Little_Tyke Reviews

Jerry and Marge Go Large (2022)

Very funny, with a bonus at the end

[9/10 · 2 February 2024]

And it is the end I want mostly to comment upon. I watched the movie and it was great all the way through. I didn't think the Harvard student got his comeuppance enough, although his father did pull him out of the university and sent him home. Also, the mechanics of actually buying thousands of lottery tickets in one go was a bit fanciful. In reality, this could never happen. The store wouldn't have enough blank ticket rolls to reload the lottery machine often enough. But for me the complete surprise came in the last few minutes of the film when singer Tori Kelly performed the closing song. The first thing I did after the movie ended was to search for the name of this singer with the fantastic voice. And then I noticed as the very last entry in the credits she was listed as herself, so I immediately went to YouTube and searched for Tori Kelly. An amazing performer. The whole movie was good entertainment for the whole family, young or old.

The Pregnancy Scheme (2023 TV Movie)

Julia shouldn't have got off scot-free

[7/10 · 19 October 2023]

A slightly above average TV movie today with the usual crop of naughty and nice characters, plus a very naive main character, Julia, who suddenly finds out that she is pregnant by the ex-boyfriend. She attends berthing classes and is befriended by several dodgy women, the most dodgy one of all being Alana. Alana has devised a scheme whereby pregnant Julia urinates on a number of fake pregnancy test strips, that of course turn positive and which Alana then sells to other women who want to persuade their boyfriends to make a marriage proposal. Totally underhand. Anyone can see that it's a scam. Anyone but Julia, that is. But she is reluctant to participate. Very reluctant, though she desperately needs the money to pay for the berthing classes and other tests, because she's skint.

So when Alana hands Julia her first cut from the scam, which is not an insignificant amount, Julia is on board for faking further tests despite her misgivings. But Julia still keeps getting cold feet. The next time Alana drops off a bunch of test strips for Julia to do the necessary on them, Julia says she doesn't want to do it any more. Alana gets abrasive, then aggressive, but Julia cannot decide whether to go to the police or carry on with the scam. Eventually, Alana is found out and the police get involved. A newspaper headline announces that Alana has been found guilty. But Julia? We see her and her new baby six months later living a normal life with no sign of any punishment having happened for her complicit participation. I think she should have got a custodial sentence. Not massive, unlike Alana, who deserved 15 years, but a few years, certainly. Then maybe Julia will engage brain in future and be more wary of offers that sound too good to be true.

Wyrm (2019)

Absolute rubbish

[2/10 · 9 October 2023]

I only gave it two stars for the nice bright colours. I watched this online for about half an hour. Cast it to the TV for a bigger picture. But I just found it utterly boring. Why is the lead character portrayed as a nerd? Is that the director's take on what shy, introverted geeky teenage boys are like? No hunky football player would wear one of the necklets, I assume! Puberty actually starts a lot earlier than the age of the teens in this movie. Nowadays 12-year-old girls are getting their first period, or even earlier. But 12-year-old girls would never have got past the censor. And anyway, what in what century would parents permit schools to attach necklets to their kids of any age? Who on earth would vote for it? Kissing can lead to other things! Is the director just a little perverted here? Seems totally weird to even have the mad idea in the first place. Anyway, after about 30 minutes I was falling asleep with boredom, so I turned it off.

Standoff (I) (2016)

Who is the stupidest character in this movie?

[9/10 · 19 September 2023]

Who is the stupidest character in this movie? The cop! He hears gunshots, ooh, suspicious. He looks around a bit, gets even more suspicious and runs back to his police car. But instead of immediately raising the alarm, he kinda plays it down, then returns to the house. First major mistake.

Second major mistake. What cop is suspicious about the gunshots and the situation overall, but promptly marches up to the front door, stands in front of it, then knocks? Don't cops in America get any training whatsoever? What he should have done is approach the house cautiously, knock on the door, then immediately dart off to the side.

Or gone round the back.

