Film Reviews by PV

OK so, this is really a kids' film, I suppose BUT will they be transfixed by it? I doubt it, even though it tries EVER SO HARD to please them, and I mean very VERY VERRYYYY hard - ticks all the boxes and has funny accents and costumes and animals and all, and more. All done by the book, with goodies, baddies, set pieces, lush scenery in a fantasy town (based on Oxford with the Bridge of Sighs of Hertford College and Radcliffe Camera/Bodleian library, and the Old Town Tower in Prague for the church), and the usual three-act structure of a QUEST with a big setback before the final triumph. But it just has no ZING to it, no SPARKLE, despite the great cast and immense cost. Chemistry, I suppose.

It even adds 2 top songs from the early 1970s US film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The 2 best ones - Imagination and the Oompa Loompa song, each cowritten by David Bowie's great hero. Anthony Newley with Leslie Bricusse who died aged 90 in 2021 - they also wrote the song FEELING GOOD for another musical of theirs, recorded later by Nina Simone. I have always liked the Divine Comedy and Neil Hannon BUT the new songs here are just mediocre and unmemorable - just like the stage musical of Charlie I saw in 2013, which also lifted the memorable early 1970s Imagination song for the finale. The final theme song A Hatful of Dreams just about cuts the mustard BUT it is no match for the song IMAGINATION.

But it all somehow falls as flat as the mediocre unmemorable melodies. Not sure why. The acting is fine, and the casting too (though the usual diverse casting of now is yawnfully evident). I especially liked Tom David as Mr Bleacher, he was great in superb Channel 4 sitcom THE CURSE, and also Simon Farnaby as Basil the Zoo Keeper, he is great in DETECTORISTS and many other TV comedy shows).

Best of all I liked Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa (who gave me my only laugh during the whole movie) BUT kids should know that orange-faced green-haired people were ONLY invented for the early 1970s US film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the book there is NO description at all in the version we all read. In the original Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, only published in the USA where Roald Dahl lived in 1964, the Oompa-Loompas are described as little black African pygmies. It was changed in later editions after criticism by a journalist/reviewer at the time of civil rights. of course if one REA:LLY wants to be right-on woke and pc, one can cite this whole film and story as cultural appropriation as chocolate was taken from South America by invaders from Spain/Portugal. That is how to get yourself tied in the multiple tangled knots of wokery. Plenty of fatshaming in this film too, and mocking the poor, and casual violence - as befitting the cartoon characters here.

So 2 stars from me. I doubt children would give it more. They'll probably demand to watch the US film WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971), apparently a Christmas Day traditional film on TV in the USA. In the UK, my generation did not see it until we were adults BUT we had the book, which is better.

I always admire those who make independent and self-financed films (and rather sneer at the state-funded BBC-funded lottery-funded tickbox drivel films the UK produces so much these days) BUT one has to be honest, this independent Italian film is a a bit of a mess.

The actors are fine esp Sam Gittins, but the plot is confusing (as with many timeslip dramas) and that needs a lot of talky explanation, especially at the end, which is tedious, to be honest, and still confusing!

I am used to watching time travel dramas too so am used to the plotline and arcs, but even i was baffled. I thought the lottery theme would be expanded upon, but it fizz;led out. The confusion meant that, in the end, the last scene reveal shocker (no spoilers) had no impact.

It DOES offer subtitles unlike some budget movies - BUT the subtitles are really awful, not quite as bad as LIVE subtitles on TV news shows, but close.

Anyway, 2 stars. Passable but not a patch on LOOPER or indeed the 1960/1 film THE TIME MACHINE. BUT anything is better than the AWFUL Richard Curtis film ABOUT TIME and this is better than that drivel at least.

I realise I had never actually ever watched the original THE FLY, only the 1986 version and the Simpsons parody episode SO I watched it. I had never realised it was produced and set in Canada, Montreal, which is maybe why Cronenburg showed an interest in a remake in the 80s.

Like THE BLOB it is a fine 1950s fantasy film, in colour, and all about the dangers of meddling with science (very Frankenstein) as well as a vague hint at the nuclear age and the commie threat.

The special effects are basic and the money shot is saved for the last scene - which was impressive for 1958. No CGI then, all models. AND I was left thinking that such is our modern pofaced hysterical age, this film was get a TRIGGER WARNING now, for animal cruelty (the cat, no spoilers), the final scene, and the usual normal male-female relations which are now seen as misogyny. Sigh...

