The Quite Nerdy Blog

This week marks the five year anniversary of me starting this blog, which is... Yeah, hard to comprehend. When I started it, I was one year away from finishing secondary school and now, I'm halfway through University, about to do a year abroad, launching me completely out of my comfort zone. Still, through whatever trials and tests have come my way, films have always been there and seeing as there was another project that needed a couple more days (check back on the 3rd for that), today we're going to celebrate the very best films that have come out while I've been writing this blog. Plenty of great ones have had to be left out, in order for the very best of a very interesting half decade of films to rise to the top. As per usual, sticking by UK release dates and starting with a couple of honourable mentions! Booksmart The most recent entry on the list, Booksmart is nothing less than a joy. Not every single person has loved it as much as I have (a lot) but this genu...

The Lion King is a film from Walt Disney Pictures, set in Africa, focusing on a pride of lions who rule over this land peacefully and fairly. Currently, it is Mufasa who leads the lions, although as the film begins, his son Simba has been born and he has a long way to go before he's ready to take over the kingdom. The film progresses through young Simba's life and eventually (and this doesn't really feel like a spoiler) becomes a riff on Hamlet, of all things. Simba is cast out from Pride Rock but with the help of a meerkat and warthog (who seem like the chillest gay roommates to have ever existed), he finds himself, perhaps even growing into the leader of the pride that he's meant to be. No one watches a Disney film for the plot so perhaps it's a waste of time even mentioning it but it takes a fairly generic plot structure and moulds it into the perfect form for a children's film, fitting in constant action and emotion in the space of 88 minutes. It's e...

Last year, a film came out called Hereditary, directed by Ari Aster. It didn't quite make my end of the year list but it was a super impressive horror film that left me staring with fear at dark corners for weeks. Only a year later, Aster is back with his follow-up Midsommar, another horror film, although one that goes for very different things through very different means. The plot is that Dani (my lord and saviour Florence Pugh) has had a horrific event happen in her recent past, meaning that her boyfriend has had to postpone breaking up with her, instead choosing to invite her on a trip to Sweden with his friends. This trip is to go to a mysterious festival, a festival that only happens once every 90 years, so very exciting stuff. Except that there's a lot of weird shit going down and it only seems to be getting more and more intense. Structure wise, it is evocative of Hereditary in that it is a slow burn until the crazy shit fully goes down, although there's a compa...

Spider-Man: Far From Home is the last film in what has been referred to as Marvel's Infinity Saga, those being the films that brought us from Iron Man up to here, just after Endgame. As you may expect, it takes place after Endgame (which means spoilers I guess, if you're one of the two people who hasn't seen it) and therefore is about Peter Parker trying to work out where Spider-Man fits in a universe in which Tony Stark has died. In the meantime though, he's being taken on a school trip across Europe, in which he is asked to help Nic Fury save assorted European cities from some weird elemental monsters, aided by Mysterio, a man from another multiverse with a mysteriously tragic past. From there, we go across your fairly standard Marvel movie beats although this time with the structure of a road trip/"vacation" movie, meaning it's just a pretty fun time all around. I will say that I was able to correctly predict a big... Let's say, moment from the ...

A little companion piece here to a post I wrote a couple of months ago about the best looking films ever made. Those films were beautiful to look at start to finish but lets look closer. These are the shots that you look at and are struck straight in the heart by. The kind of shots that you would love to frame and put on your wall, although I apologise now as not all the images I have are the greatest quality. They speak perfectly to the visual nature of film, saying more with a single image than any words could say (which may make writing about them tricky but we'll get to that). Speaking of, the only real rule I have stuck to here is that the shots have to be static shots. I could probably have worked out how to make them into gifs but it's a much simpler process for me this way. Anyway, this is less an objective ranking of beautiful shots, more a rundown of my favourites. It is going to be one of the most objective lists I've ever done so feel free to ridicule me for my ...