This was a fantastic film and all three main actors were outstanding. But especially the little girl playing the character Bird, and I note that the actor has featured in several films since this one. Half-way through I was racking my brains as to how the denouement would arrive. In the end it was somewhat unconvincing. I really wanted to see the cops arrive in large numbers and take the gangster away to be put on trial, with Bird observing from the witness box. That would have been a fitting end for him.

The House Among the Cactuses (2022)

So dire, there's nothing to review

[1/10 · 7 September 2023]

I wish I had even an inkling of a clue what the heck this movies was all about. The parents had some kind of secret but we never discovered what the secret was. It must have warranted jail time if it had been uncovered, because the father didn't dare take his dying daughter, after a car accident, to a hospital. Then it seems they buried her in the grounds of their smallholding.

Suddenly a stranger appears and he looks well dodgy from the outset. Later, the mother discovers pictures of young girls in his car that had been hidden among the trees. One of the girls also found press cuttings describing the fate of several young girls. Whether the family was responsible and this is the secret they're trying to keep hidden, or whether the interloper was somehow involved, we shall never know. A complete waste of 90 minutes.

Baby Done (2020)

Character study of a selfish, mean, underhand egotist

[5/10 · 25 August 2023]

I could not like the female lead character in a million years. Almost from the word go she was annoying. She treated her boyfriend like dirt, and the poor sap kept asking her to marry him. What an idiot! She was just full of it, yet all it was, her amazing world championship dream, was about climbing trees for a living. That's it. The writer must have driven past a team of professional tree surgeons at some point and thought, aha, we could make a movie out of this, making it super interesting by casting a character to play a truly awful, selfish, mean, egotist and see where it goes. Oh, and let's make her pregnant.

Well, for me it couldn't go fast enough towards the ending. She had roundly cheesed off all and sundry who were trying to help throughout the pregnancy, but she was fixated on going to the other side of the world to take part in a tree-climbing competition. Even though everybody kept telling he she couldn't go because she was pregnant, her cloth ears banished all that was left of her common sense, if she had even had any in the first place.

As you might be able to tell, I didn't like the character very much at all and I pity the child who will now grow up wondering what the heck kind of mother is this?

Maid for Revenge (2023 TV Movie)

Excellent TV movie marred by a few plot holes

[9/10 · 24 July 2023]

This Canadian TV movie was a cut above the usual trash, but there's something bugging me. Namely, the character, Billy. He's the guy whose truck Annie tried to steal, but he caught her in the act. So what were we to make of Billy? In any TV movie you start looking for the potential perp early on and Billy was definitely a suspect in my book. But the guy was a bit of an enigma. Although he was keen to help Annie, after initial reservations, I wondered what was he seeking to get out of it? It could only be that he fancied Annie and looked forward to some sort of relationship. But soon doubts about Billy were raised. While Billy and Annie are driving in Billy's truck, Annie notices some of Billy's business cards which state a different name, that of someone called Dave. The explanation Billy gave Annie when questioned was very unconvincing. Then later in the movie Billy and Annie are searching another suspect's house in the process of which Billy came across a wad of cash and some jewellery in a drawer, both of which he pocketed without a qualm. So, Billy or Dave or whoever is as dodgy as heck. This was never explained throughout the rest of the movie. Finally, Annie and Billy managed to corner the culprits and next we see them enjoying a vacation together. But Annie never knew about the items he stole and I have to wonder what did she let herself in for?

Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey (2018 TV Movie)

So shocking that the police didn't believe her

[9/10 · 15 July 2023]

I don't know whether the filmmaker was playing fast and loose with the facts, but after Lisa was taken to the police station after her escape, initially two female police officers refused to believe her story, suggesting that she was making it up to get attention.

Often in TV movies the police are depicted as incompetent fools, but this was exasperating. It's as if the police officers interviewing her just didn't want to believe her story. This says a lot about police attitude.

It was only when Larry Pinkerton got involved that belief started to kick in. I was on tenterhooks that Lisa might at any point have been let go to return to her miserable, abusive life at her grandmother's home.

