Lejink Reviews

Under the Bridge (2024)

Love Me, I Say

[7/10 · 31 May 2024]

This television drama told the shocking tale of the murder of a fourteen-year-old Indian girl Reena Virk by a teenage boy and girl in British Columbia, Canada in 1997. Young Reena was beginning to rebel against her Jehovah's Witness parents, in particular her strict mother and after being subjectef to racial taunts and casual bullying, she obviously felt keenly the cultural and identity issues she encountered when she tried to mix in with the kids of her own age.

And what kids they were, more like feral animals you'd say, especially the group of gangster-loving young girls from a nearby children's home, whose acceptance she longs for. We see her assimilate their malign influence as she gets into gangster rap, begins swearing, smoking and drinking and generally disrespecting her parents. It all ends up with the young girl so piqued at not being allowed entry into the three-girl gang she looks up to that she cavalierly takes on the ringleader by publicly shaming her, which triggers the terrible revenge visited on her one dark night by the leader's doting but dangerous right-hand girl keen to sate her own bloodlust and an impressionable young boy carried along it seems by events.

Often very difficult to watch, the series is careful not to paint young Reena as a saint, but it's obvious that her need to belong forced her to make some bad decisions none more so than when she goes along with the gang-leader's suggestion that she fabricate sexual accusations against her own father just so that she can get him arrested and herself into the children's home where the three other girls live.

All of the stuff about Reena and her life and death I found riveting and compellingly acted by the young cast playing the various children. I have to say though that I was a lot less convinced by the highlighting of some of the other characters in the story, most particularly the female author who becomes so fascinated with the case and the evil magnetism emanating from the head girl and her adoring confederate and later the young man who participated in the murder that she often comes close to losing her perspective on events. She grew up in the same neighbourhood and even has her own back story of loss and guilt from her own childhood.

Her story also elides into that of her childhood friend, now the diligent and ambitious lead cop in the case, her former lover, played by Lily Gladstone, who's also given a vaguely connecting backstory where we learn that she too was adopted at birth and has her own identity issues. It all seemed too conveniently and unnecessarily interconnected for dramatic purposes, detracting from the real story here, the brutal murder of a teenage girl by two fellow teenagers. Lastly we're also shown at length the courtship of Reena's own parents some twenty years before which again seemed like it was an unnecessary rabbit hole to go down and explore.

I really wish that show-runners of productions like this would desist deviating from the heart of a true story like this almost, it seems to me, for padding purposes, which irritated me as well as the voguish but occasionally confusing back and forth treatment of the different timelines at play. And, old fogey that I am, I naturally hated the constant rap soundtrack even as I appreciate it was popular at the time.

Still, this was largely compelling stuff right from the beginning, concluding as you'd expect with a set-piece courtroom scene where justice doesn't initially appear to be served although there's some consolation here if you read the on-screen printed postscripts. Gladstone is far and away the best adult actor on show but it's the ensemble acting of the young adults at the heart of the matter who really deserve credit as they pull you inexorably into the gathering tragedy.

Good as it often was, this eight part series could have been better yet if it hadn't felt the need to over-emphasise the roles of lesser characters to the extent that they detracted from the utterly compulsive dark heart of this disturbing real-life event.

Dachau Liberation (2021)

A Slight Disservice

[6/10 · 30 May 2024]

My wife and I visited the camps at Auschwitz and Berkenau in January of this year in the freezing cold and it was in every way a truly chilling experience. We therefore felt duty bound to watch this fifty minute documentary which focused on another infamous concentration camp at Dachau.

I thought the brevity of the film somewhat strange however, in light of the seriousness of the subject to which I can perhaps only attribute to a lack of actual footage from the camp itself. Thus the narrative used the current device of very obviously recreating some imagined scenes played by actors which for me certainly jarred my sensibilities. The story also crossed over into other camps including Auschwitz / Berkenau as if to unnecessarily pad things out, plus some photographic images were repeated unnecessarily I felt.

The film was however unstinting I broadcasting the horrific and harrowing vérité footage of the treatment of the Jewish and other prisoners both on video and in photographuc stills and these are supplemented by latter-day interviews with several of the survivors and also the liberating Anerican soldiers, all of whom naturally still bear the scars of their experiences. However even some of these interviews seemed poorly edited with some of the interviewees' words at times randomly cut up between others.

Sadly this film had a correspondingly "cut and paste" feel to it which for me reduced the effect it should have had on me, but please understand my criticism is of the film-makers and not the film or participants themselves who deserve only our great respect and sympathy for somehow enduring what they went through.

You'll Never Get Rich (1941)

For Richer or Poorer

[6/10 · 29 May 2024]

Another typically light and fluffy Fred Astaire musical rom-com with songs by Cole Porter, where Ginger's absence is more than compensated by the radiant young Rita Hayworth in an early starring role.

The plot is typically silly and contrived as choreographer Fred's Robert Curtis is coerced by his producer Robert Benchley into covering for him when the latter's caught out by his knowing wife over the matter of a golden bracelet the old lech was hoping to gift to Hayworth's unwitting Susan Winthrop character. Astaire and Hayworth, as we've seen countless times before in films like this, have an initially frosty relationship, plus she's very much in the sights of and is being lined up for marriage to a privileged, handsome Army officer. But wouldn't you know it before long he's unsurprisingly smitten with her and she's less predictably enamoured with him but in the meantime, Fred's required to serve a stint in the Army to escape the heat and cool his heels.

It all spirals out from there as Fred finds himself in the guardhouse in more ways than one, with the confusion deepening when Benchley brings his production to the Army base, requiring Fred to run the show, only the old man now has his leery eye on another young starlet while the Fred and Rita romance is endangered by the arrival of his army rival, to whom she's now become engaged, simply to spite our Fred.

You won't be surprised to guess how things end up for the starring couple at the conclusion of the big show, as I think every Astaire musical has ended since he first emerged as a leading man. He dances as well as ever, although I've seen him put to work in more imaginative solo routines than he has here, but it's Hayworth who really balances the ticket with her beauty and poise. I enjoyed the big production number at the end but I wasn't impressed by the forced comedy in the barracks, especially the two doofuses Fred picks up as his willing accomplices and in particular the one who continually falls into irritatingly unintelligible double-talk any chance he gets. I wouldn't say the songs were top-drawer Porter either, in fact when you hear him tag the end of one of the numbers with his famous "Night and Day" refrain, you can tell that the great composer is scraping the barrel a bit too.

