The Bookshop

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🎙️ EPISODE 592: 11.07.22 Watching or not watching The Bookshop had become a kind of running inside joke in my mind over the last few months. It was the one pre-selected TRUE RANDOM film I just couldn't bring myself to watch. And now that I sit here, a few days removed from finally having viewed it, I can say that my fears were misplaced. Yes, director Isabel Coixet was responsible for one of the biggest stinkers I've reviewed (strangely, that was also a TRUE RANDOM selection), but this harmless British period piece is fine, and occasionally bordering on good thanks to performances by the three leads: Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson. Look, I definitely don't want to oversell it. It's fairly stock melodrama, based on a 1978 novel, with a strained conflict that couldn't be less relatable. But sometimes that's the magic of good actors: they can turn a truly boring story into, well, a less boring movie.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 591 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 593A ⫸

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The Bookshop is a 2017 drama film written and directed by Isabel Coixet, based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald, in which the lead character attempts against opposition to open a bookshop in the coastal town of Hardborough, Suffolk (a thinly-disguised version of Southwold). Shooting took place in Portaferry and Strangford, County Down, Northern Ireland and in Barcelona during August and September 2016. The film stars Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and Bill Nighy. It won three Goya Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.It was released on October 21, 2017.