It wasn't shown in the movie, but I hope and expect that the grandmother was charged as an accessory to the domestic rapes. And the mother, too, should have had some serious jail time for ignoring her daughter's pleas for help for so long.

In the movie, Katie Douglas as Lisa really turned in a marvellous performance.

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers (2022)

He cannot live with a guilty conscience

[8/10 · 30 June 2023]

This movie tells the story of a city slicker who fancies himself as a hunter. He has absolutely no outdoor skills whatsoever and is as clumsy as heck. With a borrowed rifle, which he has no idea how to handle and in fact handles it very dangerously, shoving a bullet into the clip that fell on the ground and got a bit muddy, he says goodbye to his wife and young family and sets off into the forest to kill a deer for the freezer.

On reaching the woods he makes his way along a trail, then through thick undergrowth. I was waiting for the moment when the fool would trip over and shoot himself in the head, but he was lucky. So far. Finally, he espied a deer quite a way away and set off in pursuit. At some point, whether by accident of design, he fired the rifle at random. Didn't get the deer. But a short while later, he stumbles upon a man lying unconscious, probably dead, on the ground, obviously shot and bleeding. Suddenly, it dawns upon our Mr Hunter that he was the one who shot this chap. Full of remorse, he then plans to evade punishment by burying the body. He grabs a shovel and pickaxe from his truck and traipses back to the site. As he is digging, the "corpse" on the ground comes alive again. He was never dead.

Now our hero - I use the term advisedly - is overcome with joy. He didn't murder anyone after all. So he stops digging the shallow grave and tries to help the victim, who turns out to be some kind of loner living off grid. For a while they engage in conversation. Maybe at this point, if the hunter had really tried to get the guy to hospital, or at least call for help, the loner could have survived. But instead, they talked for a bit more and all the while the victim was getting weaker and weaker.

And then the old guy goes and dies, so back to Plan A, which is to bury the body. Expending considerable effort, the nutcase with the rifle manages to manhandle the body into the grave and cover it over with leaves and brushwood. Then he goes down to a creek to wash off the blood on his hands. As he is doing this he gets some kind of premonition from his wife. And suddenly, the man realises he cannot carry on living with this awful secret that he planned to tell no one about. In the next scene, he is back at the grave, fishing the old guy out again. Again, I wondered: is the old guy going to come alive again? Nope. He is well and truly deceased by now.

Finally, we observe the hunter dragging the corpse to his pickup. He then drives it to the local police station and hands himself in. We never get to see the final outcome, as he can barely speak to the duty police officer, let alone describe what has happened.

The film ends.

Now, we can only surmise what happens next. He will probably be arrested and charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by initially hiding the body. But I don't know whether any charges would stick, as it was obviously an accidental death caused by utter stupidity. He will never forget what happened for as long as he lives, but having, belatedly, done the right thing, society might just forgive him for being such a fool, and he won't need to lie to his wife and kids.

The message this movie sends out loud and clear to anyone who thinks he can easily become macho man and get a gun: Just don't, okay! Stick with the day job. Choose a hobby that isn't going to endanger complete strangers. It really made me think of the times I have walked through woods just for the fresh air and heard gunshots far away.

Everything Beautiful Is Far Away (2017)

Ludicrous fantasy

[6/10 · 27 June 2023]

This movie was relaxing to watch, but oh so stupid. For instance, the man has this robot head that has no power because he has run out of batteries. So why doesn't he have a solar panel? Out there in the desert, a foldable panel would keep that head charged all the time. Then, what happens when the fire tablets in his little stove run out? Where's the nearest shop? Oh, there isn't one. Oops, no more boiled turnip. Let's starve! The man and the girl wandered across miles of dunes and often encountered rubbish. Who left all this rubbish? Did no one think of erecting a home-made sign saying "Take your rubbish home! Keep the desert tidy!" And a complete puzzle: What did all those flocks of birds at the crystal lake do all the time? Just fly around, land, catch some fish, fly around again? Another reviewer was pleased that the man wan't constantly trying to get into her pants, but he never showed the slightest inkling of wanting to, anyway. I was hoping the leaves Rola found might be an aphrodisiac of some sort, but no such luck. And finally, is it not boring to eat turnips for all eternity? Wouldn't a nice fried egg and bacon be a welcome change occasionally? Well, I suppose they did eat a fish from the crystal lake. The film was stupid from beginning to end, though very relaxing, and Julia Garner is always worth looking at.