Pleasant and inoffensive if formulaic and somewhat hackneyed, this definitely isn't top-drawer Astaire but as pot-boilers go, it just about passes muster.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune is Busting out all Over

[5/10 · 28 May 2024]

Having recently sat through Part One, although admittedly in a state of some confusion and bewilderment, I continued onto Part Two to see if as a whole I could yet put together the various plot strands and differing characterisations to have the movie get through to me. I remember sorting of managing it with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but it maybe helped that I'd read the books beforehand. Here, never having read the source novel, I must admit I was as lost in the rolling sand-dunes as any of the massive Worms which infrequently appear throughout the story.

That's not to say that the film wasn't a visual treat. From the recreation of the vast expanses of sand, the huge war machines and various monumental interior and exterior sets, none more so than the Colosseum-type arena, they're a feast for the eyes. The actors too work hard for their money, entering fully into their often physical parts as they follow every wormhole the narrative throws at them.

I think I picked up on the various historical and allegorical references to everything from the Bible to Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany and there's even a young-love romance buried away in there somewhere too.

However, when I got to the end, while I found myself impressed overall by the spectacle of what I'd seen, I was ultimately left thoroughly discombobulated by what had passed before my eyes. Yes, I can see where every dollar was spent on what must have been a massive enterprise but there was just too much going on throughout for me to ever get a handle on events and follow the story through.

Nasty (2024)

Oh you Nasty boy!

[8/10 · 27 May 2024]

Ilie Nastase was my first tennis hero. I can still remember being disappointed when he lost the 1972 Wimbledon final to the American Stan Smith and even more so when he so tamely lost the 1976 final to the emergent Bjorn Borg. With his wavy hair, saturnine looks and entertaining playing style he was arguably the first new superstar of the Open era. With great movement around the court and a wide range of shots he was equally successful in doubles tennis and until the appearance of young superstars like Borg and Connors was probably the biggest name in the game, as evidenced by his signing the first sportswear contract with Nike way back before that became an everyday occurrence in the sport.

But they don't call him Nasty for nothing. While much of his antics on court were entertaining and served to prick the pomposity of the tennis establishment, he undoubtedly went too far on occasion, as we see him practicing the dark art of gamesmanship, especially on the normally placid Arthur Ashe. He was also guilty more than once of making highly inappropriate remarks off-court, nicknaming Ashe in a racially derogative manner while he was playing and many years later to Serena Williams during her pregnancy.

This near two-hour documentary on his life and times doesn't go into any detail on his childhood years. We're not told anything about his parents or his upbringing with his story really only beginning when he pairs up with his long-term doubles partner, the appreciably older Ion Triac and makes his breakthrough in both doubles and especially singles disciplines. We see many examples of his brilliance on court but also a number of his pre-McEnroe spats with the game's umpires and administrators.

Certainly, there are no shortage of big-name players, past and present, who line up to mostly pay tribute to his maverick ways, including contemporaries like Smith, Borg, Connors, McEnroe and Billie-Jean King and later stars like Mats Wilander, Boris Becker and Rafa Nadal. In particular, he formed a firm friendship and winning doubles partnership with the equally out-there American superstar Jimmy Connors, who speaks warmly of their time together on the circuit.

While I didn't agree with some of the unsporting stunts he occasionally pulled and certainly a number of the unpleasant things he's said off court, I found it impossible not to be won over by this sometimes infuriating but never dull individual. The point is made throughout that Nastase was the type of player who put bums on seats and got people interested in the game who might otherwise have passed it by.

I could have done without the seemingly voguish style of going back and forth in time and would have appreciated a bit more insight into his personal background, not only his youth but also into his colourful personal life as he was married five times. There is however some interesting context, when we see the 1972 Davis cup staged and in his Ceausesco-era, native very grey Bucharest, against The Americans. We also get insights into his entangled love life but it seems he could no more resist a beautiful woman and they could him. Filled with many nostalgic anecdotes and reminiscences, the picture emerges of a complex individual on and off the court, but one who in comparison with the super-fit emotionless automatons of today's game, certainly enlivened the often musty and privileged old game and certainly helped, for better or worse to usher in the modern era.

My Favorite Year (1982)

In Like Swann

[8/10 · 24 May 2024]

A riotous comedy starring Peter O'Toole as a faded, sozzled matinee idol of the 30's and 40's booked for a guest appearance on a network US TV comedy show in the year 1954. It's easy to do the read-acrosses required to arrive at Errol Flynn as the model for O'Toole's star who's named Alan Swann as well as Sid Caesar's Show of Shows as the spoofed programme as actor Richard Benjamin, under the auspices of one Mel Brooks who did indeed write for Caesar's show way back then, lovingly recreates the era and in particular the backstage buzz of putting together a live show.

With other nods to real-life counterparts, like the whispering Neil Simon equivalent, there's lots of scope for the fast-moving, fast-talking Jewish humour which came to dominate television in the years ahead.

Charged with chaperoning O'Toole's old Hollywood soak, is newcomer Mark Linn Baker whose Benjy character unsurprisingly struggles to keep his charge on a leash, especially when there's a bottle or especially a pretty young woman nearby, even fearing that his own intended will fall pray to Swann's wicked, wicked ways.

O'Toole of course is reputed to have lived this lifestyle himself and would, you suspect, have made a good compadre of Flynn, if he himself had been born twenty or thirty years earlier. As it is, he so convincingly plays the ageing lounge lizard that you half-suspect he may have downed a bottle of Bollinger or two before his takes.

The story reminds me of "Singin' In The Rain" as a fading star from a past era struggles to adapt to revolutionary new developments in the industry only for silents and talkies, thus time read movies and television.

With some nice comedic set-ups like when Benji takes Swann to meet his family or when Swann steals a patron's gorgeous gal at a posh night club as the band fittingly plays "Somebody Stole My Gal" and especially the big finale when Swann and King Kaiser (obviously the Caesar character) duke it out with a bunch of gangster-heavies out to disrupt the show, it's all great knockabout fun, with O'Toole superb in the lead.

I wonder if it was remade now just who would play O'Toole's part or do they just not make them like that anymore?

Freebie and the Bean (1974)

This Freebie's no Bean-fest

[5/10 · 22 May 2024]

Apparently this movie was the originator of the buddy-cop sub-genre which begat all those successful "Lethal Weapon" / "48 Hours" et al. Features where the invariably pair of male cops endure an invariably love-hate partnership / relationship with one another before invariably catching the bad guys. In actual fact, I'd argue that the template for this movie went back further to "The Odd Couple", with Alan Arkin playing Bean, assuming the Felix part with his various neroses to the fore and James Caan being Oscar, his flaky partner Freebie.

