BEFORE: I know what you're probably thinking, we're just three days into the New Year and I've already been through three genres - an international festival-friendly coming of age drama, a sci-fi film mixed with slasher horror, and now it's a historical romance. OK, so make that 5 or 6 genres in the first three days of 2020. If 2019 was the year of the mash-up film, let's keep that going....
But maybe it's not that this year doesn't know what it wants to BE just yet - I assure you that there is a plan for January that you've just seen the tip of. There are several crime-based films coming up, several British fantasy films in a row, and admittedly, a couple of animated films that may seem out of place. BUT, closer to the end of the month I'm planning EIGHT films in a row based on DC Comics, some are animated, some aren't, but they're all on the superhero/supervillain theme, so there's that. And after February 1 I'll be so into the romance chain that we'll all barely remember these first confusing steps into 2020, hopefully.
Anyway, it's another piece of old business today, because I watched a fair number of films last year about British royalty, and TWO films about Queen Victoria came into my possession too late to be included. By the time tonight's film ran on PBS, it was after I'd watched "A Quiet Place" and "Mary Poppins Returns" so I had no chance to link to it via Emily Blunt. So we'll deal with this one tonight, and I'll start to look for a way to link to "Victoria & Abdul" later in the year - because of course they don't share any actors in common.
But I do have a better grasp on an October chain now, I found a connection that would link my two half-chains together to equal a full month, or close to it. It means I'll have to track down 3 horror films that I wasn't planning to watch, but if my chain is still alive then, that's what I'll be willing to do. Just knowing that a month-long chain exists is enough to fuel my fire for now, and it gives me a target to shoot for, 10 months from now. A gap of 200 films might seem impossible to fill, but with enough notice, and enough films, it can be done.
Mark Strong carries over from "Sunshine", and I'll follow a different path tomorrow - but the plan is for Mark Strong to come back at the end of January for 3 more films, including "Shazam!".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "W.E." (Movie #3,317)
THE PLOT: A dramatization of the turbulent first years of Queen Victoria's rule, and her enduring romance with Prince Albert.
AFTER: Believe it or not, there is a loose theme that's developed this week, despite how my film genres have been all over the place. It's something about keeping going after a loss - the Maori tribe had to keep going even though the presumed male heir died in childbirth, and the crew of the Icarus II had to complete the mission, even after losing a couple members of the team. Queen Victoria had to keep ruling Britain after Albert died at the age of 42, and she reigned for another 50 years. There's a moral in there somewhere, or maybe I'm projecting and it's a lesson I need to hear right now. Life without my #1 cat is tough, but I've got to keep on, what choice is there? I've still got my #2, and she keeps me company now when I watch my movies.
In a way this is a bit like the connective tissue between "The Favourite" and "W.E.", because Victoria's rule was right there in the middle, between Queen Anne and King Edward VIII, with a whole bunch of Georges and Williams in the mix, of course - but most of them didn't have movies made about them, so who cares? Victoria reigned for so long that she defined an era, and her reign was the longest until recently, when she was beaten by Queen Elizabeth II (67 years and counting).
But every Queen had to start somewhere - and for Victoria that meant being raised by her mother and Sir John Conroy (Boo...) after her father died. And when neither of her remaining uncles (including King William IV) had any surviving children, she was next in line for the throne at age 11. Not bad, she moved up from being 5th in line at birth! (OK, bad for all the older men and babies that died to make that happen...) King William apparently HATED Victoria's mother, so he clung to life until Victoria was 18 so that her mother wouldn't be regent and rule in her daughter's place. William took a liking to Victoria and let her sit in on his court - a case where the enemy of your enemy is your friend, I guess.
After an over-protected childhood where Victoria wasn't even allowed to climb the stairs by herself (those palace stairs can be tricky, I guess - but how many kings and queens have been killed by staircases?) she became Queen and the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace, relying heavily on Prime Minister Lord Melbourne for advice on navigating tough political waters. As I've seen in other films about British royalty ("The Favourite", "Churchill"), the Queen needs the Prime Minister to assemble a government, and the Prime Minister in return gets to put some of his friends, or their wives, in jobs at the palace, as footmen or ladies-in-waiting. There was apparently some controversy when Melbourne was out as Prime Minister, and the new P.M. wanted to staff the Queen's palace, only Queen Victoria kind of liked the people who were already working there - this was known as the "bedchamber crisis", for real. Eventually the new P.M. was out and Lord Melbourne was back as Victoria's adviser, which led to rumors about the two of them being intimate.
Enter Prince Albert, who'd been part of the German royal family (Saxe-Coburg) that was slowly marrying into and taking over countries all over Europe, and his family sent him to Victoria's palace to visit, get intel and oh, yeah, see if he could marry the Queen. It wasn't easy, and Victoria (and Melbourne) kept him at arm's length for quite some time, but then a crazy thing happened, they fell for each other. The secret mission to infiltrate the palace turned into a real marriage, Albert turned out to be a pretty good dancer, an expert chess player and the first German with a real sense of humor (that's a true fact I just made up...). Plus he wanted to build affordable houses for the lower class, so the guy had a heart, it just took a couple of years in the "friend zone" before Victoria realized he was marriage material. There you go, stick with it Al, don't lose faith...
This film would have you believe that Albert even took a bullet for Victoria, when an assassin shot at them riding in their carriage in 1840. There's a bit of dramatic license here, Albert was never shot, and historians believe that either the guns weren't loaded, or the assassin had terrible aim. Victoria was pregnant at the time, so even though the facts are a bit wrong, let's give Albert the benefit of the doubt - a proper gentleman back then would certainly jump in front of his pregnant wife when he heard a shot. Victoria and Albert apparently had some early differences over who was in charge, but that's probably to be expected in the 1800's, which was still so very patriarchal. Once they worked it out, they went on to have 9 children and 42 grandchildren, so they must have done something right.
If you're looking for a great triple feature, you could probably do a lot worse than watching this film, followed by "Mrs. Brown" (set shortly after Albert's death) and then "Victoria & Abdul" (set in the queen's later years). I don't watch that Netflix show "The Crown" and I never followed "Downton Abbey" so these movies are as close as I come to serially following the royals. And this was slightly less confusing about the palace politics as last year's films like "Mary Queen of Scots" and "The Favourite".
Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Rupert Friend (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Miranda Richardson (last seen in "Churchill"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Harriet Walter (last seen in "Atonement"), Paul Bettany (last seen in "Dogville"), Thomas Kretschmann (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Jesper Christensen (last seen in "Spectre"), Jeanette Hain, Julian Glover (last seen in "Scoop"), Michael Maloney (last seen in "Notes on a Scandal"), Michiel Huisman (last seen in "Wild"), Rachael Stirling (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Genevieve O'Reilly (last seen in "The Snowman"), David Robb, Morven Christie, Josef Altin, Liam Scott.
RATING: 6 out of 10 members of the Privy Council
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