Eden Lake (2008)

Was it really horror? Or a warning?

[3/10 · 17 May 2023]

The story was shocking for a reason. It wanted to wake up Britain. It wanted to shock Britain into realising that this kind of spiteful, vicious behaviour is becoming the norm in many communities, especially in England. A certain class of young men and women have no role models nowadays. They have a huge inferiority complex. To compensate, they watch violent porn on their smartphones, they disrespect everyone in authority. They have absolute hatred for the "them" in "them and us". That is, anyone who is perceived to be "other", an upstanding member of society, who is obviously well-off, driving an expensive car, even designer shades is fair game for their games. Their games start off low-key, but when confronted, become much more dangerous for the victims. If the victims are stupid enough to accost these gangs, it's not the gangs who will come off worst, but the victims, as in this movie. The couple here are stupid in the extreme. If they had moved away from the lake immediately the dog did its business, and certainly after the main yob exposed himself, both victims would have lived. Maybe lived to complain to the police. They could have climbed into their car and driven 30 miles away to a different beauty spot. But these two were facing impossible odds by staying put, so my sympathy for their plight started waning pretty soon into the movie. Neither the man nor the woman could do anything right. Not an ounce of common sense between them. Take the woman, for example, as she suddenly saw the young Asian lad she'd seen earlier. The instant he started explaining how his mum was working shifts, but then said she was coming to pick him up, she might have wondered, why, when he's got a bike? And the next minute he's on his mobile phone, looking shifty, yet she doesn't suspect anything. The violence they were subjected to was over the top purely to exaggerate the desperate state of the nation in 2008, and now it's 2023 and the nation has got a lot worse. Chav behaviour is everywhere to see. Stabbings are becoming common now. Police numbers are dwindling. Ordinary people are left alone without any help at all. If some way of punishing the culprits is not found, they won't be torturing victims in the quietness of a forest, but in villages and towns. It has already happened to some extent. These bullies need to be culled, though you only need to oust the ringleaders. They are the dangerous ones. We saw in the movie how most of the other boys realised just how bad it all was getting, yet the ringleader had total control over them. A warning for the nation, a warning to the government.

You Can't Escape Me (2023 TV Movie)

One of the best TV movies I've watched

[9/10 · 2 May 2023]

I never hold out much hope for TV movies. They are usually so predictable. But "You Can't Escape Me" was excellent. Fast-paced, good dialogue, several attractive characters, especially the actress Fidelia Grace, whose character was naive and misguided, but eventually - almost too late - realised the error she had made. I could imagine the Carver father, a very influential lawyer, trying to take out some kind of civil lawsuit against the lead protagonist, Erin, for killing his son, even though it was totally self-defence on Erin's part. Gina Vitori, the actress playing Erin, must have had to put in quite a lot of physical effort in training up for this role, as the self-defence classes were very convincing. Maybe, hopefully, other abused women will take the hint and look into ways of protecting themselves. There were a few holes in the story. For example, how was Erin married for six months before any abuse started? The son, a psychopathic control freak, could not have tolerated six months without breaking into a rage far sooner. For once, the cops at the end behaved decently towards Erin, as often in TV movies they are a complete waste of space.

The Road Dance (2021)

Selfish acts lead to tragedy

[2/10 · 29 April 2023]

All the previous reviews give glowing comments about The Road Dance, but I watched it with an increasing sense of unease. I know the movie was set in a time when talking openly about sexual matters was considered shameful by all and sundry, but because of this shame the girl felt, a man died at his own hand, a baby died because the girl did not take proper steps to care for it while pregnant, the mother encouraged her other daughter to adopt underhand tactics to protect the family's reputation, and the police office was frustrated in doing his job as he should have done to bring the rapist to justice and prevent him from committing a similar attack on some other young girl. And all because the girl did not want gossip to spread throughout the community. Rather selfish really. I cannot rate this movie very highly.