Together they patrol the streets of San Francisco in a routinely madcap, smash-'em-up way, forever using a jackhammer to crack a nut, in this case, the protection of a mobster who's the key witness in a big case their frazzled, long-suffering boss is keen to crack.

So we get to ride alongside these two crazies as they bust the buns of any snitch holding out on them, draw their guns any chance they get and generally rearrange the whole landscape of Frisco as they seemingly attempt to take out every car on the road. Along the way, they display outdated predilections for sexism and homophobia but hey, it's okay this is the seventies and we know they're good guys at heart.

If you like a film with a crash-bang procession of car-chases, lots of profanity and violence, this one's for you. The ironic thing is that somewhere beneath their macho Judge Dredd-like personas there is definitely some spark between Arkin and Caan and I also enjoyed seeing my favourite sit-com star of the decade, Valerie "Rhoda" Harper, not to mention another of that ilk, Loretta "Hotlips" Swit, in prominent supporting roles, but for me it was all too loud and out of control for me to enjoy.

Navalny (2022)

Find the Cost of Freedom

[8/10 · 20 May 2024]

I knew before I watched this BBC Storyville documentary that I would be moved to both anger and admiration. I can't think of how any right-minded individual who couldn't admire the courage of Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny in his futile attempt to not only speak truth to power but indeed to unseat that dictatorial power in the country of his birth which he clearly loves. The other side of the coin of course is the rage one feels as we see him crushed under the heel of the tyrant Putin by being arrested the second he sets foot again in Moscow and of course we now know that he has subsequently been brutally murdered earlier this year in his Siberian jail almost certainly under executive orders.

This moving documentary doesn't shed a lot of background on Navalny's previous history, rather it drops us right into the action as we see him and his team attempt to bolster their grass-roots support against Putin amongst the Russian public, an almost impossible task given that Putin controls almost every media outlet in the country. The one place where Navalny can get his message out is of course on the internet where he achieves one spectacular success as we see later in the film.

This fly-on-the-wall film offers the viewer intimate access to Navalny, his family and his back-up team and it's obvious that they all offer him their unconditional support. His wife Yulia in particular has a similarly fearless outlook as she stands right by his side in all his endeavours.

The crisis point reached in the film is when he is poisoned by the Russian dirty-tricks brigade following orders no doubt from the very top and barely survives. Welcomed into Germany by their then Chancellor Angela Merkel, he's treated there and remarkably makes a full recovery before he embarks on the task of exposing the plot which he does with a brilliant sting on one of the perpetrators who no doubt is now doing hard labour in Siberia for being so easily duped.

We see just how piecemeal and rudimentary Navalny's whole operation is, built as it is on a small team of fellow-believers and done with the minimum of resources. We also witness the strong family bonds which subsisted between himself, his wife and their two almost grown children. Throughout Navalny comes over as a completely natural person but also as a driven individual even as he acknowledges that in resisting as he does, he is almost certainly signing his own death warrant, as indeed proved to be the case. It's important however to observe that the documentary isn't completely adulatory as he's asked direct questions about links with the far right where he perhaps betrays some political naivety.

Nevertheless, it makes the blood boil to see him bravely or foolishly, depending on your point of view, return to Moscow where he's inevitably arrested even though there's a large crowd of supporters waiting for him at the airport, who themselves we see brutally dispersed by the police.

The film ends with Navalny requoting the famous phrase attributed to Edmund Burke that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing and certainly in his sadly truncated life, Navalny could not and did not stand idly by and do nothing. One can only hope that in time we will be rid of the numerous despots around the world today ruling their manipulated and brainwashed populations by dictat. To do so, as Navalny recognised, we will need more fearless, principled individuals like him to stand up and be counted and hopefully this film will inspire them to pick up the torch even if it means putting their own lives in peril.

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

Mothman to the Blame

[6/10 · 19 May 2024]

Based on the real life occurrence of the collapse of the Silver Point bridge in Ohio in mid-December 1967, this supernatural thriller amplifies contemporary local press reports of the time of the supposed appearance of a demonic creature known as the Mothman which acted as a harbinger of disaster.

The movie however is set in the present day and focuses on Richard Gere's Washington Post journalist who at the beginning loses his wife following a car accident when she was driving their car and was distracted by a vision of the Mothman, a blurry, black outline of a winged creature which suddenly appeared in front of her. Gere's character, who was a passenger in the car at the time, tries to move on with his life but two years later at around Christmas time, takes a moonlight drive when he too experiences something other-worldly as he inexplicably ends up in the small country town of Pleasant Point with no knowledge of how he got there.

At dead of night, he encounters a local man who swears it's his third visit to him in a row, which requires the intervention of local cop Laura Linney, who mentions to him that lately a lot of strange things have been happening in the neighborhood. Sure enough the same local man comes to Gere with takes of nightmarish visions which apparently translate into major disasters elsewhere in the world, plus Gere and Linney themselves appear to have similar experiences of their own. Sure enough, it all converges in the disaster at the bridge involving the two in a dramatic episode to confound the apparent prophecy as it affects even one life out of many.

The movie is certainly moody and atmospheric, using a grim grey pallette and an apposite electronic music soundtrack to create an undefined air of foreboding throughout. We never get a clear picture of the Mothman itself, which instead only appears in a blurrily distorted, edge-of-imagination way but elsewhere a number of jolting shocks are inserted to keep viewers on edge throughout.

I was content to be take on Gere's convoluted journey but wasn't entirely convinced by the end that all the dots in the occasionally confusing narrative had been properly joined up. The pacing too I found somewhat slow and I found the climax to be somewhat underwhelming. Gere and Linney nevertheless do a good job of walking us through this particular series of unfortunate events but by the end, intriguing as it all was, I felt it could have been made into a still more compelling feature to really draw me towards the edge of my seat.

The Dresden Files: The Boone Identity (2007) Season 1, Episode 2

Hi-Jack your Body

[7/10 · 17 May 2024]

This second episode of "The Dresden Files" saw Harry called in to action by a distraught father, an antiques dealer specialising in Middle Eastern artefacts, who recently witnessed the tragic death of his young daughter by a trigger-happy intruder to the family shop. It seems the robber / murderer was after a rare object but in the course of fleeing with the item, got himself run over and killed outside the premises. The father senses his young girl's spirit is still lingering and calls in our hero to investigate further.

