To the Sunny Colch Odeon! …on Monday afternoon for the cheap as chips grubby fiver deal. Sitting in my Odeon app and selected less than an hour earlier, was an online ticket for The End of Oak Street.

The trailer has half captured my interest in recent weeks. I confess to not recognising Ewan McGregor in the leading father role during the promo clips.

The trouble with the Odeon cheap as chips grubby fiver deal is that during the school holidays there’s not a lot of choice to choose from. We’re talking crappy kid’s cartoon flicks here. At the end of Oak Street was my only realistic option.

I viewed the trailer once again before making the decision to buy the grubby fiver ticket. Hmmm, that looks alright. Not great, but alright. I read the Guardian review. It got slated. Hey hoe.

No worries I quite enjoy the idea of watching films on the big screen for a fiver that I would otherwise in no way get to see, or at least if I did view them at home they would hold at best 20% of my attention.

The basic plot for At the End of Oak Street is a slightly dysfunctional American family in the Michigan area in the early 1980s. Something wicked this way comes and all of a sudden their neighbourhood is transported into a not very friendly dinosaur park.

I think you’ve seen this one before. The appeal of the early Jurassic Park films was that there was nothing like this previously. You were genuinely in awe seeing the big beasts interacting with humans.

At the end of Oak Street could have quite easily slotted into the Jurassic franchise. The dinos look pretty much the same. There’s also the same US-style goofy humour taking place.

It’s not a bad film, it just tails out rather rapidly. In fact the first 20 minutes or so are really rather enjoyable. There’s a definite innocence in being transported back to the early 80s and seeing the very dullness and routine of family life in a pre-digital age.

As soon as the first dinosaurs appear, it descends downhill very fast and becomes absolutely ridiculous.

The basic play is that classic Jaws moment where everything is quiet then all of a sudden BOOM! GOTCHA! The only trouble is that you can take so many gotcha moments before you are desensitised to them.

It all got very silly when some classic hardcore dinos sex was displayed. A selfie on a polaroid was then taken by the two main characters, natch. That’s something you most defo wouldn’t have seen in any of the Jurassic films. The shark had been jumped, not to mention the two mating dinosaurs who were jumping each other.

The final 10 minutes also just about manages to draw together the threads from the opening scenes. It starts as it ends with an OK-ish film but nothing outstanding. What follows in between is one great big steaming dinosaur shit sandwich.

To the Sunny Colch Odeon! …on Monday lunchtime. On my agenda for the Cheap as Chips Monday Grubby Fiver Club was the new Spider-Man movie Brand New Day.

I don’t think I’m really the target audience for any Marvel film. I remember the kids at school being completely engrossed in the Marvel universe in a way that perhaps I thought they might be with Star Wars. Marvel is where all the action is for the cool kids, Natch.

I did try and educate myself ahead of the screening. I noticed that the iPlayer has all nine previous Marvel Spider-Man films available to watch. That’s an awful lot of screen time. I managed to get through the first one before realising that I’ve actually seen it before.

I’m sure I must have missed plenty in films two to eight but I didn’t let this put me off getting in the way of my Monday afternoon booking. My rate of viewing, especially when the football and the cricket seasons are colliding, means that it is unlikely I would get through all the past efforts sometime before Christmas.

I could just about follow the plot. The trick with all of these franchise films is to be accessible at the basic entry level for the likes of me, as well as having plenty of in depth Easter eggs for all the nerds to follow.

It’s a film about a bloke who can spin webs and fly from buildings. That’s about it yeah?

I confess to being rather drawn in and spending another half hour or so back at base, googling all the various characters and how they all fit into the current film. It’s no spoiler alert to say that the Hulk stole the show.

There’s also a fairly deep romantic plot, which I wasn’t expecting.

Brand New Day is supposed to be something of a reboot of the franchise. In the end it felt like it was trying to get all the characters in a place where they feel comfortable ahead of what may come next in the series.

As ever with the Cheap as Chips Monday Grubby Fiver Club, there was some constant chatter from the back row. Four pesky school kids took it upon themselves not only to hold some chat shit conversation, but also to shout out abuse at all the characters.

