven't seen it before, but it looks interesting. I love historical fiction that's what it seems to be?

My older brother made me watch K-19 once, never again, I didn't like watching that one at all.

My younger brother and I watched Gray Lady Down (1978, starring Charlton Heston) for the first time a couple weeks ago, it was interesting and intense. Probably more enjoyable second time around once you know the pacing and how the movie ends.

This past weekend I watched The Hunt For Red October (1990) with my younger brothers. We had so much fun. I have seen Red October more than a few times over the years and I always have a blast watching it, but I especially enjoyed watching it with my brothers.

SnowAngel

I've always enjoyed that movie as well, it's even one of the reasons why I chose my nickname...

Cool! Welcome to NarniaWeb.

Been on a bit of classic war films kick in the last month. I have watched The Bridge At Remagen (1969), Flying Tigers (1942) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) with my brothers, and The Frogmen (1951) with the whole family. My younger brother wants to watch Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and I want to rewatch Destination Tokyo (1943), haven't seen it for years, so those are probably going to be a couple of the next films we watch.

Last night one of my sisters and I watched Night Train To Munich (1940, starring Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison). It was terrific, I love classic spy thrillers. It was fun to see Margaret Lockwood in an role besides that of Iris Henderson in The Lady Vanishes. One problem though the final scene of the movie has me wanting to watch Where Eagles Dare really bad.

SnowAngel

Red October is a movie I've enjoyed too.

Right now I'm wondering about seeing the soon-to-open First Man, starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and adapted from the book of the same name.

I like well-done space movies and I hope this is one of those, like Apollo 13.

I saw Mary Poppins Returns and it was great! However, before I give a review, you should probably know that while I enjoy the original Mary Poppins movie a lot, it isn't an untouchable classic for me like it is for some people. (I'm a bigger fan of the books.) So other people might not enjoy this new movie as much as I did if they're constantly comparing it to its predecessor.

I will say that I thought the original movie was funnier than Returns. Though the new movie definitely has some funny moments, the original captures more of the humor of the books. I also thought that some of the script was a bit didactic. They had the kids explicitly stating how the lessons of the songs related to the story. I'd have preferred for the audience to figure it out on their own.

If you haven't figured it out from the marketing, you should be prepared for that fact a lot of the movie consists of variations of scenes from the first movie. Some people might find this annoying. It's kind of appropriate though since the books tended to be similarly formulaic and rehash a lot of ideas and even specific dialogue. It never bothered me reading the books because I felt the variations were always so fun and imaginative. And I basically felt the same way about the movie. Part of me does wish the filmmakers hadn't tried so hard to pick scenes from the books to adapt which were similar to scenes from the first movie because there were so many other scenes from the books which would have been great to see. (They even made some of the scenes more similar to scenes from the first movie than they had to be. While a character does travel into a picture on a royal doulton bowl in Mary Poppins Comes Back, there are no talking animals and Mary Poppins does not sing a song in front of an enthusiastic audience.) But this honestly didn't bug me much when I was watching the movie, just analyzing it in retrospect.

The song were a bit hit and miss and some of them slowed down the movie's pacing. (That's how I felt about the songs from the first movie so that wasn't a huge comedown for yours truly.) There were definitely more good songs than bad songs. I'll even say I liked "Can You Imagine That" better than its classic equivalent, "A Spoonful of Sugar." (Remember what I said about this movie having a lot of scenes that were similar to the first one?) Not necessarily better as a song but as a summary of Mary Poppins' personality. Plus it reminded me of the song, "Impossible" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. It's seldom bad for a musical to remind me of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

They did a great job of casting an actress who looked like an older version of Jane from the first movie. Ellen the maid also sounded like uncannily like an older version of her original actress. While Jane and Michael didn't have a great deal of characterization in the old movie, (they weren't really supposed to; they were audience surrogates) the script did a great job making them seem like older versions of themselves, with Michael being more cynical and argumentative and Jane being perkier.

This may sound heretical but I think I like Lin Manuel Miranda (who plays the Bert equivalent in this movie) and Emily Blunt better than Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in the roles. I don't hate Dick Van Dyke or anything but his style of comedy (in Mary Poppins anyway) is a bit too broad and cartoony for my taste. The Van Dyke heavy scenes tended to be the ones that dragged in the original for me. And while Julie Andrews is pure class and I love watching her performance as the original cinematic Mary Poppins, Emily Blunt's performance just evoked the character I have in my head more. She was helped by the script which did a great job writing dialogue for the character which was original but sounded exactly like what Mary Poppins would say. In general, the movie did a great job of evoking the world and characters of Mary Poppins and I got a kick out of it. But like I said, people with more reverence for the first movie than I have might feel differently. So might people who are fans of the books but not the first movie since it's definitely trying (and IMO succeeding) in evoking that movie. I still would recommend giving this movie a shot though. I've actually been a tad depressed lately but Mary Poppins Returns was so joyful and fun that it cheered me up.

Can anybody give me a review of the 1989 version of Shakespeare's "Henry V", starring Kenneth Branagh, in terms of family-friendliness and overall quality?

It's been awhile since I saw it, but I remember it being very good. I think as far as family-friendliness it was fine except maybe for the battle? Typical blood shed in pitched battle sort of thing.

I watched it a couple of times but I can't remember that much. I do remember it being a well made film with really good actors, music, etc. I'm a casual fan at the most of Shakespeare's Henry V so I can't analyze it as effectively as a more ardent admirer. (If you had asked me to review an adaptation of one of Shakespeare's comedies that's much more up my alley.)

The battle scenes are pretty graphic, if my memory serves, though not R-rated. I believe there is some sexual language and humor in the script but since Shakespeare's language is so different from ours I'm not sure if people would understand it enough to be offended by it.

Henry V is part of a sequence - so there are people in it who were also in Henry IV (parts 1 &2). I saw the Olivier film during high school, and didn't understand a lot of it because I didn't know the background.

Thus when we hear about an old man called Sir John Falstaff dying during Henry V, it's useful to know that he was once a friend and mentor to Henry in his youth (a heavy drinking rogue as well), but young Henry gives him up near the end of Henry IV part 2 when he takes on his responsibilities.

Some of the criminal types in Henry V were Falstaff and Henry's drinking mates from even earlier, and one of them is executed in the play, under Henry's orders.

Thanks for the info everyone! I've been getting a little more into Shakespeare over the past year and I wanted to check this out. (Also because I just love medieval stuff ). Maybe I'll do my own review when I get around to watching it...

Just got back from seeing They Shall Not Grow Old. Basically, Peter Jackson took actual footage from World War I, cleaned it up and preserved it, then colorized it, and between professional lip readers, historical documents, and recorded remembrances of World War I soldiers, put together the average soldier's storyline of the War. It was pretty amazing.

I couldn't go the original days it showed, but due to demand they did an extra viewing day, and I'm so happy I did. It was quite amazing to see the updated footage, and it really is mesmerizing. I'm quite looking forward to when it comes out in other formats, as I think this would be quite important for my students to see. Jackson also talked about how much other footage there was, and that there was enough to do several other storylines, including production on the home front, and I would very much like to see them make those, too.

I just now finally got around to seeing the Solo movie, now that its on netflix. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how well done it was, I thoroughly enjoyed the actors preformance, especially by the fella who played Han. I expected to hate his portrayal. He did an excellent job capturing the essance of Han, despite his lack of physical similarities. Speaking of, is Woody Harrelson becoming typecast as Space-Dad? Because he basically just toned down his character from GOTG for his part on Solo. Greet casting choice and another great preformance from him. There were some moments I didn't like, but overall a solid flic. Especially because it was on netflix.