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bigdaddykowalski
Reviews
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
A fine thriller for the time
Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten's masterful performances carry this small masterpiece. It's a dark tale of deception loaded with incestuous overtones, using much hand symbolism as often seen in Hitchcock's movies.
A very young Hume Cronyn plays a role rarely seen in older movies. He plays a closeted gay person who seems to be perfectly happy in his own skin and free of personal torment or malice. This character has quite a bromance going with Charlie's father. Throughout the movie the two of them repeatedly pair up and disappear together. This is a far cry from the closeted, tortured gay characters seen in "Strangers on a Train" and "Rope", and from the evil ways gay men are often portrayed in old movies in general.
The romance between the detective and Charlie seems a bit rushed, the detective having known her for only a few days. Certainly too soon to propose marriage by any standards. Plus, although the actor playing the detective, McDonald Carey, is only five years older than Teresa Wright, he looks old enough to be her father.
One particularly odd moment occurred when the detective asked Charlie's mother if he could take Charlie out for the evening so he could "interview" her. Her mother doesn't seem to mind this request, but instead suggests he take Ann, Charlie's younger sister, who looks to be maybe 9 years old. And the mother knows nothing about the man. Is that what mothers did in the 1940's, just hand their prepubescent daughters over to men who were practically strangers?
Overall, an entertaining, if not prefect, Hitchcock movie.
The Madame Blanc Mysteries (2021)
Dragged down by bad acting and weak writing
If you can get through the first episode and like it, you're probably good for the season. As characters are introduced, we are taken into a world where there's not much room for believability or a truly plausible mystery.
Instead, this show is more of the Matlock/Murder She Wrote/Charlie's Angels school, which is simple, easy, stagy, and at times making attempts to be mildly humorous. I appreciate the advanced age of the cast, because old people have adventures too, although one might speculate perhaps the star/creator/writer chose her cast in part because so many are obviously older than her.
One might wonder, though, why the characters of Judith and Jeremy, both played by actors in their seventies, are so broadly and loudly portrayed. Evidently the two actors are TV veterans, not the stage, and yet they play their parts like community theater actors trying to get noticed by someone in the back row. They need to rein it in a little, imo.
My wife and I are both fans of British crime dramas such as Line of Duty, Dalgliesh and Manhunt, maybe some Grantchester thrown in as well, but we found this more frivolous variety of "mystery" unwatchable. It is to mysteries what Doc Martin is to medical shows, except that Doc Martin is quite entertaining, well written and very well acted.
Bargain Mansions (2017)
Sure wanted to like this show
I owned a historic Tudor in KC, and now live in another historic Tudor Revival home in St. Louis, so as an old house person I was pumped to see a show centered on KC renovations. Started with the Kansas City Shirtwaist, an interesting project which picked up a partially restored home and completed it.
Part way through I started to wonder about the many odd color choices for finishes and tiles. Coral on the porch and front door, navy blue walls and a couple ceilings, lavender blue kitchen cabinets, orange rugs, green, gray... every possible color was vomited into this home.
And then the fixtures. A brassy ceiling lamp that appeared to have been stolen from the lobby of a Drury Inn, for example. Bathroom sconces that looked terribly out of place. The decorating was a designer's nightmare, not only a riot of clashing colors but also overly trendy for a house the developer herself described as "traditional". There were two rooms with dark ceilings, a regrettable fad which reminds why there is a color called "ceiling white". One room with four navy blue walls and a navy blue ceiling was so dark the ambience looked like the inside of a haunted house.
The host is not so much a decorator as she is a well-meaning person in heels and tight jeans with poor taste who gets to decorate entire houses on her own. The end result looks like a Home Goods shopping spree crashed into a full assortment of Sherwin Williams color chips. Quite displeasing to the eye. And in the end, any trace of the charm of the old house had been thoroughly erased. She means well. But I imagine the buyer pool interested in the houses gets smaller with every odd decorating choice.
Icing on the cake, even the show's title is wrong. 5000 square feet and 4 br is nobody's "mansion", not in KC where real estate is cheap and the basic construction quality for such houses is not exceptional. From Wikipedia: "Calling a dwelling a mansion indicates a level of grandeur and consumption considerably greater than the norm in that location, with the additional connotation of quality, and correlates highly with the housing patterns of the upper class." Sorry, not even close to that high bar in any way.
Rather than be so offended again, I'll just not watch this show.