Longshot, Booksmart and Rocketman

I would never normally go to see any movie that had starred Seth Rogen. However Longshot was really good fun. Who knew Charlize Theron could do comedy. The inclusion of Roxette's It Must Have Been Love made it for me. I remember I  taped one of their concerts on the radio in 1991. It had better audience participation of this song than any of those live concerts on YouTube. The tape is lost but not the memory.

Half term week and booksmart was the only drama on show. Very well received by the critics, even the older ones. Despite these rave reviews, I was mostly lost. Probably because I only understand about 80% of the dialogue. And what I did hear mostly went over my head. Yes, there were reminders of my last day at school when we danced to I Saw Her Standing There and other tracks from that first Beatles album. If only we had movies like this when we were eighteen. I didn't know one of the many songs on the soundtrack, and none I would listen to again. There should have been a warning for anyone over 60. I still don't know what the last conversation was about!

P.S. The last conversation, thanks to jaydel3 on YouTube: "What the fck is wrong with you!"
"I was going through a thing". (Meaning emotional moment). "What the F is wrong with you?" "I can be the last one on the plane. Do you want to get pancakes?" "Fck..yea" (yea was cut out).

"And the Oscar for best director goes to ....... Dexter Fletcher". (Rapturous applause and a standing ovation - I might stay up all night if he gets nominated). Fletcher did an amazing job on one of my favourite movies Sunshine on Leith back in 2013. His acting career goes back to a memorable turn in Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 and as a boy actor over twenty years before that. However, this is all surpassed by his perfect creation of a fantasy, almost musical, based on the life of Elton John. From the unforgettable opening shot, the first 50 minutes is especially brilliant.

His teaming up with lead actor Taron Egerton as Elton (they are reunited after their movie Eddie the Eagle) is a match made in heaven. If Rami Malek won the best actor Oscar, Egerton's performance is far, far superior. The writer Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Fletcher have made a heavily dramatised version, taking an often used cinematic device as it's narrative thread. The musical numbers are well produced and sometimes cleverly move the timeline on.

Mark Kermode, in his Guardian five star review misses one superb performance. "And the Oscar for best supporting actress goes to ....... Gemma Jones". She brings subtlety and high emotion to her role as Ivy, young Elton's grandmother. She accompanies Reg, as he was then, to his first day at the Royal Academy of Music. His reluctance to go in is tempered by wonderful encouragement from Ivy, brilliantly delivered by Jones. The combination of the writing, direction and her acting is unforgettable. She relates in an interview how she first met Fletcher at the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was a boy actor. He's come a long way.