I spent most of my weekend watching movies. I saw Love Actually on Saturday afternoon, and watched the extended edition of The Two Towers Sunday afternoon, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle on Sunday night. Very pleasant.

Love Actually is possibly the biggest pile of sappy nonsense I have ever watched. This is not exactly a criticism, but still, it bears saying. This film has no plot. It’s a series of immensely loosely linked relationships/romances and nothing more. It’s a distillation of RomCom. But then, that’s what it’s trying for, and even the dullest of the romances has laugh-out-loud funny moment, and at the other end of the spectrum, there are couple of nicely realised stories of things going wrong, illustrations that love isn’t an easy, effortless thing. For what it is, this is excellent, but do not go expecting anything more than I’ve suggested here, and especially don’t go looking for a plot.

The Two Towers is, like its predecessor, hugely improved by the extra footage, although again, I can see why just about every bit of it was cut – the noteable exception being the Faramir/Boromir flashback that provides the key to Faramir – without it, he seems flat and dull, with it, he becomes, well, no, not interesting, but y’know, human. But once again, there are only two or three really new scenes – most of the rest of the extra footage is a line or two here and there, short extensions to exisiting material. Still, well worth seeing – you may want to wait for the inevitable twenty disk deluxe edition of all three films, though, as you’re not going to get anything here that you need to see in order to enjoy part three. I bought this as a birthday gift for Marysia, or I probably would have waited myself.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is bigger and flashier and funnier than the first one. Which is what we want from this franchise, oh yes. Over-the-top action for those who were disappointed with the po-faced Matrix. Anyone failing to enjoy this is probably someone who doesn’t know how to relax.