Film Reviews by PV

This is real B-Movie stuff, and very VERY NOW, in its woke casting - even authentic casting with Richard Attenborough's grandson and David's great-nephew Will who identifies as queer and his character has the best lines too!

Well let's hope that from now on only 18th century pirates play 18th century pirates in movies, because authentic casting SO matters. On the other hand, actors could try ACTING, y'know, pretending to be people they are not...

As unrealistic as it is predictable - I could guess who would survive (no spoilers). All very silly by the end and the Iraq War backstory of a Mary Poppins-type English old lady character is laugh-out-loud funny.

Seeing as 90% sharks in the world's oceans have disappeared in the last 35 years thanks to overfishing and the Chinese demand for shark fin soup, I'm amazed any sharks were still living in the ocean where the DEI hires crashed.

Oh well, just coincidence I suppose, just like that fact not ONE straight one man is amongst the cast surviving in the plane underwater (as stated in the blurb so not a spoiler).

In fact, the only straight white males here are the sharks! Maybe they couldn't find black or gay ones eh?

2 stars...

Well, I have seen 'X' but some time ago so my memory is vague, that was a slasher horror film set in the 1970s porn industry and watchable enough, with authentic fashions etc. BOOGIE NIGHTS is way better though.

This moves on to 1985 with the same character apparently though it means nothing to me, as I cannot remember the first film 'X'. I see the second film 'Pearl' is recommended by others as better than this so may watch that.

I see the director has done loads of horror films, with lots of gore, and there is definitely a big market for them - and he'd adapted and gone with the 'strong main female character' trope which is now a real cliche to be honest - does any movie (or children's book) NOT have a strong main female character, often of colour too?

What I liked: the 1980s setting and music. And it all started well, act one.

What I disliked: the OTT convoluted plot, and the gore - not shocking, just boring.

I was going to give it 3 stars but the last third was really very boring, to be honest.

SO one for the slasher horror films really, or a Friday night horror-fest with mates and food and drinks...

It is what it is, 2 stars.

I hated this. I suspect if you're a Gen Zee Teen you'll find the explicit sex and violent and psychedelic drug dreamscapes fresh and new and dangerous; for anyone over 25, it's a case of SEEN IT ALL BEFORE.

I did not believe it, not a bit or the characters - their motivations, make-ups, reactions.

One thing that annoys me re this and MANY new movies and TV dramas is how female characters force themselves on men and boys, kiss them, grope them, sexually assault then AND worse, these male characters always comply, give in to the forceful female forcing herself on him and is shown to be passive and to enjoy being sexually assaulted, used, abused, even raped (by legal definition). Not on at all.

I see it SO much now, incl in READY PLAYER ONE and other movies, where a woman or girl forces herself on a man or boy to kiss or worse, and he passively agrees ALWAYS.

CAN YOU IMAGINE it the other way round? Male characters forcing women and girls to have sex? And the females shown as passively complying and enjoying sexual assault?

I do not care about the sexual imagery - but it is GRATUITOUS and MISANDRIST here and in many modern movies, that is my problem, And if you want sex, watch hardcore porn, Plenty online and on DVD.

Also, use of prosthetics has been demeaning to men - the equivalent is a camera shoved between a female character's legs, right up there, showing everything. Well if this abuse of males and femihypocrisy is what the #metoo mob mean by gender equality, mighty I suggest they get a dictionary for Winterval next year?

Reminds me of other over-rated and unbelievable recent sci-fi movies such as OLD, US, and TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. I have them 1* too.

For a decent horror film in the same vein, I'd recommend MIDSOMMAR. Not this.

1 star

Instantly bringing to mind the British case of the ENFIELD POLTERGEIST as depicted in a TV miniseries (2023) of that name and also THE CONJURING 2 (2016) as well as the infamous 1992 TV show GHOSTWATCH.

This is maybe more sexual, possibly salaciously so - though this was released in 1981 it has that 1970s feel.

