Film Reviews by JD

Bristling with awards usually means a film that needs industry support. Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't need any awards everyone knows he's fantastic. The direction was off-beat and stark maybe that needs an arty thumbs up, but the plot really is not nice. It is the worst of everyone but in a very real way.

This is a gentle clay animation that is great for anyone from 0 - 140. The story of a bright lamb who wanted to have a break has the Nick Park stamp of excellent animation all over it although he isn't credited. I prefer Wallace and Gromit for character, none of these characters is quite as amusing.

Why did they do the Wall with Bob Geldof when they could do this? This is a wonderful mixture of live concert, abstract animation and a documentary of the deaths of Waters father and grandfather. The music matching the context well and winding in a coherent plot. The personal losses of 2 wars are hardly new genres but refreshingly blunt. A great film for all Floyd fans.

I remember when Lee was an angry young stand up full of left wing loathing and bile. Now he is a fat, middle aged and middle class whingeing interminably about rubbish. This is relieved by very amateur clips only one of which is worth seeing (a couple hosed with sewage when ever they select a certain channel on the television.) His small select studio audience must be on drugs, they laugh hysterically at everything he says. Maybe he is better live.

Some of it is great, some not great. This is a comedy of a clumsy likeable IT nerd who is getting divorced and has an extremely bright son who finds him stupid. The son is the least good part. A child actor of only moderate ability playing the role of a child who is impossibly gifted in every walk of life who hates his father. Far from being a comic set up it is so grating as to spoil any humour. His wife is just nasty for no particular point. Her new partner is strange and pathetic in quite an amusing way and his boss heroically hedonistic but a bit silly. Only Darren Boyd's character has enough about them to be engaging. Generally funny but also annoying.

A great cast doing a well written comedy drama. This is classy English humour. There is some satire about the politics of getting a child into a C of E school, but it is not overdone and never patronising. I liked the clash of C of E sects and particularly the very dry arch deacon who drops the vicar off at impossible places. Funnier than most English sit-com.

Will Ferrell does his usual thing but this time with an awful script. A delicate, sensitive but very successful broker is convicted of a crime that results in his gold digging girlfriend ditching him and then him hiring someone to make him tougher. It is a plot and particularly script that would make most actors cry. Will makes it work better than most but it still is trash comedy.

You really have to be in the mood for this to work. It is an abstract film with virtually no plot except that it follows the album. There are horrific moments of a young boy wandering through the trenches piled high with corpses, beautiful animations of surreal intricacy, but there are also scenes of Bob Geldof singing and completely ruining Pink Floyd's tunes. You would not have remembered his voice being so awful until you hear this. Punk is the only genre he could have survived in. Music he cannot do nor can he act. Why did they cast him? Breaking up a room is not difficult to act except for Bob. If you could edit out BG and just have the animations it would be hypnotic.

If you like Michael McIntyre this is him at his best. Lots of beautifully observed comedy. Just brilliant

For the very young (4 - 8) there are too many scary scenes, Nicole Kidman and Peter Capaldi both dramatically play their baddie roles (Capaldi strangely not in the credits). For adults there are scenes of severe silliness that will appeal like riding the bath down the stairs on a huge flood water. I don't expect many between 12 and 22 will be looking at this. There were some disappointments. Doing animated fur is obviously difficult. Sometimes it looked OK but then kept changing. A lot of moderately sad scenes which seemed out of proportion to the fewer moderately jolly ones and Hugh Bonneville not good casting.

Pretty much all the acting is good but Freeman and Cumberbatch are fantastic. I could watch them all day. The part of the plot which centres on detective skills is pretty good though the effect of words floating around is a bit strange. The rest of the plot is not great. I hope the actors do more and the writers and directors less.

It feels as if the production has spent a huge effort making it as real as possible. If you watch all 3 discs in one go you start to appreciate the thoughts and feelings of a Viking, their beliefs and fears, their culture and motivations. The characters are all well played and believable albeit a little unusual. 459 minutes of viewing was never uninteresting, the plot, the graphic fight scenes, the acting all excellent. I hope they bring out a 4th series. The bonus feature on Viking Gods is well worth watching.

This is intelligent humour at its finest. The wit is (for me) not laugh out loud, but is pleasant and gentle. It is silly, clever, satirical and political. It relies a bit heavily on racism and xenophobia generalising on corruption and brutality in the Russian southern states, making it remarkably un-P.C.

A strange idea, Sherlock Holmes with dementia, filled with guilt and regret, has retreated to a life of bitter recluse. Only Ian MacKellen could have pulled this frankly ridiculous drama into any other than a stuporous bore. He does an old man pretty well, not just by being quite old himself but by further subtleties of gesture and gait. Recommended only as a masterclass in acting but not as a drama.

Leslie Nielsen is an icon of modern slapstick comedy. There is no one who comes close in sustaining the force of one liners, physical silly comedy and the plot of the drama. Priscilla keeps up fairly well for a celebrity's daughter,but who let OJ Simpson in? Richard Griffiths is a great English stage actor but just goes to show how difficult it is to do silly comedy, he can't. Leslie alone is utterly fantastic, every thing else is satisfactory.