Shameless Self Expression

It’s the Blitz in London during WWII, and three young orphans (Roy Snart, Ian Weighill, and Cindy O’Callaghan) are put in the reluctant (and temporary) care of single, middle-aged eccentric Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury). Prim and proper but somewhat daffy, Miss Price is something of an apprentice witch, having been taking a course in witchcraft by correspondence (As a way to help in the war effort, of course). So far she’s managed to get pretty good at turning people into rabbits. So that’s, er…something. She hadn’t had any interest in finding a man (something the locals in her town seem to find strange), let alone having children in her plans. Now all of a sudden, for the foreseeable future Miss Price has three young charges in her care, as they go on a journey in search of the missing piece of a magical incantation from a spell book. Their mode of transport for this expedition? A flying bed, with a magical navigational bedknob, of course. First they go in search of the rather sho...

Christmas time at Hawthorne College, where sorority sisters at Mu Kappa Epsilon are rallying around one of their own (Imogen Poots), whose rape by a frat boy wasn’t treated with any seriousness by authorities at all. After the girls perform a pointed skit about date rape at an annual Christmas show on campus, the girls all start getting nasty social media messages from an unknown source. And then the girls start to go missing one by one. Cary Elwes plays a literature professor who gets on the wrong side of feminist students, whilst Caleb Eberhardt plays the socially awkward nice guy whom Poots starts to have romantic feelings for.   Didn’t we already do this? Twice? And wasn’t one of those times in 2006? Well yes, and here we are doing it again 10+ years later with this 2019 film from director Sophia Takal (a writer-director and occasional actress) and her co-writer April Wolfe (no significant feature film credits until this). The best I can say for this is that it sucks slight...

A look at the fiasco that was the 2000 American Federal Election, an election circus that was partly exacerbated by tensions among the Cuban-American community over the then-Clinton Administration’s handling of the Elian Gonzalez refugee case. An election that would become a total disaster with hanging chads, MIA mayors, and an infamous recount, resulting in the eventual election of Luckiest Guy in America (albeit depending on your political persuasion), George Dubya Bush.   Although it’s a tad dry and probably more useful to Americans, this Billy Corben documentary from 2020 will likely still satisfy political nerds, of which I count myself one. It’s interesting viewing this the same year as an American election which Toddler-in-Chief Former President Trump tried to pass off as somewhat similarly fraudulent as the 2000 U.S. Federal Election. That crazy election is this documentary’s subject. A documentary that’ll give you ‘Hanging Chads’ (Only in America can you get Hanging, P...

  Artist Jean Simmons is about to marry dull but thoroughly decent doctor James Donald, when her smoothie cad ex-boyfriend David Farrar (a former flyboy and current smuggler) comes waltzing back in her life. She finds herself unable to resist him and leaves a stable life with Donald for the clearly unscrupulous Farrar. Soon they are even married. Sadly for Simmons, once Farrar finds out that she’s a) pregnant, and b) doesn’t have quite as much money as he’d assumed, he drops her like a hot potato. The right utter bastard. Then out of the blue Simmons receives word that Farrar has died under mysterious circumstances. After a while, she has moved on and gotten back together with Donald, leaving the whole sordid mess behind her. And then Farrar turns up very well not dead and with an extortion plan in tow as he sets about making things very uncomfortable for Simmons. Madeleine Lebeau and Herbert Lom play a couple of Farrar’s underworld acquaintances, Bernard Lee turns up as a polic...