Genuinely scary, made me jump, though perhaps the last act jumps the shark a tad. BUT if that is what happened in the supposed real story... but who knows? I suspect the production team wanted desperately to use the new special effects at their disposal...

I really loved the thumping pumping soundtrack - it was different and minimalist in its effectiveness.

I suspect the 1982 Spielberg film Poltergeist was influenced by this, just as ET was influenced by 1978's the Cat from Outer Space, Hey ho.

Solid stuff, a tad long maybe esp at the end, 4 stars.

There have been many movies about disturbed men (usually) on a mission to cleanse society of, often, female prostitutes. So far, so derivative. But this is different enough to work, and it is well-acted (the main actress won the Cannes award for that and the film was on the Oscar shortlist), well-filmed, well-written and authentic.

It is closely based on a real case: the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted street prostitutes and killed at least 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Mashhad, Iran who was hanged in 2002 aged around 40 so younger than the killer here, though he was a construction worker, was married with 3 kids and had been in the Iraq-Iran war. He was called the "Spider Killer" by the press for the way he lured his 16 prostitute victims back to his home before strangling them. It was a controversial case as some religious extremists expressed support for his self-described fight against "moral corruption" at the time.

A film such as this would no doubt get condemned by the usual prissy pofaced metoo feminist activists in the UK/US for making all victims young women and showing graphic detail of murders (and sex too). Thing is, this is absolutely necessary and not gratuitous, so fine, esp as it is based on a true story where the victims were young women, many of them heroin/opium addicts (as many men are in the region too).

What makes this different is how the director shows how women can be devoutly religious and so approve of someone cleansing the streets of prostitutes, NO western TV company would ever do that - they'd just blame men, set the MANBLAME default as per usual, So the film is different for that truth.

I loved this Danish-Iranian director's film BORDER so recommend that too as 5 stars.

This is 4.

Worth watching this with the 2016 film THE KING'S CHOICE about the same events, but more of a drama not a high-octane cat-and-mouse chase.

Gold Run is an action movie, as per the directors'/producers' previous films, so aims to fit that template with the constant upping the ante, increasing jeopardy, as taught on all screenwriting courses. Sometimes however that gets a bit tiresome - and predictable.

But I enjoyed it, even if it can be a bit cartoon character at times. The true biographies at the end were informative.

Watch the 1942 film THE DAY WILL DAWN to learn about the now-forgotten shortlived British/Norwegian liberation of the town of NARVIK from the Nazis in April 1940. Symbolic really. The Nazis were allowed to march 2 million soldiers through 'neutral' Sweden (which made a fortune from selling iron ore and more to Germany in 2 world wars in one century) to invade Norway - the main reason was to take the port of Narvik which was crucial as during winter no land route is possible from Sweden to Germany so they needed that port for maintain iron ore exports to the Fatherland.

Good derring-do action movie stuff and interesting, based on a true story, 4 stars.

Hmmm well. I see this is largely funded by BBC film Lotter, FilmFour and of course as all they fund these days it has to tick the diversity boxes bigtime, re race or here, gender, with a female-focused film with a largely female writing/directing/producing team. So many #metoo movies like this have been made now, and most tank at the box office.

I looked up the novel which does seem female-interest, so if you like that sort of thing you'll like this more than me maybe.

I found it very long, meandering, silly and unbelievable. Think WATERWORLD. Reminded me of the Great Floods of 1707 no doubt caused by climate change too. LOL the very idea a few days of rain can sink a city is absurd. Flooding happens and always has, but not this. AND 2 words for the writers: THAMES BARRIER. Two more: DRAINS and SEWERS though there is no doubt with our swelling population esp in London the system is under pressure like never before - THAT is the issue. So in a way, this is another of those green propaganda lectures preaching doom re climate change...

I really like Joel Fry though he a bit wasted here as the focus is always on the women, including his often-irritatingly dizzy girlfriend and more.