Something about the attempted break-in doesn't sit right with Harry however and when he notices a shared tattoo on the dead thief's back with that of a connected mega-rich collector who hired him, the trail eventually leads to a body-hopping demon who exits his host body to the nearest available conduit at the moment of death.

As Harry closes in on the creature, he naturally risks his own life before Murphy also puts herself in harm's way requiring Harry to make a life or death decision to hopefully save the day for both of them and at the same time allow the grieving father some closure with his child.

I again thoroughly enjoyed the episode which had a strong plot, exciting action and more sardonic humour from Bob, the skull-bound phantom.

I'm working my way back through this series now that I'm reading the source novels for the first time. Slightly adapted and somewhat sanitised for its target TV audience, now as then I was impressed all over again by the quality of the production and in particular, Paul Blackthorne's lead performance as our down-at-heel demon slayer.

Just a pity Harry couldn't magic up a second series for this excellent show.

The Crusades (1935)

Caught in the Cross Fire

[7/10 · 16 May 2024]

One of Cecil B DeMille's lesser known blockbusters, if that's not an oxymoron, as he tackles the weighty subject of the 12th Century Christian Crusade in typically extravagant fashion.

Undoubtedly mangling historical fact in the process, he nevertheless, for the times, plays fair one suspects with his treatment of the competing Muslims here in a way that Hollywood certainly didn't do with, say, Native Americans in countless Westerns. Their leader, the famous Sultan Saladin, is shown to be brave, wise and ultimately, considerate as he tends to Richard the Lionheart's wounded wife Berengera who he's captured, eventually allowing her to go back to her Christian husband for the sake of true love.

We follow the story from the initial sack of Jerusalem by Saladin's Muslim army and the rallying of the European Christian monarchs by the fervent call-to-arms proclaimed of a holy hermit who escaped the slaughter. Richard at the time is involved in delicate negotiations with the King of France to marry the latter's sister and so keep the fragile peace between the two forever-warring nations, but quickly seizes on the idea of entering a Holy War to put off his unwanted nuptials. Nevertheless, he requires to strike an uneasy bargain with the French King Philip who along with several other monarchs has likewise heeded the hermit's call. Worse than that, there are designing plotters in both courts with treachery afoot that will see Richard's throne claimed in his absence by his brother John and also the scheming French Marquis Montferrat attempt a power-play which will supplant his own King.

Into the mix enters the lovely Berengera, the beautiful daughter of a French Duke, who her dad craftily marries to Richard for basically the price of feeding and watering his tired and hungry army. Her relationship with Richard gets off on the wrong foot but it's not long before each sees the light, in more ways than one, culminating in a choice between war and peace which in the end has a decisive impact on the outcome of the war.

As others have said, the film lacks an eye-popping "miraculous" occurrence spectacularly shot by DeMille, like the parting of the Red Sea or the collapse of Samson's temple, but throughout he keeps the action charging along. Marshalling crowd scenes and employing monumental sets and props which he really scales up in the siege of Acre.

Like I said, this isn't a film for serious historians as it plays loose and looser with the known facts. The characterisations of the principal individuals are painted with rather broad strokes as we're expected to believe the sudden love which binds Richard and Berengera after we've witnessed their avowed antipathy, but the sympathetic portrayal of Saladin came as a welcome surprise. As a matter of both personal belief as well as taste, however, I could have done without the overbearing religious symbolism espoused at times but there's also some slightly bawdy leavening humour, as you'd probably expect, in between the action.

Loretta Young with her bright blonde hair, is very pretty as the ultimately resourceful Berengera, Ian Keith is convincing as the noble Saladin and Hrnry Wilcoxon, an actor with whom I was formerly unfamiliar, did well I thought as the mercurial King Richard.

Unlike say, his contemporary John Ford, it seems to me that De Mille's reputation as a director has fallen a little by the way-side, but the man knew how to craft a thrilling spectacle, especially here in the fight for Jerusalem with fireballs flaring and battering rams pounding away, even as I personally feared for the wellbeing of the numerous horses flung into battle.

Even if the events portrayed are more hysterically than historically accurate, the film is undeniably exciting and entertaining, just as you'd expect from Cecil B.

A Very British Sex Scandal: The Duchess and the Headless Man (2024 TV Special)

The Dirty Duke

[7/10 · 13 May 2024]

It's only been a couple of years since I remember watching the three part big-budget BBC dramatisation of the lurid divorce trial of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll in their own similarly titled "A British Sex Scandal" series as well as an accompanying real-life documentary of the time, so I was surprised to see her story exhumed again so soon afterwards for public consumption in this latest documentary. Of course it is a juicy story, the type that will always fascinate the general public, as they get to peep through the keyhole of the privileged rich, plus it seems to be part of a continuing revisionist rewriting of her story, which from all the evidence presented, seems only fit and proper.

No one's claiming that the Duchess was an angel, but there's little doubt that she was terribly treated by her monstrous husband the philandering, alcoholic, brutish and above all penniless Duke of Argyll, who once the initial love had faded from their marriage, bled her and her multi-millionaire father out of oodles of money to renovate his crumbling castle as well as finance his extravagant lifestyle.

It all ended disastrously for her in their sensational divorce case in 1963 which saw not only the notoriously severe judge, himself a clan member of the Duke's Campbell family and just as importantly, the burgeoning tabloid press, who called her "The Dirty Duchess", excoriate her in public. The most damning evidence against her comprised her personal diaries which laid bare her lifestyle containing as it did the names of 88 men, stolen from her London flat allegedly by the Duke himself accompanied by his daughter and of course the infamous Polaroid snapshot, here cheekily recreated in cartoon form, of the Duchess giving fellatio to a man whose face was conveniently cropped from the snapshot, which gave rise to much speculation as to who the "headless man" actually was.

Given the times, with the permissive society still in the future, never mind the much later emergence of women's rights, feminism and the "#MeToo" movement, with the cards so loaded against her, there was no way she was ever going to win the case, leaving her out of pocket, kicked out of her beloved Inveraray Castle, (a magnificent building, one I've personally visited) and with her reputation in the mud.

This Channel 5 documentary, the third in their own series on high-profile sex scandals in recent UK history, was in a similar style to its predecessors, being quite flashy and trashy in presentation and leaving cliffhangers at every advert break. It also proved quite selective in how it told the story, omitting some of the Lady's own underhand tactics as she tried to fight fire with fire against her nasty husband.