BUT let's not forget where it all started: George Langelaan (1908 – 1972) was a French-British[citation needed] writer and journalist born in Paris, France.

He is best known for his 1957 short story "The Fly", which was the basis for the 1958 and 1986 sci-fi/horror films. He parachuted into occupied France on 7 September 1941 to make contact with the French Resistance forces south of Châteauroux, arranged to meet Édouard Herriot, was captured on 6 October, imprisoned in the Mauzac camp, condemned to death by the Nazis, and escaped (16 July 1942) and returned to England to participate in the Normandy landings. He received the French Croix de guerre.

Vincent Prince plays, err, Vincent Price as per usual - an actor who blossomed late, he had a very posh background and studied art at the Courtauld London in the 1930s.

I always look up the child actors in these films and sadly they often do not do well in later life. Here the boy is 1950s child star Charles Herbert (b 1948). Unable to transition into adult roles, Herbert's personal life went downhill, as well. With no formal education or training to do anything else, and with no career earnings saved, he led a reckless, wanderlust life and turned to drugs. He died age 66 on Halloween 2015.

THERE IS A SEQUEL to this,. Shall I watch it? Not sure...

This is a superb original film from Iceland with stunningly naturalistic performances by the actors, especially the 2 boys, especially the boy who plays the main character Thor - this is possibly the best ever child actor performance I have ever seen. Utterly believable, naturalistic, consistent, touching, real. Should have won awards, if it did not.

Yes, the film may be a tad long and meandering. Yes, some symbolism is layered on with a trowel - the 'ugly duckling' bullhead fish thing, and the trapped/dead seagulls. Yes, we get it. The need to escape and it's OK to be different. BUT even that works in the bleak treelessness of Iceland (which reminded me of the TV drama VIKINGS and the disaster episodes set there when the island of Iceland was first occupied by those immigrants).

Just a brilliant film I discovered by accident. I shall definitely now watch and rent the film by the same writer/director and with the same actors made 6 years later - Beautiful Beings.

4.5 stars rounded up

I loved this film. It has an infectious energy to it, a great jazz soundtrack, excellent child and teen actors, as well as John Mills as a rebel teacher (decades before Dead Poets Society) and Cecil Parker superb as a grammar school head teacher. Rather conveniently, boys and girls grammar schools are next to each other, meaning a lot of gender equality the the jazz band they form! Though the usual suspects will roll their eyes and sneer at the courting shown here of course... Back before the world went mad.

I looked up some of the child actors - the youngest, Lawson, is played by Richard O'Sullivan who went on to great success in 1970s with Man About the House and Robin's Nest.

The main character is played by Jeremy Spenser (his brother David was a well-known writer for radio and TV) who was born 1937 and a bit child actor of 1950s and a bit in 1960s, last role 1968 when he became a drama teacher apparently, as did another Wilfred Dowling. Others died young - Robert Dickens aged 55 and the bespectacled skinny schoolboy is played by Dawson French, who died age 39 in December 1980 just 2 days before John Lennon. I can find no more information.

Bryan Forbes, the late great writer and director, (Whistle Down the Wind 1961 and he directed the 1975 The Stepford Wives) features here briefly as a cockney organ salesman, which is authentic as he was from Newham and went to West Ham school!

Anyway, this is colourful, youthful, fun and hopeful SO if you are in the mood for simpler happier times, some great big band jazz (back when jazz had great tunes not squeaks and ear-splitting academic scales), and sweety boy-meets-girl courting plots, then this is for you!

4 stars. Maybe watch with the original St Trinians, which is farce by contrast and at a private school; here we have STATE grammar schools!

OK so this is one of those B-movies produced independently and filmed in the USA, with the help of air museums who lend the planes, I suppose! Still the budget here is adequate to create some decent plane chases and dogfights. The BEST film for that is THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969) but at least this film does action. Some nice big explosions and bangs! CGI is fine as it is mixed with real planes.

It is all blarney of course though based on a kernel of truth. Kampfgeschwader 200 (KG 200) ("[Air] Combat Squadron 200") was a German Luftwaffe special operations unit during World War II. The unit carried out especially difficult bombing and transport operations and long-distance reconnaissance flights, tested new aircraft designs and operated captured aircraft BUT it seems they did not use captured aircraft in allied colours as trojan horses. They did use captured Boeing B-17s in Nazi Luftwaffe crosses on the wings to drop parachuters and thus maybe use that to their advantage - as seen from the ground, that would look like an allied plane. THIS is the plane that gained the US nickname WULFE-HOUND. It was interned in Spain

What was threatening London in 1944 and after were the V1 and V2 rockets made by slaves in occupied Holland. They killed 5000 in London (and more in Antwerp) and left 250,000 homeless in London with the great damage they did - they contributed greatly to the postwar housing crisis. Their inventor,. SS man Werner Von Braun and his team were taken to the USA to work for NASA and put man on the moon. SO watch a doc or a feature about that for reality.