If you like doomscrolling, watch THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS or maybe 28 DAYS LATER. Or Waterworld if you must - at least that had the budget.

This could and should perhaps have made a 45 minute radio drama, not a film - there is just not enough here to carry it. And the meagre special effects let it down badly. Watch The Day After Tomorrow for what it should be maybe.

SURVIVORS the 1975-8 TV series was also scary. This is not. It's just wet. Very wet. As wet as Cumberbatch's pointless cameo - really, if a scene does not move story of character forward, but it out, esp the unlikely coincidences in an unbelievable disaster movie. BUt do that here and you'd cut out half the film, literally.

2 stars. Just

Hmmm, although this is just 90 minutes, it feels much longer. It seems slow, somehow, just very flat - and the genres seem mixed and confused. Is it a romance? A murder mystery? A biopic? The focus is blurred.

This is from a novel called Curtain Call - I have not read it but the synopsis online is quite different to the very unlikely story we see here. I did not really believe in the characters, not the critic and what he does, or the actress, or the newspaper tycoon, or his daughter and her husband. The 1934 art deco designs are fab though.

I also wonder if, in the novel, the partner is 'of colour' (remember there were just 6000 black people in the UK in 1939, of 44 millon population) and this is set in 1934. The stench of boxticking thus hangs over it all, especially with the random minor inclusion of the British Union of Fascists - an inclusion which pads the play out but which leads nowhere.

I'd recommend watching the wonderful GODS AND MOSTERS, another film where Ian McK plays a theatrical confirmed bachelor called Jimmy...

2 stars. Theatre fans may well love it (I'd recommend watching the film CHAPLIN to them).

The director of this did BORDER - a brilliant film 5 stars - and the woeful computer game TV series/movie THE LAST OF US. So I did not know what to expect.

The screenwriter has form writing about Murdoch and big media players like Fox News, so that is the same highpowered media/money world.

I was at times amazed they got away with some scenes - especially with the litigious Trump team. BUT maybe such scenes are already in the public domain in biographies and memoirs etc, maybe from the ex wife Ivana?

The actors are great - very hard to portray such a famous face well as viewers will always compare BUT I believed this portrayal of the young Trump, in his twenties mostly, learning from the odious Roy Cohn (lawyer who worked when young with McCarthy in the 1950s red menace purges). The three rules here and how much the young learned from Cohn seem relevant and timely to today and the dealmaker Trump's MO. Jeremy Strong as Cohn is superb, the star of this film.

What I hated was the very weird supposedly Scottish accent of Trump's mum. And some phrases that were not around 50 years ago (think out of the box; he's spicy etc).

But all in all this Canadian-Irish coproduction is a decent film on Trump's formative years in business and made me want to know more about his family, esp his older brother (an alcoholic who ended up as a handyman working for his younger brother in their properties).

This is a solid, entertaining, watchable, timely film about the new (again) president of the USA.

4 stars.

This got bad reviews. I preferred it to the first JOKER movie - Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant again.

I actually actively dislike musicals. I am no fan of the perpetually over-rated Lady Gaga either (AKA Stefani Germanotta from a privileged upper-middle-class background).

However, this is all surreal with set pieces reflecting the fantasies, delusions and mental state of the characters. I liked that AND the class songs (most songs in new musicals are R&B and not for me!) This is old school and sticks to the hits, which is great!

Nice to hear songs like THE JOKER and GONNA BUILD A MOUNTAIN, music, and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Also FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE not written by Stevie Wonder, but by Ron Miller and Orlando Murden for Motown Records' Stein & Van Stock publishing company, first recorded in 1965.

It sags a tad at times, the grim prison scenes and the talky courtroom ones, and I predicted the end.

I have forgotten the first film almost completely - it is referenced a lot here so I should maybe have watched it again before this.