Nevertheless I think I learned one or two new things about her, in particular her affair with the future Hollywood actor David Niven and an abortion carried out when she was only a young teenager and it does include some tantalising television interviews with her in later life, especially one with Russell Harty you'd love to see in full, in all of which she's resplendent in her fine gown, pearls and of course that magnificent bouffant hairdo she always wore.

We've had the documentaries and the mini-series, surely leaving only perhaps a feature film to complete the set in putting to rights this most salubrious and scandalous of lives. The Duchess herself would no doubt approve.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Couldn't Get It Right

[7/10 · 12 May 2024]

I enjoyed the "What iffery?" aspect of this movie. I've seen variations of it in other films and fantasy TV series - in "Star Trek" for one, it's the Prime Directive, where the rule is that even if you could and even if you meant to do good and even if it's just a tiny thing you alter, you don't mess with events that happened in the past. Aston Kushner's Evan character actually has the power to do just that, a trait which he's apparently inherited from his institutionalised dad and his dad before him.

We're immediately dropped in on Evan on the run in a hospital where he's being treated for his condition. He's frantically scribbling down the latest in a lifetime's worth of similar experiences even as time literally runs out for him. How did he get here and what will happen next in his life of extremes, where one minute he's luxuriating in the love of his pretty young childhood sweetheart Amy Smart's Kayleigh, the next he's fighting for his life in a maximum security prison. We also see the contrasting levels of devastation and consolation his time-hopping wreaks on those with whom he comes into proximity as Kayleigh herself goes from being a blissful girlfriend in one timeframe to addled crack-addict in another, their chubby friend Lenny, played by Elden Henson arcs from a catatonic loner to Kayliegh's happy boyfriend and Kayliegh's brother Tommy, (William Lee Scott) from violent psychopath to the best boy in school.

Rather like Evan's tumultuous state of mind, it was a lot to keep up with as the past continually rewrote iitself with every well-intentioned intervention he makes. His problem is that the law of unintended consequences keeps coming into play as what may be good for one individual means something goes wrong for another, usually catastrophically so. As time circles in on itself at the end and if you've been paying attention to all the Easter Egg prompts from earlier, you arrive at the natural inevitable ending.

I'll admit I struggled a little at times to keep up with all the tumult and of course if Evan's life had turned out to be a quiet, uneventful one, he wouldn't have had to go back at all but then of course there'd have been no movie at all.

The special effects as Evan crashed his way through each regression were effectively rendered and I thought all the young leads were well played, in particular I thought by Smart. I get that the movie probably wasn't aimed at my own demographic but this literally mind-blowing feature certainly connected with me although I doubt it will stop me or indeed any of us thinking, to quote Cher of all people "If I Could Turn Back Time"...

Granite Harbour (2022– )

New Kid on the Granite Block

[4/10 · 10 May 2024]

My wife and I have recently made new friends from Aberdeen and they both talk like thaaat, ken, so putting aside my normal antipathy for home-grown Scottish productions, we thought we'd sample this new police procedural set in the Granite Harbour of the Granite City. The big twist here of course is that the central character David Lindo, is a visiting Military Police officer from Jamaica on some sort of international exchange scheme who over the opening credits, we see rocking up in his army duds into Aberdeen city centre. Although still classed as a policeman, the newbie is desperate to become a detective and sees this secondment as a stepping stone on the way to such a promotion.

Of course we've seen these fish-out-of-water, new-kid-on-the-block scenarios played out many times before and it's not long before both he and we as viewers encounter the old clichés of the newcomer's instinctive gung-ho approach not just turning up clues Aberdeen's finest has overlooked but also antagonising dismissive work-colleagues often by shooting from the hip and blundering headlong into situations.

His partner is an in-the-end supportive female detective who warms to him, rough edges and all and sure enough almost the second he arrives, they're partnered up to do the dogsbody tasks surrounding the murder of a heavyweight oil company director, although it's not long before the intrepid duo's inquiries make them the lead team on the force.

As ever, there are a number of possible suspects lined up for consideration but with a mixture of derring-do and Holmes-like sleuthing, you can bet that Lindo and co. Will solve the case.

My aforementioned aversion to Scottish dramatic productions is that they almost always strike me as shallow and ponderous with usually very mixed acting from the predominantly Scottish cast and I'm afraid I got the exact same vibe here. The writing too, just wasn't sharp enough, with too much explaining and not enough action. The dialogue likewise lacked crispness with the whole programme suffering from being pretty much one-paced, although for one thing, I did enjoy getting views of old Aberdeen, a place I've never actually visited.

I'm all for the BBC and STV taking their productions into different parts of the country but really feel they have to send a rocket up their writers to produce better plotting, more credible characters and indeed stronger acting than we get here.

A Very British Sex Scandal: The Love Child and the Secretary (2024 TV Special)

Parkinson's Law

[7/10 · 10 May 2024]

The second in Channel 5's enlightening series on that great old British sport, the political sex-scandal, this time focused on a story I remember from when I was a boy, the disgrace of senior Tory politician Cecil Parkinson. A high flyer at the time, the story is told of how he had just masterminded Margaret Thatcher's landslide election victory of 1983 and appeared to be in line for a major promotion to the exalted position of Foreign Secretary and from there who knew, possibly the top job itself in the future The Party was heading to Blackpool for what was expected to be a triumphant, processional annual conference but behind the scenes all was not well.

Parkinson, apparently one of PM Thatcher's favourites, had just confessed to her privately that he had ended an affair with his secretary Sarah Keays even though she was already pregnant with their love-child. Then, as the conference began, the story broke, splashed all over the front pages, but Parkinson obviously thought he could face down Miss Keays by returning to his wife and toughing things out in public. He was wrong as his now ex-lover chose not to go quietly and accused him of twice breaking promises to marry her over the course of their four year long affair. With exquisite timing, she released her version of events to the Times newspaper the day Thatcher was to give her leader's speech, only when she duly did so, praising Saucy Cec to the heavens, he wasn't in attendance, having cried off in the wake of the news storm gathered about him.

