August has been a highly disrupted month in Chateau Steelypips, as I tested positive for Covid on the 2nd, followed by Kate testing positive on the 6th. This has badly thrown off the regular ritual of watching movies with the kids and then blogging about them. Particularly the latter part; we’ve still watched movies, just not so much with the writing them up…
Kelly’s Heroes:
I added this to the list of movies I would pitch to The Pip a few months back when Donald Sutherland was a trending topic on Twitter, which I mistakenly remembered as him dying. Happily, he’s still alive, and his turn as Oddball the tank commander in this revisionist WWII heist movie is still delightful. It’s a little longer and slower than I remembered, but The Pip did enjoy it.
This one actually dates back to July 29th, and was the only movie we watched that weekend, because we went down to the Bronx for a Yankee game the next day.
The Princess Bride:
When Kate tested positive on Saturday morning, my mom drove up to our house, collected the kids, and took them to my parents’ for the rest of the weekend, to help with the whole isolation thing. That night, I got a video call from SteelyKid because they were firing up The Princess Bride at my parents’, and wanted to do a watch party with us, because we were sick.
We were, unfortunately, a little too sick to watch along that night, but Kate and I did fire it up together the next night, and it remains a nearly perfect film.
Ronin:
In the car on the way to or from one of The Pip’s medical appointments to deal with the stitches in his knee, we were talking about movies where a character has to do surgery on himself, and I added Ronin to the list of movies to pitch. This was a mized success— he now gets the reference when I say “I ambushed you with a cup of coffee!” and knows about Sean Bean’s bad track record in films, but this is a little more heavy on vibes than shootouts and car chases, so he was flagging by the end.
The Lost City:
This is basically a Romancing the Stone reboot from earlier this year, with Sandra Bullock as a romance novelist who gets kidnapped to help find a lost city, and Channing Tatum as the dim-bulb cover model who tries to save her. Also some very fun stuff from Daniel Radcliffe as the bad guy, Brad Pitt as an extraction specialist, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Bullock’s editor. Very fast-moving and silly, a big hit with The Pip.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
This has been high on the recommended movies list on Prime for ages now, and I keep pitching it to no avail. They finally agreed to watch it on Friday; unfortunately, SteelyKid had a bad cold (according to multiple negative Covid tests), and fell asleep about half an hour in, waking up shortly before Boromir’s death scene. The Pip enjoyed it, though he did keep mocking Kate and me as nerds for knowing too much about these.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:
SteelyKid stayed awake for all of this one, though didn’t quite follow all the fine points of the action. The primary effect was thus to double the “You guys are nerrrrrds…” commentary directed at the grown-ups.
We might finish the trilogy tonight, or it might wait until Friday. If we get to it sooner, I’ll probably do a series recap post, because I have some Thoughts, but we’ll see…
And that’s the last several weeks of media with the kids. If you like this, here’s a button:
If you want to join my kids in calling me a nerd for knowing too much about Tolkien, the comments will be open:
I really desperately love Ronin. Need to watch it again soon.