Thankfully the sound in the Sunny Colch Odeon was pretty deafening and it drowned the dickheads out.

They did join in with a round of applause at the end however. Such communal nonsense is not for me.

To the Odeon! …on Monday lunchtime. You know the score by now. Monday is cheapest chips day at this Sunny Cold Odeon. Book online and you can snaffle up a ticket for a grubby fiver.

I have made the point of looking at the cinema listings to see which is the longest film. Never mind the length, feel the thickness etc. If I’m going to buy a dirt cheap ticket then I want to stretch it out so I can spend as much time in the cinema, getting real value for money.

Which brings us to Odyssey of course. I admit that I hold no great knowledge when it comes to the classics. I was first introduced to the Odyssey back in SE17 whilst working on the school website. The Year 5 kids knew more about The epic tale than I did.

We’ve wanted to see this film for some time now but time and tide haven’t behaved very well for us. If you’re going to watch a three-hour film then you need to set aside three hours in a day to take it all in - which pretty much rules out doing anything else either side of it.

It didn’t get off to a good start in Screen 2 at the Sunny Colch Odeon on Monday lunchtime. Just as the opening scene was starting to build up, someone let rip at the back of the cinema with the most almighty fart. You dirty dog.

I tried to put this to the back of my mind and focus on the film. It proved rather tricky. Even throughout a film three hours in duration, I wanted to turn around and see who the phantom farter was. This is school holiday time. This explains a lot.

But anyway, the Odyssey. I knew I might struggle with some of the intricacies of the plot. I was just about able to keep up with Jackass 5 last time round at the Odeon. The Odyssey was a little bit higher on the intellectual level.

Having said that it is a truly fantastic film. It’s a complete epic which had me gripped for more or less the entire duration. I think I just about managed to keep up with what was going on.

What helped was the rowing WivGigs action taking place. A lot of the film is sea-bound. You have plenty of sweeping shots of the Greek army doing their best WivGigs impression and rowing round and round and round. I was familiar with terms such as holding water.

The plot line is pretty predictable but I guess that’s not down to Christopher Nolan as he’s only following the classic piece of literature that he was presented with.

The villains really are pretty bad boys, whilst you find yourself cheering on the heroes, which are highly likely to have a happy ending.

There was a slight twist towards the final scene, which I wasn’t expecting. I also wasn’t expecting the Phantom Farter to then spark up and fill Screen 2 at the Sunny Colch Odeon with a haze of incredibly strong weed.

Never a dull moment in these Monday Cheapest Chips Sunny Colch Odeon experiences.

You could say it was an Odyssey all in itself.

And so Jackass 5 was a hell of a lot of fun. I’m not sure it’s quite what we had in mind when we decided that Monday afternoons would be cultural afternoons at Colchester Odeon - and yes I do realise that an afternoon of culture in the Colchester Odeon is something of a misnomer.

I’ve always liked Jackass. It’s dumb as fuck. I’m still not convinced that it’s all genuine. Is wrestling fixed, etc. Certainly parts of Jackass 5 felt like the returning old faces were playing to the camera with maybe a little bit of a safety net already in place.

There’s not quite enough new content either to pad out an entire film. The incredibly good-looking Johnny Knoxville has declared that this is the last ever Jackass movie. The incredibly good-looking Johnny Knoxville always declares that each Jackass is the last movie.

And so Jackass 5 is used as an opportunity to reflect on what’s taken place before. I’m not sure what the exact ratio is but there is a fair amount of old pranks dropped in to the schedule.

This actually adds a little depth to the film. I would place it along a similar theme as Trainspotting 2 or even Spinal Tap 2. It’s a bit of a love letter, a film where the narrative is more than a passing thought about the passage of time.

The Jackass dudes are all hitting 50 plus. They are too old to have their bollocks being smashed full-on by a mallet. This would seem like a suitable time to bow out.

Poo jokes feature heavily. They are taken to an extreme and do cause you to actually wince and look away throughout some of the film.

Elsewhere and the new character, Larry the AI robot, comes close to stealing the show. I can’t help think that an AI robot rectal examination is the future.