But I liked it, the darkness, the music, the oddity of it,. So 4 stars

OK so it must be hard to make a film which is ultimately about a war that is still going on!

The timeline here is from 2014 when Russia rolled into Crimea and 2018 with fighting in the Donbas, the east of Ukraine, where many are Russian-speaking as in Crimea, and then in Feb 202 when Russia invaded Ukraine proper.

Most people may not know this, but in 1860s a British Welsh industrialist was invited by the Imperial Russian Government to pioneer industry in the Donbas region of Ukraine and he did as founder of the city of Donetsk, originally named Yuzovka (Hughesovka, Russian: ??o???) or Yuzivka (Ukrainian: ??????) after Hughes, ("Yuz" being a Russian/Ukrainian approximation of Hughes).

This is basically a revenge drama, though the training bits reminded me of Rocky or similar little guy against the system wins in the end stories.

The end is a thriller, which is exciting and like an action movie. Some sadness here too, Tbh, the genre is mixed - from romance, to tragedy, to revenge drama to action movie - which is maybe confusing and I thought the transformation of a peacenik hippy teacher was a tad far-fetched.

Anyway, worth a watch and very timely of course. 3 stars

This is a film version of the novel (and then stage play) Dracula by Bram Stoker. After complaints of copyright infringement, the film makers altered some details BUT Stoker's widow still sued - a court ruling ordered all copies of the film destroyed. Luckily, a few prints of Nosferatu survived, and thus the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.

This is 90 minutes not 60 minutes as stated on the sleeve. It is divided into 5 acts with INTERTITLES between scenes as in old silent movies.

What makes this special is 1) the attention to detail - the skeleton clock, the shrouded horses, the atmosphere always and shadows of course; 2) the main character Nosferatu who despite his name Count Orlock is Dracula and is terrifying, his eyes, fangs to the front incisors not canine here, and those long, clever, sinister fingers clawing at the screen! 3) the film sticks loyally to the novel too, simply swapping Whitby for a German coastal town so is well-structured, even having its first plot point at minute 24 just like modern movies!. 3) the acting is superb - exaggerated as per silent films which came from stage acting BUT perfect for horror - and the still camera lingers over it which makes it worse - but better cinematically!

The soundtrack is a version of the original, apparently. Sometimes is jarred, the panpipes etc, but hey ho...

This is 1922, when silent films were either comedy shorts from Chaplin etc or the 1920s romantic epics of Rudolf Valentino playing a non-authentic non-pc Sheikh, the silent Ben Hur, various shorts - romance, crime etc. So this though only seen by German audiences was special and groundbreaking.

Watch the same director's silent films, and first sound film M a brave film about a child abuser which made Peter Lorre a star.

I also recommend another German silent films by Fritz Lang, Metropolis of course but especially Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond) 1929 which is excellent.

As the credits state, this is 'inspired by' The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, so it was a stroke of genius to cast Natasha Kinski here who made such an impression in TESS from the early 1970s (she IS Tess).

A great cast, but lots of flab on the script and direction.

I was in the right mood to watch this to be honest, just let it wash over me, and I do like snowy landscapes - most of this film is that, so I was happy!

The film cuts back and forth between the 'present' and past without any signposts or titles saying 'X years ago' or dates to viewers have to be aware of that.

Lots of mumbling as in so many of these films.

Slow, but watchable, and great if you like snow! 3 stars

I loved this director's last 2 films, the Czech CHARALATAN and the English language MR JONES which tells an important story of Ukraine's Holodomor famines of early 30s and what a Welsh journalist exposed it to the world, or tried to and paid with his life when Stalin ordered his murder. Also the older film EUROPA EUROPE.

But this I'm afraid is pure propaganda. One has to ask WHY these 'refugees'; head to the EU (and Britain) from Asia and Africa and not go east or south to countries nearer their homeland with similar culture and religion and language? The reasons are purely economic. Lax laws, UK, EU and UN act as a magnet attracting them - thes ebadly need reforming. Uk refugee law created over 70 years ago when there were 2 billion people in the world; there are now over 8 billion mostly caused by a population explosion in the global south. That cannot continue; and Europe will have to build a wall and start deportations too.

