Suffragette and Spectre

Tonight Onagh and I met up for a bit of a British movie double header at the Kino Cinemas. Our first film was Suffragette, a historical drama about the British suffrage movement in the early 20th century. It stars Carey Mulligan as Maud Watts, a laundry worker who gradually becomes a suffragette through some women she works with and interactions with others she encounters along the way, including Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter) and Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep). There is huge personal cost for many of these working women as their activism makes them get shunned by their employers, families and communities due to their increasingly militant activities which result in them getting thrown in jail. The film culminates at the Epsom Derby as they try to get media attention for the suffrage cause as King George V is in attendance. It wasn't until 1928 that all women over the age of 21 got the right to vote in England.

Our next movie was Spectre, the latest James Bond film (and complete opposite of what we had just seen). While I have viewed bits and pieces of Bond films over the years I don't think I've ever actually watched one from start to finish. Spectre begins in Mexico City at a Dias de los Muertos parade as Bond (Daniel Craig) takes down an assassin who is part of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE. Although he has been suspended from the field by M (Ralph Fiennes), who is battling C to keep the 00 program alive, Bond slips out the country to learn more about SPECTRE and fight its leader Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz). The film's action sequences are completely over the top, as you would expect from a big budget Bond film. While I found Bond's immediate hook-ups with the women he meets to be ridiculous, the film overall was entertaining although a bit too long.