People have talked about this one for a while, and we’ve always pondered watching it but never really got round to it. Now we have, I’m glad we did but I can’t say it was one of my favourites. I’m impressed with Jason Segel more and more - the piano, the full-frontal, the writing, all good stuff. Russell Brand was also surprisingly funny, although perhaps not having to do a huge amount of acting!

Our ambitious adventure to work through alllll the Bond films begins here, with the first. It was a surprise to me, how good it was. Of its time, naturally, with a slow pace, a couple of questionable effects and some really dodgy audio. But aging aside, it held up. I thought Connery was good, although he’s not my Bond at all.

We love a film that is in the cinema and also available to rent online simultaneously, as it gets rid of the hideous windowing that we’re always waiting for. So, settled down for this one after what seemed like a reasonable trailer, and I think it exceeded expectations.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this memoir of life as a child in Southern Africa, but I really enjoyed it. The stories felt a bit disjointed at first but either they started to flow better as the book went on, or I just got in the groove with the writing style. It’s such a different world to the one I know, it’s absolutely fascinating.

It sort of felt like Walter Mitty, with the main character going on a journey for one reason, but really finding out a lot about himself along the way. It even had some slightly odd dream sequences, but in Hector they didn’t quite work as well as they did in Mitty. Whilst all of it was great fun, bright and colourful, meaningful, with inspirational quotes, it didn’t quite hang together for me.

The thing about Sliding Doors is, I couldn’t remember anything about it except that I watched it when I was still living at home and really, really disliked the ending. To the point that I argued with my mother about it for a very long time, and probably still would have done if she’d brought it up. Except I couldn’t remember what it was that happened or why I didn’t like it.

It’s an odd one, getting off to a really slow start. For about twenty minutes, it really is just two Irish chaps wandering around Bruges and bickering. Yet it’s intensely captivating, and gradually as you find out more and more about why they’re there and what they have to do next, you get sucked right in. It was a little bit gory in places, but somehow not hugely violent. A bit sweary, but not over the top.

A difficult read, this one. The story follows Sage, a reclusive baker who has family issues to deal with. Aside from her own problems, she’s also faced with learning the horrific history of an elderly friend who claims to be a Nazi officer that presided over Auschwitz. The way the story weaves around, through different points of view and alongside a fiction inside the fiction, is great and it gradually builds up the horror and the history of the Holocaust.

You know EXACTLY what you’re going to get with this film. It veers more towards a drama-com, than a rom-com, but it’s Hugh Grant being generally a miserable person before meeting people that turn his attitude and his life around in spectacular fashion. And as long as you’re okay with that, it was brilliant.

Browsing through the BBC iPlayer, I saw that the final episode of Miranda that aired over Christmas was about to time out. It reminded me that three of my fondly admired sitcoms came to their conclusion this festive period, and surprisingly, all three went out in style. It may be that LOST burned me and that I hold a grudge for too long, but it feels like most TV shows captivate their audiences and then end in disappointment. Not these three!

I’ve seen this before, but so long ago that I couldn’t remember anything about it bar the concept of Tom Hanks being trapped at the airport. For some reason, I had the feeling it was a really sad piece, and whilst it does have its moments, it’s ultimately a touching story with a satisfying ending, no tears required.

Box of Lies with Channing Tatum

The history My experiences with Harry Potter have been something of a rollercoaster. I enjoyed the books during their first run, but wasn’t hugely passionate about them - happy to wait for the paperback version, rather than stand in line at midnight for the final book’s release. I somehow ended up owning just six of the seven physical books, so was super keen to own them as ebooks so I could a) complete my collection and b) ditch the last standing physical books I owned. JK Rowling finally capitulated and I was able to plow through them all, on my Kindle, for a second read.

Love Denzel, so was keen to watch this one, even though it seems just like a Liam Neeson ‘man with specialist skills’ situation. He was, as most always, exceptional, showing some real cold and calculating skills alongside a heartwarming desire to do right by the people he cares about. Chloe Moretz, too, had some great scenes - particularly the stark difference between her at the start of the film and then at the end when everything was changed. Like night and day!

