The Quite Nerdy Blog

This time last week, I sat down with my housemates to watch Bake Off together for the first time (wholesome time, highly recommend it) and while about half the house went to bed afterwards, the rest of us stayed out of interest to see what this new reality TV show called The Circle was. A week later and I'm ashamed to say I'm hooked. Before carrying on, I just want to say that I haven't seen Sunday and Monday's episodes yet because (unbelievably) I have a busy social calendar at the moment but I still feel confident recommending the show on the four episodes I have seen. For those who are unaware, the premise is that eight strangers live together in an apartment building but they never get to see or hear each other face to face. Instead, all communication is done through a social media site called The Circle. They set up profile pictures, write on their wall and engage in chats both private and group based. Occasionally, they also get to vote on how much they like ...

The Predator is the fourth movie in the Predator franchise, of which I've only seen the first film. That said however, I completely adore the first film and have only avoided the others so I didn't have that first film dragged down in my mind. Oh well, too late, here comes The Predator. The plot is honestly hard to remember, despite the fact that I saw it yesterday. I'm pretty sure it's about a Predator who comes to earth and then some science dudes try and analyse him and then there's another, bigger Predator who has Predator dogs and they kinda fight a bit and then in the middle of it there's some dudes who were on a bus who fight and runaway and fight the two Predators. If that sounds convoluted, that's kind of because it both is but also because it really doesn't matter because the plot is just a series of things happening that you have to sit there and accept. That's a damn shame when you consider how well structured the original film was bu...

This week was originally going to be The Miseducation of Cameron Post because I saw a preview screening where the director turned up for a Q and A and I'm planning a blog post about stuff from that at some point but between when I saw that and when this post comes out, I saw American Animals and damn do I want to talk about it. It's a film based on real life events where four college students plan and carry out an audacious robbery of their library, home to multiple rare and highly expensive books. None of them are criminals or have experience at pulling off heists but they do have a love of heist movies. Through dramatic re-enactments and talking heads with the real people, Bart Layton lays out this tale in an enticing and entrancing manner which I'll go into in a moment because while this is usually the bit where I talk about story, there's so much about the structure and format of this film that I want to talk about that a fraction of a paragraph wouldn't cu...

When this film was first released, I honestly had little interest in seeing it. I've been trying to leave my filmic comfort zone and of course I love ABBA but I just don't like musicals and I hadn't even seen the original. One marathon courtesy of Mama Jordan later and here we are, reviewing what may well be the most joyous film of the year. In what is a sentence I didn't ever expect to write, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is pretty much the Godfather Part 2 of musicals, in that the events take place both before and after the events of the first, the head of the family now dead and replaced by their child but shown as a younger self in flashbacks. To move away from vague comparisons and into the specifics, we rejoin Amanda Seyfried's character five years later as she's finally turning her mothers dream of creating a hotel into a reality. She tries to throw an opening party with all our favourite characters from the first film but meanwhile, Lily James plays a ...