Change Your Image
d-73056
Reviews
Out of the Shadow (1961)
Really?
Too many excuses are being made for this film. Why would someone have an open top car in use in the English winter months? How were car brakes actually disabled on a Cambridge main road, and in so short a time? With all the students living there, is it likely that the place would be described a quiet? Do you really shout out your plans in a public place(s) all the time? Why was the lead character never actually finished off when being attacked, or at least hospitalised? There were plenty of opportunities.
The talking was ridiculously fast throughout and unnecessary; the acting totally over the top.
Hard to believe any of it.....
Derby Day (1952)
Lightly enjoyable
After all the overrated films I have seen on Talking Pictures recently, involving second rate North American B list actors with their irritating personalities and annoying voices, it was great to sit back and watch this film with its easy weaving of interactions of half a dozen or so English stalwarts. Derby Day was a great reason to play out the issues shown, even if some of the decisions the characters made were not that well thought out. For instance, when Google Withers and her lover were accidentally responsible for her husband's death, why didn't her wanted by the authorities man, just leave the house, and she contact the Police, and say they'd be an accident at home. After all her husband could have been in a rush to get to work having come back to get something he had forgotten, and just slipped and fell down the stairs? And why is it in almost every film when someone falls down ordinary domestic stairs, it kills them?
The odds on the horses offered were far to generous for The Derby! They were more like Grand National ones.
The Long Memory (1953)
Enjoyable but...
Overall an enjoyable watch, but with a strange element of the children's books that I used to read, and sometimes still do. Like this film, it was never revealed, or commented on, how toilet matters, in the widest sense, were attended too. To simply make camp in an old boat that had absolutely no facilities was ridiculous. Our man must have had some money before his spell inside, so there was no reason to make these pieces of wood his new abode. There seems to be an unnecessary element of masochism here, somewhat over emphasising the anger he felt. That, and ignoring the charms offered by an attractive women after spending twelve years without!
And, it was never explained where the beds, tables, curtains (!) came from either. Love the way the beds were arranged, just like School Camp!
As I said at the start, kids stuff.
Mrs Wilson (2018)
What's the point
Ruth Wilson admits that her Grandmother did not know about any of the other 'wives', except the first one! So this
programme is fiction, not fact, even though the writers knew the truth at the time of making it.
So what is the point? Did they think the story was not interesting enough without adding these falsehoods. That really it was just a lot of gullible women falling for a bloke in uniform, aided by that fact that it was a difficult time for everyone, and they were willing to turn a blind eye to his extra activities. It is difficult to swallow that someone working for the Government Services, in whatever role, would be paid so poorly that he couldn't support his family, or even two.
I don't think it was only the characters that had been lied too, as they kept repeating.
A Question of Suspense (1961)
Something's not quite right.
A watchable just over the hour non mystery that never the less fails to convince.
Why did Rose leave her car at the coast, and how did she get back? And for the short space of time the car was there, would the police really have thought it abandoned? Why did Rose agree to go round to Drew's place, when she knew they were going back to hers in half an hour, and Drew would ask where the car was?
The most unlikely happening though was the hand sticking out of the beach. Drew would have made sure the body was deep enough not to be discovered surely? Or certainly not after such a short burial time.
And lastly, each to their own, but I think his Secretary was a greater attraction than Rose. So much for childhood memories clouding your judgement. And Drew: that Wig! Lose it.