"Action!" Films of 2026
Doublethink
Admin, 8th Day Host
I am looking forward to Odyssey in the summer, but is anything else good coming up - anything you’ve seen and want to talk about ? Post reviews and recommendations here.
(ETA late because my own typo was doing my head in.)
(ETA late because my own typo was doing my head in.)
Comments
Confession time: as a teenager I was a member of the Neil Diamond fan club 😬😆 which is partly why my daughter chose it.
But honestly, Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson et al turned in such excellent performances that you wouldn't need to be a fan to enjoy it. Unless you hate musicals!
What I really loved, apart from the excellent singing and acting, was that the film featured some of Neil Diamond's less populist songs with his imo very poetic lyrics.
It's a sad but hopeful story and I'm glad to have seen it.
Trailer.
I had a small quibble with the translation of ‘embouchure’ as mouthpiece. Should be embouchure in the context of wind instrument technique.
Looked at the trailer. Looks interesting. Been forever since I've been to a theatre.
Really liked many things about this film, especially Ralph Fienne’s performance and the young soldier who took on the tenor solo. Like others, not so sure about Elgar’s appearance, it made him look like those awful people on the conscientious objector committee, and didn’t really contribute to the plot.
The application of Gerontius’ music to ww1 deaths of millions of young soldiers was very powerful. The script brought out the social changes accelerated by ww1, which I remember my grandfather, a veteran of that war, talking about.
WitG and I have plans to visit the war graves in France this year, as we both have great-uncles buried there.
I suspect the answer to my question is yes, I am the only one.
I’m just saying that my mind repeatedly ignores or fails to register the exclamation mark, so that even though I know better I keep reading the thread title as “Action Films of 2026,” rather than as “Action! Films of 2026.”
Maybe it’s the extra space before the exclamation mark—“Action ! Films of 2026”—that throws me off.
Arethosemyfeet, Heaven Host
I found my mind was doing the same thing. Thank you for the change.
I saw "David" yesterday at our local theatre. I doubt it will be here much longer as there were only ten of us in attendance. It made me wonder how many people watched it and went home afterwards to read the story in their Bible. I found it entertaining. The best part was the interpretation of the fabrics and the textures in the clothing. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in textiles and that type of thing.
Claire Foy is just amazing in the key role and the relationship between her and the goshawk is very real.
A thoughtful and thought provoking movie, as was the original memoire written by Helen Macdonald.
The plot sounds naff and, truth to tell, it is not a great movie. But it is a sweet movie. It helps that I adore Peter O'Toole. He wants people to see "the Big Picture" but otherwise won't tell them what it is. Victor Spano cuts to the heart of it: "Harry, I keep trying to see the Big Picture. I'm sorry, but I keep missing it because all I can think of is how much I love her." O'Toole: "What makes you think that you are missing it?"
This movie is firmly in my list of Guilty Pleasures. I just re-watched it tonight. It remains on the list!
I almost posted this on the "Feeling Old" thread, as seven of the 25 are from after the year 2000. It just feels to me like that is too soon to make a judgment about the cultural etc. importance of a film. But I admittedly have a bias toward older films.
Much obliged for that. My wife wants to see it, but the words 'tear jerker' were enough and the rest clinched it. She will go with one of her friends.
Just saw it. Cried my eyes out. Not sure what a “tear jerker” is other than a movie that makes people cry. Schindler’s List is a tear jerker, for example, but I don’t think that cheapens the film in any way. The Color Purple is a tear jerker as well - and although I think it is a well made and acted film, I do think at times that it crossed a line into melodrama. The film Precious was flat out misery porn in my opinion. I think in both these latter cases the novels were probably much better than the films, although I haven’t read them. I certainly liked the novel Beloved (also about very difficult subject matter) much better than the film.
I don’t think this is true about Hamnet - though I also haven’t read the novel it was based on. The latter half of the movie is just really sad. It didn’t help that it echoed the experience of sibling illness, grief, and guilt, in our own family eerily closely, although the parents are the primary characters in the film.
I think it’s a film that, despite the fame of Shakespeare, is about a relatively modest story and much more about Agnes/Anne Hathaway (whom history knows almost nothing about) and her experience of love, motherhood, and grief than it is about the Bard. The whole Oscar industrial complex hypes up expectations, though, so nominated films almost always are a disappointment in some way to watch. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to watch them though!
Has anyone seen Marty Supreme?
I knew only one film in this list. And where, oh where, was, 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon'?
Did anyone else see it and what did they think. Not sure if there was a discussion about it on last year’s thread.