Knoxville and the boys have seen a huge transformation in the way they go about putting across their message. What initially started off as their own private video pranks soon became an MTV phenomenon. MTV in itself was pretty much killed off with the modern interweb.

Now all you have to do is scroll through your stupid phone at some dumbass TikTok videos and you have your own Jackass curated experience. The modern interweb is full of dumb shits who want to make a fool of themselves in public.

Knoxville however is something of a camera star. I love the way that he sets his buddies up and yet is rarely at the butt of his own jokes. Spoiler alert: he does take one for the team in Jackass 5 with a very randy ball that involves an ambulance towards the end scenes.

We didn’t exactly find high culture in the Sunny Colch Odeon on Monday afternoon. Thankfully we also didn’t find an audience that was so impolite that they spoke shit all the way throughout. Jackass tends to attract a different kind of audience, natch.

We had something of our own Jackass experience as we headed upstairs briefly for a visit to the toilets. The Sunny Colch Odeon escalator has Jackass embedded within it. It moves incredibly slowly until you step on it and then it goes into fast forward.

Hi, my name is Jase and you’re watching Jackass on the Escalator.

I thoroughly enjoyed Spielberg’s Disclosure Day at the Sunny Colch Odeon on Monday afternoon. I confess to having scrolled down the listings to see what our film of choice would be for yet another Monday cheapo cheapo £5 screening. Disclosure Day was the only option that didn’t deliver a Meh shared outcome.

We watched the trailer at home just to be sure. Even this was weird. The official trailer actually features Spielberg cutting himself into the action to describe what’s taking place. This hinted to me at a film that needed some explanation. I don’t like films that make me think too hard.

Disclosure Day had a plot that I could follow. Often I find myself sitting in the cinema not being able to keep up with the action, as I have to backtrack and try and cross reference some of the dialogue I’ve just heard.

Christ, I’m a bloody old man.

This of course also manifested itself in the usual Monday afternoon SHHHHH! moment.

The cheapo cheapo Monday afternoon Sunny Colch experience wouldn’t be complete without another couple insisting on talking throughout the entire fucking film. I really hate doing this, but from past experience a very abrupt SHHHHH! shuts them up for the rest of the afternoon.

The film itself was fantastic right from the start. You can watch the trailer yourself, or read all the spoilers that are out there. Basically it weaves together three different scenes and characters all related to the overall strand of trying to cover up - and also expose - evidence of aliens on Earth.

It’s really quite comical in places. The level of detail and symbolism in terms of clothing, colour, etc is quite intense. I really can’t be arsed to look for the online Easter eggs but I’m sure there’s some great explainers out there that would add more depth and understanding to my already high enjoyment of the film.

It gets really quite poignant as well towards the close. In these troubled times there’s a strong message to humanity. It strays ever so close to being rather twee from Spielberg, but the final end scene is delivered with what appears to be well-intentioned meanings.

I almost had to have a SHHHHH! moment to myself (spoiler alert) when Mr. Alien is actually a grown-up ET. At least there wasn’t anybody sitting in the cinema who was dumb as fuck to actually phone home during the screening.

To the Odeon! …on Monday afternoon for another in the latest series of cheapo cheapo grubby fiver screenings over in Sunny Colch. Filling up my afternoon of leisure was Mandalorian and Grogu. This has to be the crappiest name of any film, not only in the ever-expanding Star Wars franchise, but also in recent cinematic history.

Talk about Tell It Like It Is.

I should by now know what to expect with the cheapo cheapo screenings. I’m no cinema snob but, you aren’t exactly mixing it with a high-end Barbican crowd. Christ, I am a cinema snob.

For the second consecutive screening I had to turn around only a couple of minutes into the film and deliver a bit of a shhh moment as I put my finger to my lips and asked a couple behind me to stop bloody banging on.

Christ. What the fuck is wrong with people? Once again they were happy to yap away all over the trailers. I had no real issue with this as the trailers were mainly Minions shite anyway.

The mundane conversation that wasn’t even in the remotest related to the film continued as the plot was being set up for The Mandalorian. I’ll continue to shhh selfish fuckers up if they continue to spoil my £5 afternoon of enjoyment.