Very wrong to try and tie in refugees from Asia and Africa with Ukrainians fleeing to Poland - those Ukrainians share a culture, language (Slavic family) and Christian heritage and faith with the Poles, so fine, AND they will return, most of the, to rebuild Ukraine one day, NOT AT ALL the same as people from Afghanistan, Syria, Asia, African states like the Congo, and even Morocco here (where Brits holiday) coming to Europe illegally to claim asylum because EU law stupidly states that anyone setting foot in EU has the right to apply for asylum which takes years and ditto bad UK law the same AND so many see UK as a laxland of free money and housing and healthcare and work to head here in small boats, TURN OFF THE MAGNET and then none would come and none would die in the attempt AND amoral criminal gangs would not make millions from this awful brutal trade.

This is a propaganda film, which is misguided and wrongheaded in my opinion. It would work better as a documentary - we get that at the end a bit re the Ukrainians heading to poland which is a TOTALLy separate issue to Africans/Asians paying criminals money to get taken to rich Europe as economic chancer refugees MOST OF WHOM of male, unlike what is shown here. See who arrives in England on small boats. Almost all younger men, mostly Muslim too. Some terrorists and criminals amongst them for sure,

What a mess. Like the film which is meandering, overlong, the last half hour, shamelessly tries to like Ukraine/Poland issue with the African/Asian migrant issue and here specifically the was BeloRussia's dictator and Putin;s bestie invited them in to cause problems for the EU and Poland. Turkey complicit in its flights it seems too.

A truly cringeworthy rap towards the end is the propaganda icing on the cake, Maybe people should look at spiralling crime rates in German, Scandinavian cities and realise most of the rise is due to migrants - and inthe UK 35%+ in our prisons are foreign-born.

The issue is way more complex than this simplistic propaganda film claims.

Worth watching this to see Peter Kay (who looks very young) and David Walliams (who overacts in his usual OTT way) in early appearances. Matt Lucas also here. Little Britain is fermenting here - it appeared 5 years later.

And Catherine Tate and Marcus Brigstocke. Rhys Thomas at age 20 here - before he did Down the Line on Radio 4 which became Bellamy's People.

Some sketches and characters work; some fall flat (esp a very odd 2 builders and a clueless son extended sketch series).

The CYCLE MASTER character by Brigstocke is underused! It is so relevant now! Starts only in episode 4 but could have been so many more sketches.

The best is the psycho PE teacher by (Paul) Mackenzie Crook, who also teaches maths bizarrely (geography for PE teachers surely so they know where they are on the pitch, or biology so they know where all the bits are, but maths? Seriously? Most PE teachers are not great at that...). The best character by far - I wonder if it is based on his teachers at Dartford Boys Tech in 1980s? This is before Crook made it big on The Eleven O'Clock Show which gave us Ali G pre Borat, and of course The Office and Detectorists.

Rhys Thomas at age 20 here - before he did Down the Line on Radio 4 which became Bellamy's People.

The worst sketch is by Omid Djalili, deeply unfunny and also racist as this Iranian comic actually blacks up and wears a curly wig to mimic a black African doctor. Gosh.

WHOLE CAST: Niall Ashdown, Will Barton, Marcus Brigstocke, Cliff Kelly, Matt Lucas, Dave Lamb, Sarah Parkinson, Rhys Thomas, Tim Verrinder, David Walliams, Tony Way, Glynne Wiley, Kriston Berlevy, Mackenzie Crook, Jo Enright, Simon Greenall, Catherine Tate, Martin Trenaman, Steve Brody, Steven Burge

Anyway, worth a watch for comedy fans as only one series of 6 episodes - it was not recommissioned.