Film Reviews by Alphaville

Welcome to Alphaville's film reviews page. Alphaville has written 859 reviews and rated 817 films.

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Ashes and Diamonds

Classic anti-war film

(Edit) 05/12/2022

B/w 1958 film, third in Andrzej Wajda’s classic anti-war trilogy, follows a resistance fighter on the day the Nazis surrender. Our hero Zbigniew Cybulski, the ‘Polish James Dean’, is tasked to kill a communist bigwig, but then he meets a woman. Will he choose love or duty? Some political subplots have lost their bite, but we always come back to our mesmerising hero, who commands the screen in every scene he’s in. The ending is unforgettable. Like Dean, Cybulski was tragically killed in an accident a few years later. Some of Wajda’s shots still astonish and make the film essential viewing for anyone who loves cinema.

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

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The Road Dance

Earnest but grim drama

(Edit) 25/11/2022

Tragic drama set on the Isle of Lewis in 1916. Act 1 (i.e. first 30 minutes) is little more than Sunday night TV fare, then a tragic incident changes the life of our heroine and from then on it’s increasingly engrossing. The trailer gives the game away so do avoid that if you want to experience the film at its best. It’s hardly a fun watch, but you become so involved in the heroine’s plight that what at first seemed a one-star film now seems worthy of four stars, even if the ending is a tad unbelievable. And the production does seem to have misunderstood Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, which was meant to be ironic: whichever road you take, it makes no difference.

2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Embarrassing Watch of Wasted Talent

(Edit) 07/11/2022

Unless you’re a fan of Nicholas Cage’s mannered overacting, a film in which he plays a fictional version of himself will drive you up the wall. There’s no doubt it’s meant to be humorous, but a little goes a long way. After half an hour a plot kicks in about him developing a film, which turns out to be the one we’re watching. This could have been a neat idea, but most of the in-jokes and slapstick come across as self-indulgent. It’s an oddity that deserves marks for trying and is watchable throughout, even when it makes you wince, but is it the ‘wildly entertaining action-packed comedy’ that the DVD guff promises? Er, no.

2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

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Black Book

Fast-moving dramatic thriller

(Edit) 03/11/2022

Wonderful, fast-paced adventure yarn about a Jewish woman aiding the resistance in WW2 Holland. It’s an epic saga crammed to overflowing with incident. Of course, as directed by Paul Verhoeven, expect nudity, torture and more surprises than in old-fashioned war films. It will certainly keep your eyes glued to the screen, constantly making you wonder what can possibly happen next (as long as you avoid the tell-all trailer). Another Verhoeven master-class in film-making.

2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

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The Ledge

Leaves a bad taste

(Edit) 03/11/2022

This horrible film has four men murder a woman after a failed rape and chase her friend up a mountain rock face. There’s nothing wrong with having baddies chasing a heroine, but these men are despicable and we have to spend most of the film listening to them as the contrived plot leaves our heroine on her own with no dialogue. Sample dialogue: ‘I’m coming for you, bitch.’

To cut down costs, the bulk of the film takes place at night on a set representing the ledge of the title, so there’s no more than a few brief climbing scenes and scenic shots. The misogynists are on the ledge and the woman is trapped beneath them below an overhang. It’s static, it's ridiculous and it's awful.

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

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Jurassic World: Dominion

Bland rehash

(Edit) 19/10/2022

For a film that features state-of-the-art cgi dinosaurs, this sequel is incredibly bland. Far too much time is spent re-introducing a surplus of characters from previous films in the franchise, all of whom are forced to exchange such excruciating banter that the actors can do little with it but phone it in. You have to wait nearly an hour before a bog-standard dino-on-the-loose chase is rolled out and it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Naturally Chris Pratt rides a motor bike and only extras get killed. Tick. Then it’s another hour before the last bog-standard confrontation. This franchise ran out of ideas about what to do with cgi long ago.

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

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Operation Mincemeat

Sunday night TV fare

(Edit) 19/10/2022

Even if you don’t already know the story from the celebrated 1956 film The Man Who Never Was, the trailer will tell you anyway. That leaves a film that has little to do but go through the motions, retelling the story with barely a surprise along the way. You can predict every beat as the stiff-upper-lipped Brits devise their elaborate plan (yes, Colin Firth is present and correct). It’s padded out with titbits to give the main characters some backstory, but that merely bogs the drama down even more. All of this turns an extraordinary real-life wartime episode into a peculiarly unmoving viewing experience. Even worse, there’s a pointless voiceover and a laughable climactic clapping scene, presumably for the benefit of transatlantic viewers.