What happened after that showed Parkinson in an even worse light. Not only did he never meet his new daughter after she was born, but he chose not to do so the whole of her life. Moreover, the poor young girl suffered life-threatening medical issues but he continued to completely ignore her and her mother, apart from paying to Keays the minimum requirement in child maintenance until she was of adult age. He even went so far as to impose a gagging injunction on the girl no doubt to protect his valued public and political image, which seemed to work as he was later restored to high office by Thatcher and even ennobled in the House of Lords as Keays struggled to bring up their child on her own.

The story is told by a number of his former Conservative colleagues, the unsurprisingly very much fence-sitting Matthew Parris and weirdly ironical Edwina Currie (will her romp with John Major feature later in the series? I very much doubt it, as both parties are still alive!) as well as opposing politicians like Neil Kinnock, who for once, doesn't say much. However the heavy-lifting in this documentary was done by the various journalists ("Private Eye's" Ian Hislop for one, really savours putting the boot in) and allies of Ms Keays who are withering in their contempt for Parkinson and his heartless treatment of her and especially his own flesh and blood.

I, for one was pleased to see this particular upper-class-twit (although he wasn't born one!) properly exposed for the love-rat he undoubtedly was. He died in 2016, having more or less ridden out the storm, although the programme does show him given a torrid time on live TV by a young female member of the audience obviously disgusted on Keays' behalf by his chicanery.

Noticeably made without any input from either Parkinson or Keays' side, and keeping to the rather sensationalist tone established on the previous episode about Lord Shaftesbury, this was definitely a scandal which you feel sure would have played out differently today.

Once Upon a Time (1944)

No Sir, Don't Mean Maybe

[2/10 · 8 May 2024]

Well, there goes my theory that I could watch Cary Grant in anything, because, mark my words, this is a real stinker. They say never act with kids or pets and yet here he commits two crimes for the price of one in a totally sappy, ludicrously plotted and wholly uninvolving would-be fantasy feature.

Grant plays Jerry Flynn, a one-time big-shot theatre owner and impresario who's hit the skids after a run of flop shows. So, how to turn his fortunes around and chase the wolves from his door? - that's easy! You happen upon a street urchin who keeps a caterpillar in a shoebox and can make it dance by playing "Yes Sir That's My Baby" on his harmonica and before you can say Jiminy Cricket, he's tricked the kid into a partnership and sold the rights to his insect to Walt Disney, who actually makes an appearance, for big bucks. This naturally brings him into conflict with the kid and his protective old-enough-to-be-his-mother big sister, played by Janet Blair as well as his own sidekick "The Moak" (no, I don't know why either), played by James Gleason.

Rather like Curly the caterpillar, at least until the predictable ending, this one just doesn't fly at all reaching an absolute nadir when Cary actually smacks the kid across the face in a fit of pique.

Sorry, but even Cary can't carry this dead weight, it pains me to say.

The Dresden Files: Pilot: Storm Front (2007) Season 1, Episode 0

Here's Harry...!

[8/10 · 7 May 2024]

I've finally started reading the source novels of Jim Butcher and I'm enjoying doing so so much that I decided to rewatch the to date only television adaptation of the adventures of his creation, the wizard Harry Dresden.

In this first episode, which although it shares the name of the first Butcher novel, has a completely different narrative, we get the first-hand narrative by Harry himself, as he tumbles into an adventure centring on the magical abilities of a floppy-haired young boy with special powers, the adopted son of a single parent mum. The boy is in demand, being sought by a villainous shape-shifter who's already brutally slain and taken the form of his school teacher and who turns up at the boy's door looking for him where thankfully a repellent spell cast by Harry keeps her at bay.

When the teacher - demon (there are two words I find surprisingly easy to juxtapose!) visits Harry in his apartment, we're introduced to Bob, a waspish old spirit with powers of his own who's encased in an old skull, but occasionally manifests himself in human form. We also get flashbacks to Harry's own youth when his magician father, knowing his son to be a true wizard, tries to protect him and keep him on the right path.

Finally we get to meet Murphy, the female cop who uses Harry's services whenever there's a suspected supernatural element to a crime in the city, which of course turns out to happen more often than you would think, although like in the books, their relationship can get a bit testy at times.

It naturally winds up in a big showdown between Harry and the demon, with our hero being pushed to his limits but naturally survives, to at least move onto the next episode.

I only got into the books now because I remember enjoying this 2007 series so much before, starring the likeable Paul Blackthorne in the titular role and this first episode was as good as I remembered it the first time I saw it.

Red Eye (2024)

Slow Plane to China

[7/10 · 7 May 2024]

It seems, rather like buses, you wait and wait for one airplane-set drama to arrive and then two arrive at once. Earlier this year I watched the Idris Elba-starring "Hijack" series and here we are, up in the air again, for this fast-moving, if fantastically-plotted political thriller.

It starts with a bang as we see Richard Armitage's Dr Nolan character, out in China with a bunch of friends and colleagues to attend a medical conference, obviously under the influence of something, crash his speeding car in the nighttime rain, but somehow still manage to escape the scene and get on the return flight to London. Unknown to him, he's been inveigled into a major political incident which means that on arrival back in London he's forced to return to Beijing to go on trial it would appear for the murder of the pretty Chinese lady who picked him up at the evening reception there. His colleagues are also sent back with him, presumably as witnesses and he also has as company a WPC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, into whose custody he's placed, requiring them to be handcuffed together on board.

On the ground, the WPC's younger half-sister, a budding reporter gets wind of the political high jinks and senses a breakthrough story, especially with her sis as the perfect inside-woman but MI5 are also on the case, under the watchful eye of Lesley Sharp's commander. The Magoffin in all this is a sensitive multi-billion pound contract with the Chinese for a new UK-based nuclear plant, which naturally attracts the interest of the CIA, whose own chief operative just happens to be romantically involved with Sharp. The scene is set then for a real rollercoaster of a plane journey as the body count mounts up, with no-one who they seem to be as Nolan and Li overcome their initial frostiness to put themselves in considerable danger as they try to get to the bottom of the mystery and save the country or at least the country's economy, in the process.

Far-fetched it may inevitably have been, but this production kept injecting enough cliff-hanging twists and turns into the pacy narrative to keep me interested all the way through. Solidly acted by old-hands Armitage and Sharp with strong support from the new-to-me Lusi as the remarkably resourceful Li, this was one flight where it was best to engage autopilot and just go along for the sometimes bumpy ride until you come back to earth at journey's end.

