About Time was a movie I watched for the first time a year after its 2013 release date. Despite relatively high Rotten Tomatoes scores (70% critics, 81% audience), I recall being unimpressed by it. Many accounts I follow on TikTok are of people giving film reviews. While most, if not all, of those I follow in this niche, are younger than me, more often than not, I generally agree with their assessments (hence, my reason for following them). So often, About Time is referenced in a video. The film is often called beautiful, poetic, and devastating. Some have gone so far as to call it a gut punch. Those characteristics I seek out in my romantic dramas, so I signed up for the rewatch, thinking I must have missed something. It turns out that I didn’t. My second viewing did hold my interest more than my first, but it still felt very average. I’m even more uncertain now about what others see in this film that I missed.
Category Archives: Bill Nighy
Living (2022)
While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did him a solid by selecting him as a Best Actor nominee, it does feel, in a way, that Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Notes on a Scandal) was chosen for a remarkable lengthy career rather than his performance in Oliver Hermanus (Moffie, The Endless River) underwhelming Living. While it scores high on Rotten Tomatoes (critics – 96%, audiences 86%), the film has a more realistic 7.5/10 on IMDB and 81 Metascore. Even those marks seem high for a mostly unremarkable movie. It earned just $2,000,000 domestically, which isn’t necessarily bad for an independent film but is relatively low for a movie with multiple Oscar nominations (Best Adapted Screenplay was the film’s second nomination category).
Hope Gap (2019)
Hope Gap is another self-reminder not to watch movie trailers anymore. Had I not seen the trailer when deciding whether to see this movie, I would not have known what was to come. Of course, without the trailer, I wouldn’t have known if it would have interested me. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure. My new way of watching a non-theater trailer is watching just enough to determine an interest level. If, after 15 seconds, it looks like something I want to watch, I’ll cut off the trailer. If it takes 45 seconds, so be it. If I’m still watching by the end of the trailer, there’s a better chance than not that I won’t end up watching the movie.