This is fantasy, but exciting in a sort of pantomime Nazi versus good guy Captain America sort of way. The characters are pretty thin though - we are supposed to care that one died (esp at the end) but by then I could not remember which one he was!

Some truth here - German pilots DID shoot down allied airmen (all men no women) parachuting to earth, or locals murdered them on the ground, beat them to death, after raids by Brits and Americans. Just horrific.

Otherwise all very silly, especially the absurd inclusion of a female prisoner and 2 black American ones in a Nazi prison cell. For a start, prisoners were never held together. Women would not be mixed with men,. the few taken, such as resistance partisans etc. AND as for African Americans, hardly any died in the Second World War because the ones there were got kept well back behind the lines, often as medics and auxiliary staff (Maybe the segregated US army did not trust them with guns!) Anyway, good for them as mostly they survived. Any taken prisoner? I doubt it. SO that is silly wokery too. just stop it!

It is ALL very silly, such as when a Nazi is disarmed but then the US airman does not bother taking his gun from the forest floor. but leaves it behind so the Nazi can pick it up and shoot at him as he runs through the forest. Hmmm. And LOTS of on the nose dialogue, with lone characters SAYING how they feel, what they are doing, and thinking and what they plan to do.

BUT oddly likeable and watchable, hence 2.5 stars rounded up. And the constant orchestral strings music works too.

I loved this. Like so many older movies from the 1960s or 50s, sword and sandal epics, this focuses on character and TELLING A GOOD STORY based on someone's real life - here that someone is the late 12th and early 13th C Mongol leader, warlord, imperialist, slavetrader, brute/hero Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; c.?1162 – 25 August 1227).

Now, the usual suspects will get triggered by the lack of racial/ethnic authentic casting here (though funny really as at the self-same time they hold the completely contradictory polar opposite position of adoring black/Asian actors playing white European/British historical characters (Ann Boleyn, Queen Charlotte, many more), , and others of European heritage who were definitely NOT black (Cleopatra etc).

But ALL I care about is whether this is a good story told well - which should be ALL that any fiction or drama is judged upon imho. Not some sort of assessment by a politburo woke committee about how well the casting and plot ticks the diversity/woke boxes. Those wanting that can watch the 2005' authentic' BBC version, with all-Mongol actors playing Mongols. What next, only 18th century pirates playing 18th century pirates? TRY ACTING! Make-up is fine too.

SO I loved the Egyptian Omar Shariff in the central role and Robert Morley as Emperor of China (now THERE is colourblind casting, YAY!) and James Mason plays Chinese too (it doesn't end well) and Michael Hordern plays a Mongol wise man (before his Paddington narrator days). It works. The Arab slavedrivers are played by actors with Russian or Slavic names. ALL GOOD.

Yes, we care about the main character, and others, and the battle scenes are impressive. Probably skimps on the monstrousness and brutality of Genghis Khan, a warlord and slavetrader who butchered millions to create the 2nd largest empire in history (after the British Empire, the most benevolent in history by far which banned the slavetrading Khan and other despots so loved and profited from). And yes, Khan's grandson did become the Chinese emperor Kubla Khan.

SO many claim descent from Genghis Khan, and it is all a bit vague. For example, the first of the Moghul invaders of India who ruled for centuries until overthrown by the British claimed to be a descendant, even though many Muslims apparently traditionally hate the Mongols who were not Muslim but conquered Persia etc.

A great story well told, and SO enjoyable. Hence 5 stars.

Some of it is historically accurate though we know only some bits of Khan's life -very few contemporary sources about him.

This could be called THE COLOURBLIND CASTING ROOM - it is absurd and worrying this lie of history is being inflicted on the young.

I have an interest in antiques and this period, and have seen photos of workers from the Potteries then, and reunions of staff who were there with Clarice Cliff and there is NO ONE black face. And yet here, there are black women called Vera, Gladys Elsie and Betty, and black men working the kilns. Honestly, GET REAL! Get a grip. This is our British history, a real story about real people and they were not black!