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

Occupational Hazards

[5/10 · 7 May 2024]

With its confusing, un-related "screwball" title, I found myself surprised to be actually watching a major Golden Age Hollywood feature made by an A-list director Leo McCarey and starring two top stars in Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers which was so critical, so early, of Hitler's regime. America, after all, hadn't long entered the war but I straightaway have to commend the movie in particular for highlighting the treatment of Jews, but also for showing their cold-blooded killing of suspected spies and their reliance on twisted propaganda to further their megalomaniacal plans.

That said, the film does try to mix in comedy elements too, but for me, I think it would have worked far better as a straight drama as the humour is too clunky and unfunny to work. The romance angle between Grant and Rogers I can just about accept, but for example the early scene where Cary measures Ginger up for some clothes or a later one when Ginger impersonates her maid to escape from two dopey German guards or an even later one when he interrupts a ship's captain in a bridge game all just curl the toes rather than the edges of one's mouth.

I also didn't detect any great connection between the two leads and there are times when you can almost see them go into auto-pilot to get each other through certain scenes. Walter Slezak, in his first Hollywood movie, however, convinced for the most part as the duplicitous senior German, causing havoc wherever he goes.

I did like some things about the film, like Rogers' character's sympathetic self-sacrifice to enable her maid and her two young children to get out of the country and the calling out of the Norwegian traitor Quisling in a piece of dialogue, but on the whole I felt this was a well-intentioned, if ultimately awkward mix of humour, romance and drama.

Portillo's Andalucia (2023)

Portillo's Spanish Steps

[8/10 · 6 May 2024]

My own personal politics are diametrically opposed to those of former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo so it was going to take something special to encourage me to watch any programme fronted by him. But credit to him, although he still offers his opinions on politically-themed programmes on satellite channels, he's also managed to reinvent himself as a genial and engaging travel show host. This series he did in 2023 on the Spanish region of Andalusia caught my attention as my wife and I have been living in that region for the last six years.

Over six episodes, Portillo, whose name I now know to pronounce in the Spanish way, journeys around a number of the interesting places here, frequently meeting up with locals where his command of the language serves him well. He and his researchers do a good job of seeking out these people and places, with Mikey wholeheartedly joining in on local occupations and crafts. He also gets to stay in some fine hotels, the likes of which are probably beyond the budget of you and me.

Malaga apart, he avoids the well-known Costa Del Sol resorts and among the other places he takes in are Ronda, Cordoba, Grenada, Cadiz, Jerez and Seville, with each place having its own cultural or historical tale to tell, before ending up back at his own home in the small town of Carmona where he holds a party for his local friends and neighbours.

I had no idea that his father was a prominent Nationalist poet who was caught up in the Spanish Civil War before emigrating to England where his right-wing motivated son was born and came to prominence. Putting politics aside however, my wife and I really enjoyed this informative and entertaining trek of his around this lovely part of southern Spain. We've yet to really spread our own wings and explore some of the neighbouring towns and cities, but thanks to this series, our appetites have definitely been whetted and I'm sure we'll be hitting the road to explore them for ourselves, hopefully enjoying some Portillo moments of our own along the way.

Race (I) (2016)

Out There on his Owens

[8/10 · 5 May 2024]

This long overdue film bio-pic of the great American athlete Jesse Owens naturally concentrates on the run-up to his golden year of 1936 when he was clearly the fastest man on earth who just happened to grow up in a country where he experienced extreme racism in his daily life and then went into history by winning four gold medals in a country where again his race was considered sub-human. That he did so with such humility and grace on and off the track is to his credit, although as the film makes clear, he was no angel.

In fact so much happened to him in such a short period of time that I freely admit to going in the web to fact-check so much of what is portrayed he and then being surprised to find most of it true, like his breaking three world records and equalling another at a track meet in the States, the cheating on his wife-to-be, with whom he'd already fathered a child, the dropping of two American Jewish runners from the U. S. 4 x 100 m sprint team and the remarkably sporting assistance he received from his main German rival in the long-jump. The only really questionable item I guess was whether Hitler did or didn't actually snub him after his victories although I'm happy to grant the director some dramatic licence here. In fact as Owens himself said, he cared more about the slight he felt at his own country's president not publicly acknowledging his feats

I personally would have preferred if the movie had stayed with the remarkable Owens as it's main focus. Instead it diverts its attention to seek to rehabilitate the reputations of two other controversial figures associated with the Games, American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage and female German Nazi-sympathiser director Leni Riefenstahl who produced the undoubtedly iconic if imbalanced official film of the games "Olympiad".

The depiction of the period was well-renderef throughout with clever use of CGI to recreate the Olympic stadium itself and the actual competitions themselves. The acting too was good, even if lead Stephan James scarcely resembles Owen and I especially enjoyed film debutant, Bruce Willis lookalike Jason Sudeikis as his super-strict coach Larry Snyder.

Whilst some of the scenes were perhaps too obviously made-over Hollywood-style with attendant noble dialogue to match, this was nevertheless an enlightening and enjoyable retelling of the fantastic achievements of one of the greatest ever Olympians.

The Earl, His Lover, the Escort and Her Brother (2023 TV Movie)

My Indiscreet Lord

[6/10 · 3 May 2024]

I wasn't aware of this particular scandal which happened some 20 years ago concerning the lurid life and untimely death of the extremely wealthy British nobleman Lord Shaftesbury but I certainly found his story to be a fascinating one, at least the way this Channel 5 documentary, the first in a new series, presented it.

The most famous in the line of past Lord Shaftesburys was the distinguished anti-slavery campaigner of Victorian times, but it soon became clear that when the 10th Lord took on the title over a hundred years later, greatness wasn't on the horizon. A hereditary peer of the United Kingdom House of Lords, it took him 24 years to make his maiden speech there and that a drunken ramble in opposition to Tony Blair's proposed reform of the Chamber.

A picture is painted of a shy man who unexpectedly inherited the title, land, grand house and wealth of the family dynasty and frankly didn't cope at all well with his new position and riches. Married and divorced twice, he soon fell into dissolute ways, spending most of his time and money in Cannes and on young female prostitutes.

It was his sorry fate to fall in with a pretty young French-born single-parent woman Jamila who'd taken to working as an escort girl around Cannes. As he often did, he fell hard for a younger woman, they quickly married and moved into a grand house in the area. Besides two young children however, she also had a temperamental brother who she brought into their household, but when the marriage quickly fell apart and Lord Shaftesbury mysteriously disappeared, suspicion fell on the siblings. When his body was discovered some time afterwards, it didn't take long for the French police to charge the brother and sister with his murder.