Queen & Slim (2019)

Illogical plot

[4/10 · 16 April 2023]

What a stupid movie! Just five minutes in and the driver lunges for his phone that his date had grabbed off him. In doing so, he swerves the car, attracting the attention of a patrolling police officer, who turns out to be the devil incarnate as far as police officers go, which in America isn't hard. Now, the date is a female, newly qualified lawyer fresh from college. Obviously intelligent, quick-witted, and well versed in legal stuff. But what does she suggest after the guy shoots the police officer dead? She suggests they make a run for it! What happened to all that education she had to become a lawyer? Didn't it cross her mind, or his, that this was a case she could almost certainly win in a court of law, especially with the dashcam footage to back up their story? In fact, her guy initially actually wanted to hand himself in, but she persuaded him otherwise. So off they go, repeating one crazy decision after another. They stop near a field so he can see what it's like to ride a horse. They hang out the car window, as if waving a flag saying "Here we are!". Finally, the confrontation at the end with the police who arrived in force. The police said "Get down on the ground!". They didn't. The police repeated the demand several times. Nope. Don't want to live! So the police shot them both to death, first the woman lawyer, then the man. If they had complied and given themselves up, they would almost certainly have survived legal proceedings with a relative slap on the wrist for running.

Just plain nuts. But the scenery was good. And that turquoise car was fantastic!

Temptation Under the Sun (2022 TV Movie)

Nice, easy viewing after lunch

[7/10 · 5 April 2023]

I just watched this in the afternoon movie slot on Channel 5 in the UK. It was not bad. The acting was passable and the lovely Caribbean scenery was a welcome change from the posh mansions and fancy lifestyles that usually feature in TV movies. For an afternoon movie I thought it was pretty steamy in parts, especially when the two main actors, a man and a woman, made little attempt to climb out of a hole they had fallen into, but proceeded instead to spend some quality time together with very little on. But that hole! Was that supposed to be a sinkhole? It was so very obviously man-made by the film crew, because the perfectly perpendicular walls could not possibly have formed by accident. Anyway, one could see the workings.

Finally the bad guys got their come-uppance and the two love birds parted, for Cassady, the girl, had to return to Detroit for some unfinished business involving a mobster. That, too, got sorted and two months later she returned to the island in the sun and to Travis, her leading man, who had invited her to the reopening of the bar under new management - his. Cue the music and they are probably solving yet more crimes as we live and breathe right now.

The Rascals (1980)

Very good French language

[6/10 · 31 March 2023]

I liked this film mainly because it is the first French language film I have watched that I could understand quite well, although the English subtitles helped a lot. I have watched a lot of French movies, but always could only understand a word here and there. But in Les Turlupins most of the actors enunciated their lines so perfectly that I would recommend the film to anyone keen to learn French. Also the quirky behaviour of the boys and the very sensual demeanour of the girls was a eye-opener. Perhaps they were living through a war and just thought every day might be their last. An enjoyable movie.

She Went Missing (2022 TV Movie)

Rather wooden acting from some of the characters

[6/10 · 21 March 2023]

For a TV movie in the afternoon slot it wasn't bad, though the acting by some of the characters was poor. Also, what was the director thinking by casting the rather weird Pete as receptionist? The plot was so simple, I was able to fill in the blanks in the first 15 minutes. An old friend (male) from high school appears, who was besotted with the lead character way back then. Now he's out to get his revenge for her offhand treatment of him. They go on a kind of date. A few minutes before he attempted to kiss her, I said, he's going to try kissing her, but she rebuts the advance. Bingo! Now he's really riled, but doesn't show it. Finally, Pete seemed to have disappeared from the movie (better job offer elsewhere?) and the girl is tied to a chair with the loosest knots imaginable. So she escapes, fights off the high school stalker and decides she wants her husband back. They had been separated on a trial basis.

