I loved the 2020 book Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.
The Thursday Murder Club is a 2025 American crime comedy based on the book.
Its plot follows a group of elderly amateur sleuths who attempt to solve a murder.
Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie. Big names.
For me the movie stated too slowly. I was disappointed.
BUT the second half got increasingly entertaining. I’m looking forward to the proposed sequel.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I hate motor racing — but can highly recommend F1 on Apple TV.
It’s a feel good holiday treat.
… starring Brad Pitt as Formula One (F1) racing driver Sonny Hayes, who returns after a 30-year absence to save his former teammate’s underdog team, APXGP, from collapse. …
Racing sequences were adapted from the real-life races, with F1 teams and drivers appearing throughout, including Lewis Hamilton, who was also a producer. …
Pitt was paid $30 million for his performance in this very profitable film. But it’s not about the money … 😀
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Remain (film) will be released 2026, written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan.
He wanted a change from his usual genre, this time a love story.
New York architect Tate Donovan heads to Cape Cod to design a summer home for his best friend, seeking a fresh start after being treated for acute depression.
Still mourning his sister’s death, he meets Wren, a young woman who disrupts his carefully ordered world.
I lust for dead people, might be the tag line. 😀
Unique in this project is how the story was written.
It was developed simultaneously with author Nicholas Sparks, who separately wrote the novel version of the same story.
The book — Remain: A Supernatural Love Story — published 2025 — I found an OK read. Good, not great.
I was dubious when hearing that Timothée Chalamet would play Dylan. BUT he was excellent.
Won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for Best Actor. Sang all those songs himself. Played the instruments, as well.
Supporting cast members, including Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, also sang their respective roles. The performances were recorded live on set to capture an authentic feel.
Edward Norton is a great actor. One of the best.
A Complete Unknown is a 2024 American biographical film about the early career of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan …
… the period of 1961-1965, beginning with Dylan’s start as an American folk singer, and ending with his controversial use of electric instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. …
Surprisingly, Dylan was supportive of the project. The movie is not true to the strict historical record, but rather tries to portrait his rise to fame in the folk music genre and the move to electric instruments.
Like everyone my age, I thought I knew Dylan’s story. I thought of him as a street poet with a terrible singing voice. Another Leonard Cohen.
BUT I realize now that Bob Zimmerman was a wonderkind super talent. The only musician to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Well deserved.
A genius.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed the first Wicked movie.
So went to see part 2 in the theatre.
Certainly the 2nd film is not as good. Not as surprising. Songs not as entertaining.
BUT if you liked the first, it’s worth seeing For Good.
The most important theme for me is friendship.
Freeing the animals. Romance with Fiyero. An angry Tin Man. All far less interesting.
Jeff Goldblum plays Jeff Goldblum, always entertaining.
The nine million colourful tulips are real. As is the Yellow Brick Road.
Wicked: For Good … is a 2025 American musical fantasy … sequel to Wicked (2024) …
… explores the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda as they embrace their new identities as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
John Candy was born 1950, seven years before me.
Like pretty much every Canadian, I was a huge fan of SCTV, the low budget, super hilarious, Canadian television sketch comedy show about a fictional TV station.
Many of those comics went on to have great careers, including John Candy.
John Candy: I Like Me is the 2025 documentary on Prime about his all too short life. He died age-43 while filming a movie in Mexico.
I saw most of his TV bits and films, but — looking back — it’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) that I remember best.
Some feel that Uncle Buck (1989) was even better at portraying John the man.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Cold Storage is a 2019 science fiction novel written by one of the top screen writers of all time.
After decades underground in a forgotten sub-basement, a highly mutative organism – capable of extinction-level destruction – has found its way out.
Only Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz can stop it. With the help of two unwitting security guards, he has one night to quarantine this horror, before it destroys all of humanity.
Loser Teacake is hilarious.
It’s one of those end-of-the-world thrillers. Not too believable — but would make a good Hollywood film.
I did enjoy the humour. Some of the dialogue could be kept for the movie.
In fact, a film version is planned for 2026. Starring Joe Keery, Georgina Campbell, and Liam Neeson.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I’m one of millions who enjoyed all the Dan Brown books.
The Secret of Secrets (2025) is his latest.
If you liked the rest, you’ll probably like this one.
I do enjoy the many little scientific nuggets included.
But Brown is an infamously terrible writer:
At this stage, everything that needs to be said about Brown’s sentence-by-sentence ineptitude as a prose writer has been said.
Fear not: he’s still hopeless. It may be counted as a metafictional joke that in a novel where a favoured adjective like “elegant” can appear in two consecutive sentences, where bells are said to “blare” …
This is, in other words, a Dan Brown novel. It’s weapons-grade bollocks from beginning to end, none of it makes a lick of sense, and you’ll roar through it with entire enjoyment if you like this sort of thing. …
The Secret of Secrets (2025) by American author Dan Brown is the 6th instalment in the Robert Langdon series.
The Associated Press review described the novel as a 650-page thriller featuring Langdon on a dangerous quest through Prague, where he is caught up in an international race to unlock the mystery of what happens after death.
Brown once again blends suspense, philosophical themes, travelogues, codes, puzzles, and secret societies …
Too long. Tom Hanks must be exhausted.
Killers stop to join in long, philosophical discussions.
No doubt the movie will be better than the book.
First in the Kate Burkholder series. … I might continue on.
In Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and “English” residents have lived side by side for two centuries.
But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community. A young Amish girl named Kate Burkholder survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer . . . but ultimately decided to leave her community.
A wealth of experience later, Kate has been asked to return to Painters Mill as chief of police. Her Amish roots and big-city law enforcement background make her the perfect candidate. She’s certain she’s come to terms with her past―until the first body is discovered in a snowy field.
Kate vows to stop the killer before he strikes again. But to do so, she must betray both her family and her Amish past―and expose a dark secret that could destroy her.
Amazon – Sworn to Silence (2011)
It was adapted into a TV movie called An Amish Murder.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
You might recall Julia Roberts here in Eat, Pray, Love.
The small city of Ubud has developed a serious tourism industry, promoted as an arts and culture centre.
More than three million foreign tourists each year, many of those NOT YOUNG. (Youth are on some beach instead.) I saw many families with young kids, as well.
Ubud is inland amongst rice terraces.
Highlights for me were:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I twice went walking in the local rice paddies, as well.
My favourite restaurant there, Sweet Orange.
Even better was a splurge for steak and mushrooms at Funky Chunks. Cost about CAD $15.
Traffic is terrible. But I did like Ubud.
Rick McCharles 