On the Road: Staring at the sea

I flew from London to Los Angeles this past week, amid growing global unease about covid-19, so I'm trying to be careful. I've seen one new film since landing here, ironically a British drama set on the English coast: Hope Gap. It's a sensitive marital drama starring Annette Bening, Bill Nighy and Josh O'Conner as a couple and their son going through a shift in the family dynamic. It's refreshing to see a movie tackle these things without resorting to overwrought melodrama, and all three actors are excellent.

I only watched two films on the flight (plus some episodic television). First was the gorgeous Oscar-winning animated short film Hair Love, and then the feature doc Andy Murray: Resurfacing, an intriguing look into the life of a top sporting competitor facing the possible early end of his career. And arriving in Los Angeles, I attended the opening night of the Noir Film Festival, a screening of the rarely seen 1952 Argentine thriller The Beast Must Die, a fabulously melodramatic noir whodunit.

In addition to visiting a few museums, I also spent a rainy day at Disneyland with longtime friends, and of course many of the attractions are based on movies - from the two frankly awesome Star Wars rides Smugglers Run and Rise of the Resistance to the outrageous gravity-defying hilarity of Guardians of the Galaxy: Breakout and The Incredicoaster. It was also fun to revisit rides based on Indiana Jones, Mr Toad and Pinocchio, as well as two that later became movies: Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise.

There's not much out here this week in cinemas (I'm not particularly tempted by Bloodshot or My Spy, more interested in Sally Potter's The Roads Not Taken if I can find it in a local cinema), but I have a few films I need to watch online for work, including the Lithuanian drama The Lawyer, the German thriller Darkroom and the animated rom-com Top 3.