Intet (2022)

One of the sickest movies I've ever seen

[1/10 · 5 January 2023]

The author must be sick in the head to even think of, let alone write, this horrific story. It is set out to shock from the outset, as a bunch of deranged, psychotic kids aged around 14 set out to maim each other, steal a Jesus statue from a church, decapitate a dog, and rape an underage girl to get her to sacrifice her virginity. None of the "children" seems to have any concept of what's right in living one's life. Of course, it is implied that the parents are to blame, but you hardly see any adults anyway. The kids have taken over the asylum! And all because one boy at the start of the movie rebels and climbs a tree, refusing to come down. Just before, he had given some sort of daft soliloquy that impressed the rest of the class so much that they decided to be bad. I'd throw the lot of them in juvenile detention for quite a long time (years) to give each of them pause for thought.

Cradle Did Fall (2021 TV Movie)

Utterly useless police detective

[3/10 · 27 October 2022]

I wouldn't have bothered writing a review about this movie, which was mediocre at best, but I once I realised just how utterly useless the police detective was, I just had to. When the best friend, Lindsay, was found dead, the detective just assumed she had committed suicide, but I expect even the most rudimentary forensic examination would have shown that she was strangulated before being strung up. But would the detective listen to Taylor? Oh no, he had already made his mind up.

But there are so many plot holes, anyway. How did Skylar's mother manage to lift a dead body on to some rope on her own to fake the suicide? The victim was not a small woman. The movie shown in the afternoon movie slot was very confusing towards the end, because there were several scenes jumbled together, but that may not have been the director's fault, as this particular TV channel has a habit of censoring murder scenes in its afternoon movies, so the camera will cut from someone wielding a knife or gun to the dead body lying on the floor, with all violent frames removed.

Then there's Lindsay, the naive victim of the fake suicide. Suddenly she started to be suspicious of the woman who turned up at her house purporting to be from the police, but Lindsay remained sitting on the sofa for vital minutes, pondering what to do, instead of running hell for leather for the door. She'd still be alive but for her slow reaction.

This was a very untidy movie from start to finish.

Love Triangle Nightmare (2022 TV Movie)

TV Movies may be getting better

[9/10 · 23 September 2022]

For a TV movie, this was entertaining and fast-paced. Sadly, there was a surfeit of victims, but to an extent they brought it upon themselves by not engaging brain. Because, actually, the doctor was too creepy for words and anyone must have suspected him. The doctor's house in the country was also used in another film with Hannah Vandenbygaart. I've noticed before that TV companies frequently use the same props. However, in Love Triangle Nightmare aka Deadly Divorce Party it became obvious that the dear old avuncular doc really had the hots for the cute daughter, so the plan probably was to marry the totally unsuspecting mother, push her down another staircase, then play the role of loving stepfather. And him a famous prize-winning surgeon! Who would have thought it? Anyway, the daughter saved the day in the nick of time and the dastardly doc met his just deserts - even though he said he was stuffed after that big meal they had just eaten. Honestly, TV movies nowadays are so sanitised.

Is There a Killer in My Family? (2020 TV Movie)

Husband a wimp, wife was good

[7/10 · 31 August 2022]

An above average TV movie for afternoon viewing. I had seen it before. I've probably seen most afternoon movies before. As long as sufficient time passes since the last viewing, I can watch it again. This movie took a while for me to remember it, but as soon as I saw the rather ugly house on the island I did remember. Then pretty much everything fell into place. This time it was more about how the characters interacted, since I kept remembering what was about to happen next, kinda. Still some misremembered surprises, though. The ending was a bit weird, however. Did I understand correctly that Kevin had had an affair with the girl who ran through the woods in a white robe? Kevin was such an irritating guy, the way he kept asking her how she felt over and over. And apologising. Was that his guilty conscience speaking? And at the very end, the captain's boat was putted up at the jetty while the captain loaded suitcases into the hold. Along comes Kevin, limping. Looking sorry for himself. But it wasn't clear whether they were both leaving, or only her, off on her new wish for a vacation, or indeed Kevin alone after his wife had dumped him for sleeping around? I hope it was the latter. Anyway, the movie was better that most, so I'll give it 7, not least because I thought the girl who played Carly was an attractive character.