It is as absurd as casting 'white' European actors as Zulu warriors or Aborigines, or maybe heroes of South Africa. Colourblind casting is such nonsense - this is REAL HISTORY and REAL EVENTS not fantasy. Cast accurately, Does it matter? YES. It matters a lot. HOW WOULD Asians or Africans like it is white actors were cast to play their historical figures of the past? See how Egyptians now are triggered by woke Netflix casting a black actress as Cleopatra (she was Greek and clearly not black - look at her image on coins).

FYI there were just 6000 black people of the whole UK population in 1939. Less in the 1920s. And none working with Cliff in Stoke on Trent in the 1920s and 30s. Not a one.

This feminist tickbox preachy metoo movies shows Clarice Cliff as Wonderwoman, in effect - erroneously claims she invented ART DECO (named in France in 1925), and colourful pottery designs, as well as marketing to women and modern business techniques. WHAT ROT! Colourful Art Deco designs were popular post the First World War in France and Holland, and Cliff took her influence from there. Yes, she achieved but steady on! She did NOT invent anything or create ART DECO or colourful designs of the 1920s and 30s. Gouda pottery (PZH) was doing colourful bowls and vases from 1918.

She also married her boss, in 1940, something left out here.

fact is, this s a very flimsy story and not enough to sustain a feature film SO the female writer and female director unfortunately make it into a metoo movie, a feminist fantasy propaganda piece in which of course a lobe heroic woman has to overcome obstacles, sexism, and awful silly sexist nastywasty men to finally succeed. Actually men enabled her career and she married the boss! This fantasy feminist film portrays Clarice Cliff as WONDERWOMAN and is about as realistic.

There were MANY women working in ceramics - in Stoke and Worcester and Swansea and other potteries. AND some women worked in design and some men worked in painting and decorating pots and plates (Worcester has many famous male artists). This who feminist pity party is CONSTRUCTED. Just like the colourblind casting mess fantasy. Fact is, BUSINESS cares about BUSINESS - making profit, It does not care about the sex /gender of anyone who enables that (or the skin colour).

I would rather see a film about the WHOLE potteries story - Wedgewood needs a movie and the whole history of porcelain whose secret recipe and process was jealously guarded by the Chinese. Now THAT would be a story. There is just not enough here to make a feature - not even a biopic.

I wish this film had been made a decade or two ago, before wokery and metoo tickbox agendas infected the film industry,

And it may have been better as a TV series, with a drama about the WHOLE Art Deco period of the 20s and 30s. I would watch that.

A wasted opportunity, 1,5 stars rounded up. I cannot fault the acting though the main character actress is way too Wonderwoman for the real world!

There is nothing particularly wrong with this film; nothing particularly memorable either. It features the famous massive explosion of WWI, where British diggers tunnelled under German lines and set explosives which, when detonated, killed 10,000 Germans, many of them vaporized, and a blast that could even be heard in London. The accidental Canadian Halifax ship explosion in 1917 was the biggest blast of WWI and maybe in history, not including nuclear bombs.

The information given at the end before the credits is worth waiting for. What precedes this can feel a bit stretched and drawn out, with romance and tragedy of the loss pof young life added into the build-up to the climax.

There are many great films about the First World War - ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT from 1930 (best version); JOURNEY'S END. Others. Probably worth watching a documentary about this too before watching this drama, or after.

The novel Birdsong features these tunnel diggers from the First World War too.

3 stars. It does what it says on the high explosives tin.

This is one of those low-budget Second World War films, this one of several British ones. They are low-budget BUT way better than the US equivalent. I seem to remember watching a US movie with the same plot - based on the true story of rescuing a scientist. Cannot recall the name.

Anyway, it is decent enough and I enjoyed it. The Nazis are suitably pantomime villain and atrocious; the ragtag band of allies believable enough, incl the excellent Sam Gittins as an Irishman.

But it's no use, I cannot help it - even now Rupert Graves (born 1963) has gone grey, and is old and haggard (he's age 57/8 here), when I see him I always think of those lush 1980s Merchant Ivory films like ROOM WITH A VIEW when he was age 23 playing 18.

Now he plays older than he is and is an old dumpy white-haired man. But hey, that is what having 5 kids does to you, Rupes! Time is a cruel master indeed...

3 stars

Well what to say about these 2 films/ SANS SOLEIL is from 1983, all still photos and commentary on Japan mostly. I turned off after 25 minutes.

They are not MOVIES - they are STILLIES. Still photographs only shown with someone commentating on what they show and how supposedly profound it all it. It was a technique for film-making that did not catch on obviously, Hmm, I wonder why... Maybe because they are mind-numbingly boring?

