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Leopardman4
Reviews
Coquelicots (2007)
familiar elements
"Life is all about choices. One Christmas day. Three parallel lives. Three individuals in trouble. In one way or another, all of them have to face down their conscience and answer the real questions."
So claims the blurb. This flic is about the usual entertainment subjects of underworld peep shows: putes, pimps, drugs, johns, violence, etc. - and just because it's a Noel vid, it ends with motherhood redemption.
Story-telling, nothing more. If you want to know what happens next, you will follow along to the end, and then as the credits roll, you'll grab a pizza, a coup de rouge, walk your dog, whatever. Entertainment of a kind, no nonsense about the "real questions".
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Cop for a Day (1961)
Here be SPOILERS
Many of us Hitchcock-lovers enjoy post-mortems where we pick apart the stories, particularly when we find plot-holes - and we often do. The action of a story carries us right past an illogicality, so that we fail to notice it until we go back for a 2nd look.
After enjoying Matthau's performance, I noticed that the rationale for rubbing out the female witness would be doubly applicable to the 2 cops guarding the witness. They both get a better look at the killer than the woman may have done.
No problem, Hitch: it gave me the extra pleasure of feeling like a schmotty!
Perry Mason: The Case of the Lonely Heiress (1958)
Virtually unlike the book "The Case of the Lonely Heiress"
I have read a few of the PM books, "The Case of the Lonely Heiress" among them. This televised distortion is disappointingly different from the book.
Yes, the book has a lonely hearts magazine... and that is the only similarity. The book's colorful characters are missing from this presentation.
The motivation for the crimes - a contested will - is entirely absent from this show, as are the relatives of the deceased and the husband-and-wife team who operate the magazine, all colorful characters.
Compare the compressed version of "The Case of the Vagabond Virgin" (televised as "Vagabond Vixen" in the Eisenhower era, when all American women were virgins and acknowledgment of the word could imply that another condition might exist for American women: unthinkable!). The story in "Vixen" is simplified and abbreviated, but it remains the same basic story.
None of the several PMs I've read has been subjected to the wholesale butchery that has mistreated this story. I'm not saying that the televised story is not enjoyable... but it can be disappointing to a reader of its source.
Phromajan Suay Phan Sayong (2015)
Decent flic: skin, soft music, picturesque scenery, sympathetic characters
Familiar elements: attractive young people in shiny cars go to an exotic tropical paradise getaway.
Visually pleasing, lush Thai tropical surroundings, restrained music. Thai food beforehand could be nice.
Tatts are a key theme of carnal significance. Might wanna give your date a full body scan just in case.
It's a nicely paced soft-core porn. Smooth, lovely, not cheapo. Graceful ladies, hunky deeudes (new spelling, hope y'like it).
Yes, there is gore. So conservatively introduced that it could be erotic... except that it is gore...
And to be on the safe side don't forget to feed Tabby!
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Don't Interrupt (1958)
Double immorality
Actually, this story contains TWO acts of immorality involving silence.
The first is, of course, the little boy's failure to announce the presence of the figure struggling in the snow outside the window.
This is the first silent act of avarice.
The second is the waiter's failure to tell the boy that the silver dollar has fallen to the floor.
His silence is also motivated by avarice.
He knows that the dollar belongs to the little boy, but he fails to speak out so that he can confiscate the money, to the evident disgust of his bar-tending colleague.
The waiter is an adult; he should be less dazzled by the dollar, but he uses his adult reasoning powers to rationalize his act.
(Furthermore, if he were a bit foxier, he might have returned the money in hope of getting a tip from the boy's parents, thereby getting money and moral kudos, too.)