Jamila, having had her jail sentence reduced on appeal, is now out and about, proclaiming her innocence on camera although the evidence suggests she was complicit in Shaftesbury's pre-arranged death with her brother as the actual perpetrator. All contrition now, she even wants to apologise to her late husband's previous wife and family for the pain she's caused them, all this while her murderous brother continues to languish in prison for his crime.

This was a sad take on the life of an insecure, rather pathetic old man, unable to take on the responsibilities of his title and position and who instead sought solace in the bottle and attractive women. However he certainly didn't deserve to come to the sticky end he eventually did with his lifestyle splashed all over the tabloid press.

This documentary told the story in a rather formulaic style. With no input from anyone from the late Lord's family, it used stock images of Cannes as well as recycling the same pictures of Shaftesbury and his country estate, demonstrating a lack of depth never mind understanding in telling his sorry tale.

A cautionary tale on how the other half lives, I somehow felt after watching this that the vulnerable old man at the centre of this particular scandal deserved better representation than he got here.

Schitt's Creek: Happy Ending (2020) Season 6, Episode 14

Good Years for the Roses

[9/10 · 1 May 2024]

My wife and I were both happy and sad to reach the end of "Schitt's Creek". Comprising six seasons, each seemingly better than the last, we certainly enjoyed getting to know the madcap characters of this crazy, crazy town to which the once super rich Rose family have descended.

Everyone will have their favourite character, from the Betty Boop-like Alexa, her highly strung but ever-hungry brother David, pragmatic, peaceable dad Johnny and his self-centred, language-mangling wife Moira and that's before you get into all the local townsfolk.

We'll also miss town mayor Roland's too-late-I've-already-said-it candour, his sassier-than-she-looks wife Jocelyn and tough little cookie, hotel receptionist Stevie.

It all ended up with all four members of the family finally finding a way out of Schitt's, if they choose to take it and David's marriage to his boyfriend Patrick. I actually thought there was going to be one more twist in the tale - what with Alexa garbed in a white dress on the day, we were sure that Ted would fly back in and see us off with a double wedding celebration, but it sadly wasn't to be.

I understand that all four principal actors won Emmy's for their performances in this the final season and must say that they were all fully merited. Kudos too to the production company for quitting while they were ahead, even if it means the door closing permanently on the old Rosebud Motel.

This was definitely one of the best comedies that we have seen in many years and will certainly miss the wars of these particular Roses from our television screen.

The Big Street (1942)

Lucille, You Won't Do Little Pinks' Will

[7/10 · 29 April 2024]

I've read a collection of Damon Runyan short stories and must admit I enjoy entering his world of crazily-named, usually low-life but regularly loveable rogues, trying to eke out a living on the streets of Depression and Post-Depression Era New York. I was interested them to see him named as the actual producer of this movie. I've also been taking a deep dive of late into the life and career of Lucille Ball who acted in movies for some ten years before finally breaking through in the new medium of television. I believe she said that this was her favourite of the many films in which she acted and one of her few starring roles. She's also acting alongside a fine troupe of actors and is playing opposite Henry Fonda so there was a lot to intrigue me here.

The main problem I had with the film was just how unpleasant Ball's Gloria character was, who even before she is cruelly struck down and made a cripple by her jealous big-shot former boyfriend, lords it over the warm-hearted guyscand dolls who offer her to my mind undeserved support to the extent where they effectively become her drudges, so much so that she only deigns to answer to the name "Your Highness".

Chief amongst them is Fonda's lowly Hotel boy Pinkerton, nicknamed Little Pinks who is completely infatuated with her and so panders to her every wish and keeps coming back for more even when she insults him and makes it quite clear that she will never reciprocate his feelings for her.

It's to Ball's credit that she carries through her mean demeanour to the, as it turns out bitter end, but i probably enjoyed more seeing the likes of Eugene Pallette, Ray Collins and especially the wonderful Agnes Moorhead havibf fun with Runyon's rich characterisations and dialogue. Fonda as Pinks tries the viewer's patience with his meek submission to Gloria's petty tantrums but in the end he finds his spine and ingeniously gives Her Highness the send-off perhaps only he thinks she merits.

An interesting movie for lots of different reasons and an entertaining one too, it's interesting to think, amongst other things, what would have become of Ball's career if the film had in fact catapulted her to stardom then and there.

Ordinary Angels (2024)

See Angels Fly

[7/10 · 28 April 2024]

A heart-warming family entertainment starring Hilary Swank, "Ordinary Angels", based on a true story, is set in rural Louisville, Kentucky in the early 90's and centres around the family of Alan Ritchson's Ed character. Sadly, this is a family struck by tragedy as we quickly learn that after giving birth to two daughters, his wife dies only five years later. Even worse, their youngest daughter, has a life-threatening kidney disorder and because hard-working but hard-up family man Ed can't afford medical insurance, the bills for little Michelle's specialist treatment just keep piling up. His devoted mother pitches in to help but clearly the family is about to go under...

Which is where the town hairdresser, Hilary Swank's Sharon Stevens comes in. She too is a struggling single parent, although her apparent predilection for drink has estranged her from her teenage-musician son. It seems as if her life too is on a downward spiral until she crashes the family funeral and hooks up with Ed and his adorable daughters as a result of which she decides to help them out. This she promptly proceeds to do, beginning with a fund-raising haircut-drive in her shop. But she doesn't stop there and soon afterwards drops full-square into the family's lives and despite his initial resistance, uses her business head and sheer cussedness when it comes to negotiating deals to take charge of Ed and his finances to help them stay afloat.

But little Michelle's condition takes a turn for the worse to the extent that only a kidney transplant can save her life. It all ends up in a madcap race in terrible winter conditions to get the little girl to a hospital six hours away and will require the willing cooperation of a number of "ordinary angels", coralled together by Sharon, to hopefully save the day.

Even if one suspects that some of the action is ramped up to varying degrees for dramatic effect and I'll include in that the suspiciously contrived-looking sub-plot of Sharon's broken relationship with her own boy, you'd have to have a heart as cold as Kentucky snow not to be warmed by this tear-jerker as it reaches its nail-biting climax.

Swank is very good as the boozy Stevens who finds her own self through helping others and Ritchson too shines as the big man pushed to his limits but whose obvious love for his kids pulls him through.

All in all, despite perhaps over-stoking the fire at times, this feel-good movie will put a smile on your face even as you at times will doubtless dab a tear or two away from your eyes.