This book starts with a small child falling off a balcony and being rushed to hospital, so you get the tone right from the beginning. The story then dips back in time and follows a family through the drama of heading towards that horrific incident.

The book is in two distinct halves - one of which I thought was brilliant, the other left me cold. The first half sees Piot start out as a young academic, researching diseases and epidemics. Reading how he travelled to Africa, saw first-hand the issues and dealt with working out where Ebola came from and how it spread was endlessly fascinating. How he combined the horrors of witnessing first hand devastation with trying to raise a young family is beyond me.

The film starts out just like the trailer, and there’s a clear Outnumbered influence as the three kids run riot whilst the long-suffering parents try to hustle them into a car for the holiday departure. Much of it is just family bickering, and David Tennant trying to fathom out what the heck his kids are talking about, but then it all changes.

In the mood for something slightly low key, we picked this out on Netflix, and low key is exactly what it was. Really, it was like a BBC drama but with better lighting. A brilliant colour scheme and some fabulous cinematography, but ultimately just a bit of a detective drama around the glossier parts of London.

This was a complete surprise. I’m always a bit nervous going into a movie that’s written, directed and starring the same person - because those kinds of labours of love can be hit or miss. This one had the extra slightly dubious claim to fame of being a Kickstarter funded movie - something even Hollywood didn’t want to go near.

It’s a bit of a joke, now, how Liam Neeson has managed to create the single character that appears in all his movies now. Guy who wants to put his crazy action lifestyle behind him, but can’t because there are bad guys on the loose, so he gets involved with bringing them to justice - usually with a gun.

I think we only ended up watching this because we were looking up things Alice Eve had been in, took a look at the trailer, and saw that Wade from Hello Ladies was one of the friends. That sold it to us, although I think it’s easy-going nature and rom-com style was appealing after hauling our way through all the Harry Potters.

I read the first two Alex Rider books quite quickly, and had intended to wait on this one. However, I fancied an easy-to-read adventure and that’s exactly what these books deliver. They are quite literally James Bond as a teenager but that’s great because you know exactly what to expect and how things are going to work.

Another intriguing entry in the 87th Precinct series, this one takes yet anther format. We don’t focus so much on the cops themselves this time, even heroes Carella and Hawes are by-products to the story really. Instead, it’s about the heroes and villains, and how actually neither are one thing or the other.

The titles of these books are sometimes straightforward, but sometimes a clever play on the crime within. This is one of those but it seems a bit flippant having read the story and realised exactly how sad the crime itself was.

From the traipsing around of part one, this finale really does ramp things up to a big old wizardy action sequence. There’s a lot that annoys me about this one, things like the fact they make a big deal about Teddy despite barely mentioning Tonks and Lupin’s relationship this whole time, but there’s also a lot to like. Neville finally getting his moment to shine is fantastic.

Hermione really levels up her awesomeness in this one, with the fantastic bag that carries everything, the fact that reading saves the day, and her loyalty to the cause even when Ron deserts them and she has to eject herself from the life she once knew. Love her.

It’s a cliche now, that these films just keep getting darker and darker, but this one really crosses the line so that we know what to expect from the final two. There are moments of brightness - Ron and his love spells, Hermione helping out with the Quidditch tryouts, and things like that, but mostly it’s angst and drama and bad times.

Following swiftly on from the films of 2014, Mr C turns his attention to music. The playlist to choose from was up to 17 songs at one point, and narrowing it down to five proved to be a difficult task, but one which was great fun for me to watch him agonise over. You can view previous years via the handy links at the end of the post, but for now, let’s see what the end result of the hours of weighing up country against girl groups against guitar bands were.

I hadn’t particularly expected to like the first Young Guns film but I really did, and so was quite keen to see the sequel. It got off to a shaky start, because I wasn’t fond of the narration from Emilio as the old guy, it was really hard to understand. Thankfully, he only piped up every now and again.

In all honesty, it’s at this point that our binge-watching of the Harry Potter films makes them start to blur together. It doesn’t help that this one didn’t stand out anyway, it’s very much setting everything up for the future films to come.

