Music contd.

Turns out I was wrong about not listening to as much music this year as last year, but only really because I ended up listening to a lot of music during December. Unsurprisingly my last.fm playback reveals that I listened the most to AFI (my favourite band, who released a new album at the end of October), closely followed by Sleep Token (who released their album in May and I do love them, but they’re not AFI). I also went to 5 gigs last year – Dave Hause (combined with a nice mini-break in Brighton), Deathboy, Sea Power, Viagra Boys (who I don’t even remember seeing) and Samia.

Films tho.

I saw a lot of new films. It was probably time for it after 2023 and 2024 didn’t really have that many. Nature is healing etc.

In reverse order of how much I liked them, as usual:

• Rose of Nevada – This was interesting, but I just didn’t like what happened.
• Ariel – Looks good and a cool idea but meandered a bit to boringly to be anything more than just fine.
• Always – Kind of a painting of a film that could I thought would be more poetry
• The Amateur – I’m glad I didn’t get around to seeing this in the cinema because it’s firmly a watching from the sofa film.
• Captain America: Brave New World – My Mum enjoyed it but she doesn’t really follow the Marvel films in any particular way – she just sees what I happen to take her to see and likes action films. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if it was a standalone film and these were non-Marvel characters.
• Mother – I particularly liked the bit with Lordi’s Eurovision-winning hit, “Hard Rock Hallelujah”. Otherwise, pretty much what I was expecting from a film about St Teresa of Calcutta.
• The Fantastic 4: First Steps – This was fine. The 1960s-ish alternate universe setting was good, as was the actual family vibe of the F4.
• Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson – A DVD extra of a film that I don’t know really counts for the list, but it’s there on Letterboxd. Interesting to see the work that went into it, but I feel like social media also fed me the 70% of this via clips before I even saw it.
• Ballerina – The action in this is really good.
• BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions – This film grew out of a video art installation and I should probably watch it again but with the internet so that I can look up stuff at the same time.
• Super Nature – I’m neutral on the whole super 8 film thing but it does provide an interesting limit for all the people involved in making this.
• Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – Like the Springsteen film I saw last year, I didn’t learn anything about Bruce that I didn’t already know yet it was still an enjoyable watch.
• Train Dreams – In some ways this reminds me of Little Forest, which I also saw at LFF and was also a kind of quiet, enduring the passing of time and all that comes with it kind of film.
• Jurassic World Rebirth – Did I rate this one so highly because it was better than I was expecting? Maybe!
• Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey – Pangolins are so cool and maybe Kulu is the coolest.
• The Choral – I still don’t really get what everyone seems to like about Alan Bennett’s work but I did enjoy watching this.
• Silent Friend – I don’t know what I thought this film was going to be about when I bought my LFF ticket for it, but it certainly wasn’t what I ended up seeing. There’s always at least one like this for me and I’m glad did see what is essentially a film about a tree.
• The Testament of Ann Lee – I kept hearing that this was a musical but I feel like it’s more like a film that happens to have singing in it.
• Below the Clouds – I have visited Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum at least 4 or 5 times in total, but you will not catch me actually go up Vesuvius. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live there. The highlight was the fire department’s call centre.
• Frankenstein – Astoundingly like my experience of reading the book when I was 15 – starts strong, Victor gets more and more tedious and annoying to hear from and then the Creature shows up to take over and improve the story. Fantastic to look at.
• The Accountant² – The lack of actual accounting is made up for with line-dancing.
• Superman – This has a way better Clark Kent than the other recent Superman films – far more sincere and optimistic as a character and way more human.
• Karate Kid: Legends – I saw this as part of my Mum’s multi-day birthday film extravaganza, so it was all films that she wanted to see or I thought she would like and this film was both of those things. We had a great time./li>
• Wake Up Dead Man – Benoit Blanc is like if Lt. Columbo had a fashion sense. There are a bunch of moments where I thought “huh, no one Catholic looked at this part of the script” and “are these lighting choices too obvious???” but still a great film.
• Thunderbolts* – They literally won with the power of friendship.
• Rental Family – Definitely the film I most enjoyed in a year with actually a whole bunch of films I really enjoyed (at least the top 20 out of all the new films I saw and even the remaining ones on the list were fine). Heartwarming, funny and moving.

The Rest

Went on my usual English seaside town holiday. Ate an incredible pizza with roast potato on it. Visited Norfolk as usual. Read 10 books. Took my Mum to to the Saturday race of the London e-prix and was invited by McLaren FE with a bunch of other fans to hang out for the Friday free practice session. Visited the Wallace Collection and someone took a funny (in a iykyk way) photo of me there. Saw the Tim Burton exhibition at the design museum. Saw Sigourney Weaver in The Tempest (it wasn’t great :/). Saw Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell in Much Ado About Nothing (which was great).

And for 2026? I’ve got a handful of gigs planned, but that’s all so far.