Brendan Fraser

Pressure

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Stagg takes a phone call

Nerds win the war in Pressure, which entertainingly tells the story about the meteorological johnnies who made the D-Day landings possible. How, when you’re launching the biggest seaborne invading force in human history, do you make sure the weather isn’t going to destroy your armada on the high seas? Whether the gap between England and France actually counts as the high seas is questionable. It’s only a 20-mile gap but it is difficult to navigate at the best of times. All that Atlantic Ocean on one side and North Sea on the other trying to squeeze through a bottleneck, with storms liable to barrel in from off the Atlantic at any time. That’s … Read more

The Whale

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Charlie on the sofa

The Whale did something that films these days hardly ever do. When it was released in 2022 it opened small, in “limited release” in a handful of cinemas. It had done well at Cannes and at the festivals but no one really expected a film by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser – neither of them hot any more – to keep on growing, week on week. But it did, opening in more and more cinemas, until it was in 1,500 theatres on its sixth week, up from six on its opening weekend. Word of mouth is what did it, and the word was that Fraser was exceptional as Charlie, a morbidly obese … Read more