Blue Bayou (2021)

Not a lot of sympathy from me

[3/10 · 8 August 2022]

At the very beginning, as he was being interviewed for a job, I thought, now here is a guy who is deferential, personable, and desperate for work. I usually support the underdog, which is what he appeared to be. And then the interviewer mentioned his previous felonies and it all went downhill from there. Throughout the story he seemed to have a death wish that deportation was inevitable. He just rubbed everyone up the wrong way, even the people who were trying to help him avoid deportation. He flatly refused to go and talk with his adoption mother, but then he did, only to find that she would turn up in court anyway, despite his misgivings about their relationship. He only found this out later, because he wasn't actually in court, being beaten up by a nasty cop and buddies, which admittedly wasn't his fault.

But about half-way through the movie I was losing interest in what might happen to him. Earlier I had really wanted some trick of American "justice" to discover a loophole that would allow him to stay. But then he and his mates broke into a motorcycle shop and stole several tens of thousands of dollars' worth of motorbikes.

After that little episode I wanted him to get his comeuppance and it was no surprise that America had no place for a repeat felon. It was awful to watch little Jessie and his wife/partner distraught at the airport as the officials marched him away, but I had agreed by then that, indeed, deportation was inevitable.

Perfect Nanny (2019)

Check your child minders, then check again

[9/10 · 2 June 2022]

I would have regretted watching this movie, because the ending was so horrific. But then I discovered that the story was very closely based on an actual case in New York in 2012, so then it became a warning to parents everywhere to be much more vigilant when searching for a child minder. A relatively short interview is not enough, and candidates may be in cahoots with dubious referees being asked for references. But how come just anyone, a total stranger, can come into someone's home and be trusted with the care of children without child services or the appropriate agency vetting the prospective employee first?

That said, there were enough clues in the story, taking it at face value, that Louise, the child minder, was daft in the head. The way she was abrupt with her employer when she did not get her own way and flounced off home with hardly an au revoir. Later, the daughter told her mother that Louise had done a wee in the children's potty, but the mother just disregarded this as a made-up story and did not ponder even for a minute why would a very young child think of making up that particular scenario, as it is so outlandish. The Arab woman, Louise's kind of friend from the playground, started to become worried about Louise's attitude, but did not mention it to the parents. The man's mother, Sylvie, came for dinner and stated categorically that Louise was dangerous. Again, the parents did not react. Their own lives were too important to be thinking what might be happening in the apartment while the parents were at work.

A terrible, shocking case in real life and more than adequately depicted in the movie.

The Furies (2019)

Utter rubbish

[1/10 · 17 May 2022]

Just to reiterate, this film is utter rubbish. I would rather watch paint dry. Red paint, of course. I switched off after 40 minutes. I just couldn't be bothered to watch further.

Danger in the Spotlight (2021 TV Movie)

Surprising twist at the end

[5/10 · 1 April 2022]

When I saw Anna Marie Dobbins in the cast list I couldn't not watch, since she's my latest crush. The movie however was pretty terrible, with Martha, the other main actress constantly looking perplexed, as if try as she might, she just couldn't learn her lines. The twist at the end made me jump out of my skin, because I wasn't expecting it. But from that moment I realised I hadn't really understood what was going on. The husband, though, always looked suspicious, and he had only left the house for 5 minutes before returning and catching Martha out, who was going through his stuff in his office, which he had expressly told her not to do. Later on, Martha and Daphne seemed to be getting along together just fine, with Martha gently soaping Daphne down in the bath a bit too intensely, I thought. After the denouement with creepy husband dead, Martha and Daphne cemented their friendship, which was a bit more than just friends, if you get my meaning.