Mary Poppins Returns

Very excited for this movie. Huge fan of Emily Blunt and huge fan of Mary Poppins.

This movie is similar to the first movie but with a slighter darker twist and less showstopping tunes. As a bookshop manager I will be playing the song "A Cover is Not the Book" around my shop for several weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNvV6N7veRs

Emily Blunt is not Julie Andrews but she is really the only woman currently acting, with a strong voice who could have pulled it off and she really did pull it off! Emily Blunt is the Mary Poppins that children from this generation will remember but children from my generation or earlier will remember Julie Andrews as the main Mary Poppins. Emily Blunt could keep this going for a few more movies though and I think that Julie Andrews may have been proud of their choice to replace her. Blunt has a great voice, the right personality to pull it off and the skill behind it all, which can clearly been seen by her dancing in this movie. So long as you remember that Mary Poppins never comes to save the father, she always comes to save the children then there should be no problems with these movies.

No Dick Van Dyke reprising his role of 'Burt', which makes sense because Burt would be reaching his fifties or sixties and therefore probably wouldn't still be sweeping the chimneys in London. This time, the role of street worker is taken on by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Musical writer of Hamilton and Moanna) and he takes on the role of 'Jack', a street lighter who was a child working with Burt in the original movie so it sort of gives his character a bit more purpose. This movie, in so many ways, runs parallel to the original movie. If you can remember the 'step in time' dance sequence then fear not because there is a similar sequence with the street lighters and of course, 'A Cover is Not the Book' is in a similar place to 'Supercallafragilisticexpialidosious', making it very easy for you as the audience to feel like you are in a Mary Poppins movie.

Of course, Dick Van Dyke gets a brief look in, as does Angela Lansbury as a balloon seller. Van Dyke takes over as head of the bank but he only briefly appears and dances on the desk as the movie resolves itself. The main role of head banker is played by Colin Firth and when I said that this movie was slightly darker that is only because there is an obvious bad guy in this movie and that is Colin Firth. The bank and financial troubles were always a problem for the Banks family but the bankers weren't obviously as bad as this time around.

Poverty hits Michael Banks after his wife dies and leaves him with three children to look after. He forgets to pay monthly loans and generally forgets to do a lot of things. He still has Ellen, this time played by Julie Walters but even she cannot make everything happy again. As I said, less showstoppers means less memorable music and less unity of family but this time Mary Poppins had a more subtle role to play and she did it so very well that I only have positive reviews to write about this movie. Everyone in this movie was great and I especially loved how far Meryl Streep has come with her singing. Her acting was more similar to her role in 'Into the Woods' but her voice has come even further than it had in that movie. She was great, her costume was fantastic, her setting was stupendous and her singing was enjoyable.

Overall, this movie was thoroughly enjoyable. I saw it with my Mother and my Grandmother and we all enjoyed it. There were moments where I wished for the classic, three beat Mary Poppins music but I do have to accept that the songwriters are not going to be the same. There is always room for improvement and this is something that they can take in to the next movie. Emily Blunt appears to do less with her singing voice than Julie Andrews did and therefore may have a little more time to make another movie before having to retire from the musical theatre side of movies but from my point of view, I hope that she makes another movie because she is fantastic in almost everything that she does and this role was different to any other role that I have seen from her and really suited her.

Bumblebee

Transformers was a good movie, the rest were rubbish and changing to Mark Whalberg didn't make them any better.

So instead of making more movies they have decided to backtrack a little and explain how Bumblebee arrived on earth, without his ability to speak. What I will say now is that this movie completely destroys the timeline of the previous series made, starting with the movie staring Shia Le Bouf and Megan Fox.

Instead of picking a slightly sweaty, teenage boy who is out to impress a somewhat attractive young girl, they pick a young girl, portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld. My first issue with this character is that they have chosen the very typical, only child, parent died, other remarried and home sucks feel that so many movies have adopted poorly over the years. Given that Spielberg was involved with this movie I didn't expect to have so many criticisms of it as this is the first movie with his involvement that I think I have publicly criticised on this blog.

Hailee was good and her portrayal and character developed but the sort of, I am so hard done by because you wont buy me a car, attitude just sort of shows what a stuck up lifestyle she thinks she has. A lot of Kids who are turning 18 want their parents to buy them a drink or something smaller than a car, knowing that they didn't grow up with that kind of money. It just seemed a little unreal to me, as an adult viewer, looking back on what I wanted as a seventeen year old girl.
Once we got past that point it got a bit better. There was nothing wrong with her performance but I felt that the script was very tailored towards children and that in doing so they were eliminating the older audience that so often enjoys these types of movies.

Great music choice and generally speaking good action to the movie but it is hard to see how they are going to develop it. Prime  is on earth which removes the older series and means that they now have to reboot the entire franchise. With man having witnessed one fight between the Autobots and Decepticons in an attempt to save Earth and humanity, what are they going to do in the next movie and how do they plan on working with that? The romance was unnecessary and didn't really flow with the rest of the movie.

I am sort of interested in seeing what they do next with it, simply because they have destroyed so much of what we already knew that I want to see how they dig themselves out of it. I am sure that Aquaman would have been a worse choice of movie to go and watch but I still felt like this one would have been challenging Aquaman as it was boring and a bit pathetic.

The Green Book

This movie has not been released in the UK yet. It will be released in early February of 2019 and will premier towards the end of this month.

This means that I can't write in my normal way as I will spoil the entire movie for most readers.

The Green Book is about a musician called Don Shirley. Most of us haven't heard of this man because his music was a bit different. He was a pianist, a black pianist who trained in Russia and was performing during the heavily racist period of the world's history. Black people, at this period in time, were going to get in to trouble for performing classical music in predominantly white places. Therefore, his record label made him part of a trio and they improvised classical styles of music. His style is classical but with some elements of Jazz in it.

Orpheus in the Underworld is probably his most known work and it is, well, different. The foundation is very classical but it never entirely sounds like a classical masterpiece. It is different and does require your full attention when listening to it in order to truly appreciate the craft behind it.

So what can we tell you about Don Shirley? He was a doctor. He had two doctorates in various studies and was a fabulous pianist in every way. He was well spoken, made acquaintances with a lot of high up people, people close to the president and had high up mannerisms that were seen as a little uncharacteristic. The teachings of etiquette were fantastic in this movie and Don Shirley, according to the movie, had similar mannerisms to myself, which I appreciate.


Don Shirley, in this movie is played by the rising star Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Luke Cage, Hidden Figures) and is a man of many secrets. Opposite him is Viggo Mortensen (A History of violence, Captain Fantastic, The Lord of the Rings) playing an American Italian, (think of De Niro) known for his ability to talk people in to things and for his muscle. Usually used as muscle, he turns in to a driver for this one gig, one tour of the slightly more racist parts of America. Apart from getting paid, he learns to expand his taste in music, speak better, write better and learns a few things about mannerism and friendship.

This movie has many fantastic moments and I can see it winning all the awards possible. The music is fantastic, the speech, at times, is hilarious and some of the most powerful moments are, of course, towards the end, moments that make you want to rise up out of your chair and put your fist in the air. Someone of my generation, with my upbringing, wants to shout at the screen and ask the racist people why they are so racist, why they treat performers in such a way. There was nothing to be afraid of but they never learned that.

Seriously, if this movie does not pick up more than one award at every ceremony then there is something wrong with the judges. Watch this movie and learn from it. You can receive a musical education from this movie, even if you are a trained musician and think that you already know most things about music. You can also learn a lot about yourself from watching this movie.


For those who aren't sure and haven't seen the trailer, it is listed below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkZxoko_HC0