I love this. I used to watch it as one of those ‘in the background’ movies, but hadn’t seen it for a really long time. I’d forgotten quite why I liked it. At first, having immersed ourselves quite so much in Hollywood, I was a bit boggled at how this film ever got off the ground - such strong accents and mumbling style of talking. But you soon get used to it, and it really grows on you.

I can imagine that fans of Sherlock Holmes were a bit concerned when this book came out, a book approved by the Doyle estate and an official entry into the Sherlock canon. I thought it was done really well. It had all the tone and feel of the originals, certainly the writing style was an homage to but not a direct copy of Doyle’s work.

After watching this one, we decided it was the best so far and with the benefit of hindsight can conclude it is the best of all of them. With the kids now old enough to start being teenagers and trying to fathom the workings of the opposite sex, it really was like Dawson’s Creek on broomsticks.

The final of the initial X-Men trilogy, I knew I definitely hadn’t seen this one before. It started as they all do, with Wolverine waltzing in and out, but then Jean Grey was resurrected and everything went a bit weird.

I’ve shied away from Lisa Gardner books in the past after finding one of them particularly vicious, harsh and featuring just slightly too much hate for my tastes. However, I thought I shouldn’t base my assumptions on just one book so picked up this one in a sale.

Up there in the notes, I said this was the best film so far, of the three we have watched, and I think that’s true. It was starting to build the over-arching story, rather than just have the standalone mysteries and adventures for each film. It had some great casting and cameos, Dawn French and the shattered wine glass being a particular highlight.

I know that I had seen the first X-Men film before posting it here, but I couldn’t remember about this one. Even after watching it, I’m not sure, but I’m erring on the side of not having seen it before. It’s very similar to the first one, with Hugh Jackman flitting in and out, a group of kids trying their best to fit in, and a big bad threatening the world.

I was a bit concerned at the start of this, that including members of Steve Carella’s family in the story was just reaching for a way to bring emotions into it. But actually, it did work and the story made sense. It was nice, that some of the other cops sacrificed their day off to come in and help him out, and it was good to see how the relationships grew and changed across the course of the wedding.

It was a really interesting film, quiet and moody, creepy and intense, although ultimately slightly unbelievable. You hope that doctors aren’t capable of doing the things that he is, and you sort of have to think it’s just a story or you might never go to a hospital ever again.

I wasn’t really aware of this one other than casually browsing past it on Netflix occasionally. When Mr C suggested we watch it, I suddenly realised just how many famous faces are in there, baby faces of course, but hey, who doesn’t love a young Kiefer Sutherland?

Amazingly, this is a sequel that pretty much matched its predecessor. Seeing all the characters we loved from the first back again was great but there were also lots of brilliant cameos and new characters to love. Giant Abraham Lincoln was fun, as was the big ol’ inflatable balloon dog thing.

It was surprisingly good, lots of great characters, a fun story, and some excellent CGI. I did get a bit confused towards the end what exactly the big bad plot was, but it didn’t matter because it was all fun and games and actual details were unimportant.

I had anticipated making a big deal of the 500th film, picking an epic classic, but in the end I wasn’t feeling well and in those cases you just want to watch what you want to watch. So, we took in the second adventure of Harry Potter and his pals, in which the shortest book is made into the longest movie.

It was actually a lot better than I’d thought it would be, but it left me a little baffled. It wasn’t the stupid comedy I’d anticipated, although did have some hit or miss jokes that you expect from the genre. But it was a bit too serious to be the normal comedy, and yet not quite serious enough to be a full on drama.

I was happier going into the book and I quite enjoyed how the stakes were raised, and the morals of the situation analysed. I wasn’t totally sure why we had that week of difficulties with the faux family at the beginning, but once Rider got to the school things really heated up.

I had no idea what to expect going into this book and was drawn in immediately. The way it’s told, as though you’re just having a conversation with Alex himself as he reminisces, allows the information to be drip-fed, not always in chronological order

It’s that time of year again (a little late actually), the one where I force Mr C to decide on his top five songs and films from the year just gone. Usually, this is a fun process in which we discuss music and movies and have a bit of a laugh. This year, it’s been less enjoyable because there have been so many good songs and films that it’s been a bit of a wrench to cut the list down to just five. Nevertheless, we begin with films.