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Paris

Fails to engage

(Edit) 12/10/2022

A man with heart disease watches people in the street from the balcony of his apartment and we follow their lives. Unfortunately their lives turn out to be not very interesting and the various unconnected plots, if they can be called that, go nowhere. It’s a quintessentially French film, but there’s not a lot going on here behind the city centre cafes and boulangeries. You wait for it to get going but it never does and what remains on screen is less than riveting. The unoriginal theme is ‘seize the day’, so why not do that by watching a wonderful Parisian film that celebrates life and love in a way this film never manages: ‘Paris, 13th Arrondissement’.

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

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Fairy Tale Killer

Disappointing mess of a thriller

(Edit) 02/10/2022

Disjointed plot, mad laughing killer, pedestrian police investigation, lead cop with a troubled home life, risible climax… all add up to a right old mess. There may be a good serial killer thriller lurking in here somewhere, but it never sees the light of day. Not the best work of normally reliable director Danny Pang (The Eye, Bangkok Dangerous).

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The Quake

Terrific edge-of-seat disaster thriller

(Edit) 02/10/2022

The problem with most disaster movies is you know what’s coming but still have to sit through screeds of character development to reach the action. Here, however, the build-up is believable and engaging, more of a detective story.

It’s a kinda-sequel to The Wave (also excellent), with the action shifting from Norway’s fjord country to Oslo. Our hero geologist, now a broken man estranged from the family he saved from the wave, now has to save them again as he begins to find evidence of what’s coming next. His efforts in a city of collapsing buildings really ramps up the tension in some terrific scenes of peril.

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Jackie

Turgid biopic

(Edit) 02/10/2022

Documentary-style actor’s film about Jackie Kennedy, focussing on Natalie Portman’s portrayal of her. If true-to-life it’s educational, but judged purely as a film there’s nothing here to tempt an audience disinterested in the subject matter. The West Wing TV series had more life.

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Nitram

The joy of film. Not.

(Edit) 02/10/2022
Spoiler Alert

A ‘slow burn’ trumpets the trailer. Yep, you know what that means. A slow, bleak, actorly film about mental illness that ends in mass murder. However well-meant, is this really what you want from a viewing experience? Do check out the trailer first. That should be enough to put you off.

2 out of 11 members found this review helpful.

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The Quiet Girl

Understated and underwhelming

(Edit) 21/09/2022

Sunday-evening-TV-like rural Irish drama. ‘Beautifully understated’ trumpets the blurb. Translation: slow-paced and staidly directed with static shots held far too long. Our young quiet girl of the title is sent from a dysfunctional family to stay with more likable relatives on a dairy farm, where (guess what?) she likes it more. Nothing much happens, even at the cop-out ending, to a soundtrack of (guess what?) plinky-plonk piano muzak. There’s even a montage set to an embarrassing Irish ditty. You’ll know exactly where it’s going with not a single surprise along the way.

Minimalist drama can work in films, but not at this deathly pace. The whole shebang is saved from dross only by the luminous presence of Catherine Clinch as the girl. Little acting is required of her in this, her first film, but her screen presence augurs well for her future career. Take her out of it and there’s not a lot else to see here.

0 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

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All My Friends Hate Me

Dire Britcom

(Edit) 18/09/2022

Even a jazzed-up soundtrack can’t disguise the fact that you’d run a mile to avoid the five vacuous post-university friends who meet up in a country house to celebrate a birthday. They swap inane and unfunny dialogue to the point of irritation. As in most such theatrical films, better suited to the stage, the camera is merely plonked down in front of the person speaking, so there’s no visual interest either. At the end the mood changes, but who cares? It’s because of critics who don’t know a turkey when they see one that the British film industry keeps making such stagey TV fillers.

2 out of 7 members found this review helpful.

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Benedetta

Trigger warning: thrilling, discomforting, erotic, emotional, terrific

(Edit) 18/09/2022

Although it’s hard to believe, this colourful and rambunctious tale of a Lesbian nun who becomes an abbess is based on evidence from a real 17th century court case. In the hands of director Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct etc.) it’s a riot. There are moments when you may not be able to take your eyes away from the screen even if you want to.

It’s set in a convent where suffering is seen as the only way to salvation. And boy, do these Brides of Christ suffer. Benedetta has increasingly lurid and erotic dreams about Jesus while becoming involved in a Lesbian relationship with a fellow nun. Even the wooden Virgin Mary dildo they use is based on fact. And that’s just the start if it. Beginning as fun, the film dials up the excitement level, goes to some dark places and builds to provide an unexpectedly emotional punch.

Good to see one of cinema’s enfants terrible still on such good form and still causing trouble. The film has naturally been attacked in some quarters, but it’s good to see someone not afraid to make subversive art that refuses to tow the line. Rock on, Paul.

The DVD also has an enlightening interview with Verhoeven, including extracts from his previous films.

7 out of 7 members found this review helpful.
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