Two films in four days

In the space of just four days, I have seen the best film I've seen for a long time, and the very worst film seen for a very long time.

When "Man of Steel" came to local cinemas, we were enjoying our long cruise, so we missed it. We regretted it, but thought we'd probably hire the DVD on some occasion. I was a little suspicious when the film had such a short run at Rugby Cineworld, but happily took the opportunity to see it when it returned for one day, as part of Cineworld's "Take 2 Thursday" series.

A young itinerant worker is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race.

I'm no film critic. I just know what I like and dislike, and why. This film is dross. It has very little human interest - and not really much Kryptonian interest, either - no humour, little pathos. It has a lot of special effects, most of them conveniently high-speed (it must be much easier for the effects guys to do), with Superman and Zod throwing each other around Metropolis, destroying huge swathes of it as they do so. The Man of Steel may have amazing strength, but there doesn't seem to be a lot going on between his ears. A brighter superman would have taken the fight elsewhere and saved millions of lives, and destruction such as gives insurance companies nightmares. Those sequences were dramatic for the first two minutes, but I sympathised entirely with the under-12s in the audience who were very bored after the first half hour.

This is a film to miss.

Back to Warwick

There's not been much to write about since our return to the marina. Routine sort of stuff, catching up with email, Twitter and so on. We have a number of smallish jobs to do before the end of the month, so those are in our sights.

Yesterday, however, we went to the cinema to see "About Time", an excellent British film with a superb cast; funny, clever, fascinating, poignant, very well scripted and directed. Possibly the best film I've seen for some time.

At the age of 21, Tim discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life. His decision to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend turns out not to be as easy as you might think.

Then today, we drove out back to Warwick to see St Mary's church which was closed when we were there last week. After a very good lunch at the Thomas Oken Tea Rooms close to the castle, we went to see what we'd missed.

It's a fascinating building, dating way back to 1123, the original crypt being still usable, with various additions being built in the 14th, 15th and 18th centuries.

Some of the visitors were asleep!

After enjoying the church, we climbed the 160 steps - worn stone, very narrow spiral - to the top of the tower for a spectacular view. I had pictures of the church, taken from the castle. Now I have photos of the castle taken from the church, too.

Road works and confusing diversions forced us to postpone an intended visit to the little church at Flecknoe. We'll have to do that another time.