Change Your Image
dgwyn66
Reviews
A Way of Life (2004)
Remarkable film debut
A Way of Life is an extraordinary and disturbing film.It seems scarcely credible that the director is making her debut and the performances of the largely unknown cast so powerful and totally convincing.I would feel confident in asserting,for example, that the performance of Stephanie James in the central role of Leigh-Anne will stand comparison with those who will be honoured at the Oscar ceremony next month.Her portrayal of an attractive and intelligent young woman smouldering with racial hatred and frustration is one that will live in the memory .It is a film that gets under your skin and forces you to ask yourself some fundamental questions.How did these young people get to be the way they are? Is the connection between poverty and deprivation on the one hand and violence and cruelty on the other too facile,although it should be said that the film itself makes no such facile connection.The whole thing is unsettling and uncomfortable and you cannot take your eyes from the unfolding tragedy. By chance I had seen Clint Eastwood's accomplished Million Dollar Baby a couple of days before.Of the latter The Guardian's film critic,Peter Bradshaw, rightly remarked that,three-quarters of the way through, it delivers to the audience a right hook like Jack Dempsey.A Way of Life delivers a barrage of right and left hooks that leave one bruised and soul-searching as one emerges from the cinema.
The Smiling Ghost (1941)
I saw this film 58 years ago
I saw this film 58 years ago so don't expect any vivid detail but as I saw it with a group of my contemporaries i recall the atmosphere of the occasion with great clarity. It was a "B" feature(something that has disappeared from the cinema now)a filler before the main film and it was an example of a genre very dear to our hearts at the time-the comedy thriller.Very much in the mould of The Cat and the Canary(I refer to the Bob Hope version of course) it was chock full of one-liners,sliding panels and eccentric characters not the least of whom was the wonderful Willie Best.Even after all these years I can still remember his words when he catches sight of the eponymous apparition.Overtaking a galloping horse he wails "Move over horse.Make way for someone who can really run".It gave us all a lot of fun then and some recollected pleasure now for me anyway.