But anyway. The film. Blimey. It was absolute bobbins. Those days of eagerly anticipating a new film in the franchise are long gone. The Star Wars franchise is nothing but a money-making exercise for Disney, and a very profitable one at that.

Not a lot happens in the film. Not a lot actually happens in The Mandalorian telly series, but you could pass a pleasant 40 minutes or so, transported into the Star Wars universe whilst watching at home.

Transport this to a full-on cinema experience with some selfish arseholes sitting behind you, and that £5 suddenly didn’t feel like money well spent.

I won’t bore you with the plot. It’s out there to explore online. There isn’t much of a plot to be honest. I knew that I had lost my love for the Star Wars franchise when one of the major scene stealers involves Jabba the Hutt’s son wrestling with his uncle and aunt.

I dozed off midway through the film and wished I hadn’t awoken. It was very loud, which makes my slumber all the more perplexing. I’m amazed that I slept through those two selfish arseholes talking absolute crap throughout.

May the Voice be with you.

Dickheads.

To Moving Image! Or rather not to Moving Image on Tuesday evening. We did have plans to go along to the village cinema to catch the screening of The Essex Ways film. A quick shifty with the online trailer, and you can actually watch the whole film at home via YouTube. It would be rude not to.

Never say that I am keen on saving money, plus various household bits and bobs got in the way of a trip out to the village cinema. We made sure we had a clear path, so to speak, and then fired up the YouTube video with a strict rule of no phones or other distractions.

It’s more of an online film to watch, tbh than paying to watch it at a semi-pro village cinema. It follows the footsteps of James, a young man who decides to walk the Essex Way and record his adventures on camera.

I thought that we had walked the Essex Way a couple of months ago. My lack of local knowledge puts me to shame. We walked about a tenth of the Essex Way as we made our way from Manningtree over towards Harwich.

James completes the real serious business, pretty much circumnavigating the entire county, starting in Epping and then being washed up in Tilbury.

In between, he takes in many locations that are on the edge of our patch. The nearest he comes to us is Brightlingsea. Hesomehow manages to skirt away from Colchester. Walton, Frinton and Mersey Island all feature.

The film is a homage towards nature. There’s a very powerful message that is superbly told by James as he weaves in his personal narrative connected to the county, and a wider picture of declining nature and global warming.

We debated at first what time of year their film was shot. He mentions St. George’s Day midway through, which is the dead giveaway. It seems a perfect time of year to capture this county. Spring is pretty much in full bloom, and he seemed to have picked a favourable time when it comes to the weather.

It left me feeling that we have so much more to explore around these estuary wilds parts. He makes it to the other side of the Blackwater Estuary, something which, to my shame, I have yet to do.

He also addresses many of the Essex stereotypes. This is the great misunderstood county. I was surprised, and also very pleased, to hear him address class snobbery.

Within that, he also identified a north-south Essex divide. He came out with the conclusion of there being one Essex. He also managed to drop in the Crass slogan of the only war is the class war. Later in the credits, we see how Crass members were involved with the film.

His final destination of Tilbury seemed to symbolise what the whole film has been about. He describes being on the edges of London, with Tilbury being a mix of nature as well as something of a dumping ground. This is illustrated quite literally in the form of Tilbury being once a dumping ground for London.

There is optimism in the final scenes from Tilbury. Nature has reclaimed the slag heaps and is managing to work its wonders in disguising what London has done to the outer edges of the county. It was a very optimistic message in which to end.

I still have much more walking around these parts to do.

Screening at the Sunny Colch Odeon early afternoon on Monday as part of the cheapo cheapo deal was The Drama. This is a film in two parts: the preparation ahead of a wedding, and then the immediate fall out when a major, major life secret is shared.

Spoiler alert (although it is widely trailed in all the reviews): Emma, one half of the happy couple, reveals to her husband to be that she came close to carrying out a High School shooting massacre as a teenager.

awks, etc.

