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threeleggedant
Reviews
Worzel Gummidge (2019)
Not at all bad!
The original Jon Pertwee version was a bit late for me and it passed me by as I was too old for it - I never thought much of it. I suppose that Jon Pertwee was MY Dr Who, so seeing him as another character was just 'wrong'.
This version, however, is totally entrancing. Well done.
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Entertaining
At first I didn't really take to this as it was a bit heavy on the CGI, but the more I watched it, the more I enjoyed it. As a kid in the 1970s, there were loads of movies about deepest, darkest, Africa with scary creatures, quicksand, and man-eating plants (I kid you not) and I used to throughly enjoy them in those simpler times when there were only three TV channels here in the UK.
This movie has mediocre CGI, but then I remembered that the special effects of all those 1950s movies that I used to watch were also dreadful and you filled in the defects with your imagination.
This moving is a continuation of that genre of movies set in Africa that just doesn't seem to get made these days, and it was all the more enjoyable for it.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
Wow! Didn't See This coming
Found this on Netflix and had never heard of it before.
Having been to Guernsey in about 1970, and then 2008, as a visitor, I had a bit of knowledge of the history. Furthermore, I read the book about the Jersey occupation from the perspective of a doctor, and obviously heard the term, "Jerrybag", being an abusive term about young women who hooked up with Germany soldiers.
The occupation took place just after my father was born, and just 25 years before I was born, so I have been brought up with 'views' about he occupation.
This film puts a lot of it in context. From reading around the subject, it was already clear that the Germans were (almost) as much prisoners as were the islanders. The film makes it abundantly clear that there were also slaves during the occupation, but it doesn't dwell on it (a bit of a shame).
What the film does do, or attempt to, is to remove some of the stigma from the women who hooked up with the Germans. It is distasteful, but how shameful was it really? And did they really deserve to be tarred and feathered after the occupation just because they were women? Basically, were they subjects of male subjugation, and were males in the islands treated less harshly? They probably were, but who are we to judge?
This is at the core of this movie, and it is better for it.
Looking back on it, the child, 'Kit', would be two years younger than my father who I miss greatly, and would have born in the same year as my mother. The movie (haven't read the book) is stronger for the fact that Elizabeth is never found because it puts the story firmly in its time when people would disappear without trace, and the film doesn't try to follow this up.
With regard to the settings, and some of the props, it does rather fail miserably. It could have been done much better. Why, for instance, right at the beginning of the movie does the publisher have a lamp from a lathe on his desk as a desk lamp? It rather looks like the prop buyer was buying random 'old' stuff off eBay without anybody advising them? And the Weymouth angles were wrong as were the ship approaches to Guernsey.
Colditz: Tweedledum (1972)
Possibly The Best Ever Episode
I was only 7 years old when this episode was aired. This was a time there there were only three TV channels in the UK, and it was a prime-time show.
This was an extremely powerful episode. I've only now just seen it (2020) and the final scenes made me tearful - something that didn't happen in 1972.
I figure that 20-25% of the population actually saw this episode when first aired. I'm now 55 and this episode still resonates (actually it is pretty much the only episode that I remember clearly from 48 years ago - this makes me feel very old!). My mother was suffering from mental health issues at the time but I don't think they manifested themselves until just after this, so it was quite an introduction to mental health issues for prime-time audiences at the time (when there were only three channels).