blimey, a third film watched

hi there

wow, a third film watched in 2015, look you see. quite a hot streak i am on with all this movie watching business. i think it's happening because the many TV channels here have taken a rest from showing loads of NCIS repeats and thus i am more or less forced to select an optical disc to watch.

what did i watch? well, not a new film as such, and not one of the purchases i have waved around here a bit proudly, like some chicken which has just laid an egg.

yes, that's right. "hey, look at me, look at me! i am special, i have finally watched a film that more or less everyone else watched about four years ago" time.

we wanted to watch The Woman In Black when it came out, but it was one that eluded us somewhat. UK films rarely get a release in SA, which is where we were when this came out.  for those of you hollering "why not just download it, then", well, some of us really like those shiny discs.

a reminder about this film, and our wish to watch it, came from two sources. most blatantly, of course, has been the advertising for the sequel, or if you like follow up, to this. more pressing, however, was the illustrious and highly respected Payney mentioning it in passing during our most recent meeting and exchange of thought, theory, idea and ideology. we were interested already, of course, but the Payney seal of approval on a work of art carries an awful lot of gravity if not weight, and so i decided that i would procure, or otherwise obtain the film, at a time when it was convenient to do so. and, as you can see in this picture, HMV made this a most agreeable thing to do by selling it to me for a mere 1p shy of £3.00. cheers for that, much appreciated.

plot? i would have thought that all who wanted to see this have seen it. there could be, however, a number of you out there who, like us, wanted to see it, didn't quite do so and have somewhat forgotten the purpose or intention of doing so. for you, then - a young lawyer, touched by tragedy, is sent off to prove his worth to a law firm (where lawyers are invariably employed) by dealing with the estate of a deceased, somewhat reclusive lady. the reaction to the arrival of the lawyer in the village where the estate is held is rather Wicker Man in nature, and tragedy would seem to befall the village on an all too often basis. is the lawyer to blame? can he work out why? or is it mere co-incidence.

i really rather enjoyed this film. no, it's not the greatest or scariest film which i have ever seen, but it did cause me to jump with fright more than once. this it did without any overt violence or shock factor tricks, just good old-fashioned ace film-making and most splendid storytelling.

is that Daniel Radcliffe lad, for he is the one who plays the lawyer, any good? why, yes he is, and this is only the second time i have seen him in anything. that whole Harry Potter thing looked a bit too lengthy and somewhat Australian for me, but i did watch the one of them that had Ian Brown and Gaz Oldman in it. really good that one was.

i thus have no idea how he was in all that boy with a wand business, so to some extent did not have any preconceived ideas or expectations of him in this one. it, for the most part, relies on him to carry the film - for he is in damned nearly every scene - and this is something he achieves with great comfort. that said, the supporting cast are up to the task, and are equally superb insofar as none of them made us at any stage say "bit of sh!t acting, that".

yeah. i was keen to watch that Black Sabbath film i picked up after seeing a documentary on some band, the name of which escapes me for the moment, but my (considerably) better half selected, or perhaps elected, this one instead. i will have a gander at the other one soon. ish.

so, there you go  - if The Woman In Black is one of them films that you went "oh yeah, i want to see that" and didn't quite get around to it, it's 90 minutes that is well worth getting around to.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!