Much of the film then focusses on the reaction and inner-questioning coming from her fiancée, Charlie. He takes on very much the High Grant English uneasiness role, stuttering and running his hands through his hair with despair.

Not a lot actually happens in the film. It’s no action drama; dialogue is everything. It’s superbly written, with some scenes stretching out at ten minutes, keeping the suspense building up. I really enjoyed it.

The soundtrack has many Psycho like screeching moments. With shaky camera angles, you feel that you’re never too far away from something very, very disturbing. The wedding speeches scene is just brilliant.

Once the genie of the planned shootings are out of the bottle, there’s no putting them back in. It was uncomfortable viewing, but very rewarding.

To The Odeon! …in Sunny Colch on Monday afternoon. This is becoming something of a regular visit for me as part of the cheap as chips start of the week routine. £5 for a film on the big screen? Would you like to add food and drink before you check out? Would I chuff.

The grubby fiver film screenings do have their drawbacks. They attract a certain type of clientele. That clientele isn’t quite me just yet. But I do fear that I’m getting there. Sitting next to me for the screening of Glenrothan was a 60 plus couple. I now know more about than I would care to about Mr and Mrs Chatty.

They talked LOUDLY over the adverts. Fine, I’m cool with that. And then also the trailers. This got on my tits ever so slightly. One hour into the film and they still hadn’t SHUT THE FUCK UP. This was simply unacceptable. I bet they put their feet up on the train seats as well.

Having spoilt the first half of the film for me, I was determined not to let them get the better for what remained. I politely asked them to hold back on their general chit chat until they got home.

“FUCK OFF, YOU CUNT.”

What a charmer. But it did have the desired effect. The conversation ended, and they chose to actually take in what they had also paid a fiver for - which was a half decent film in Glenrothan.

But seriously, SOME people.

There’s a growing genre in cinema that I’m calling Local Hero 2.0. It’s essentially feel good films, usually centred around ideas of national identity. The genre can border around the fringes of Farage flag waving shit. But then it also cuts back with some more progressive ideas, both in terms of the script and appearances on screen.

And so joining the likes of Fisherman’s Friends and The Ballad of Wallis Island, here we have Glenrothan. It’s Brian Cox’s directional debut. He also takes up the role of Sandy, one half of the local Scottish whiskey distillery, alongside his rock ‘n’ roll brother, Donal.

The plot involves Donal losing his Blues club over in Chicago, and then having to confront what he left behind in Scotland over four decades ago. We’re talking family relationships, personal relationships, notions of identity etc.

It sounds pretty heavy stuff, but Local Hero 2.0 always allows for some strong humour. There’s a couple of lol lines - possibly more in the first half, but I couldn’t follow the full dialogue thanks to Mr and Mrs Chatty. The ending wasn’t sign posted, but it was a happy one.

Glenrothan is the type of film you see on a Sunday evening, and not a Monday lunchtime. Given my Sunny Colch Odeon experiences of late, Im not sure that you should see any film on a Monday lunchtime tbh.

We watched Saipan on Sunday - the Roy Keane Mick McCarthy spat of a film that attempts to capture the moment when the Man Utd star walked out of the Republic of Ireland’s training camp on the eve of the 2002 World Cup. It was originally released at the cinema in January. The film has already found its way as a freebie viewing on Prime. Make of that what you will.

It’s a slow burner, for sure. The entire film is centred around will he or won’t he walk away from the tatty team training facilities in Saipan? Given that we already know the outcome, the limited appeal is more in the dialogue and double headers between Keane and McCarthy. Both men give a sense of holding back and hiding away their feelings, right up until the epic profanity ridden fall out in front of the rest of the players.

Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy just about gets away with it. He’s always one facial tick away from Partridge, but whatever character he plays, you always get authenticity. Éanna Hardwicke as Roy Keane is mean and moody. His simmering performance is captured more in what isn’t said, than any actual dialogue.

There’s plenty of cliches to keep the non-football crowd entertained, including a Britpop soundtrack that not only gets on your tits, but also feels slightly out of sync with the actual period itself. There’s no need for any spoiler alert: Keane walks, the Republic reach the last sixteen of the World Cup.

Ole, ole, etc.