La Jetee is the earlier film, 1962 and about time travel and nuclear apocalypse. I lasted less than half an hour with this. Supposedly influential, and it may well have been, but GOSH it is dull and boring. The year before the BRILLIANT colour film version of THE TIME MACHINE was made. Watch that instead. Or DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS TV series 1982. Or 28 DAYS LATER. or THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, Or SHAUN OF THE DEAD. Something ENTERTAINING. This is not that.

However, both these films may well be great sures for insomnia and can be used instead of sleeping pills, so...

These are 2 very VERY pretentious and monotonous arty self-indulgent French films - the sort of thing I would have watched in the late 80s when I was arty and had aspirations to be arty and go to arty college and act arty. I grew out of it, thankfully.

If watching a series of photographs being lectured in mind-numbing dull and pretentious French with obscure references and supposedly profound pronouncements is your thing, fine - you'll love it. Just like up a Gitane, stare into the middle distance, pontificate about the futility of existence and do a Gallic shrug, and you'll be fine.

Not for me.

This is a movie like DINER (set 1959) or I suppose AMERICAN GRAFFITI (set 1962), following teen boys through their coming of age with gang rivalry in smalltown America and the predictable tragedy (well something needs to happen in a story!). Apparently the novel is set in 1965 though it is never stated explicitly BUT from the music, this is pre-Beatles, 1961/2-ish I think.

And the music is GREAT I must say - Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Blue Moon. Superb stuff and deeply authentic.

The main actor is brilliant, C Thomas Howell, who debuted in ET and was cast here age 15 (he is now 57 and looks it. He stars in new film REAGAN and was also in the now-triggering SOUL MAN - yes, in blackface. Maybe that caused his career to nosedive? Odd really as the opposite worked wonders for Spike Less and the WHITE CHICKS film makers; Amazingly the actor playing his quiet Hispanic friend Johnny was 21 when this was filmed (he looks 13/14 at most!).

Patrick Swayze is here for the girls who love him (no dancing though). Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe. And Tom Cruise is one of the boys too in a small pre-stardom role.

And apparently director's daughter Sofia aged 11; the awful feem toon is written by a Coppola too and Stevie Wonder is roped in to sing the drivel. WHY NOT just use a great early 60s song? AH nepotism. An Italian word...

So-so, not brilliant, a real melodrama soap really. BUT the young actor boys are great as is the soundtrack AND unlike so many films now, it is NOT TOO LONG.

4 stars

I watched this 2002 movie a couple of years after its release and then again in 2024 - and I was amazed really. What first struck me is how woke demands would now mean they would not DARE use the racial language which characters use here - these days the new puritans are po-faced wokies who demand the 'N-word' etc are banished from our screens in case they make viewers feel 'unsafe'. They'd also demand colourblind casting, so black and Asian actors throughout in main roles and more women too. It would be film-making by pc committee which is what we now have (see the Disney woke-ageddon disaster).

Ironically, there are more Chinese-American characters here than I have ever seen in any historical US movie which tend to focus exclusively on African-Americans and sometimes socalled 'Native Americans' (actually earlier immigrants). Chinese immigrants have been in north America for centuries as workers and more, and yet they get completely ignored. Maybe they lack the loud pressure groups? The political affiliation? How ironic considering the corrupt politics shown in this movie, Nothing changes, it seems.

SO enjoy this (and the rest of the archive) for we shall never see their like again. The way this movie tells a little-known part of American history straight, without the usual woke tutting and white/west-blaming fingerpointing is really refreshing. This is no lecture or sermon, as so often movies are these days. It just shows a version of what happened.

The endless Oirish diddy-diddly-dah blarney is trowelled on too thickly for me here, but the whole film is utterly dominated by a brilliant towering performance by Daniel Day Lewis which is still mind-blowingly brilliant.

The writer Jay Cocks (born 1944) must take credit for that too. He has not written that many produced screenplays (6 or so), but the same writer did an uncredited rewrite of Titanic by James Cameron apparently. So they are his masterpieces.

Brilliant costumes, characters, a fine British cast of supporting characters such as Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsden, Stephen Graham and veteran actor David Hemmings - all so great. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it after a gap of over 15 years. This is how epic film-making should be done - and is what Hollywood used to do SO well, once upon a time. Occasionally as with Napoleon by Brit Ridley Scott, the ambition sneaks through still, not not a lot.

4.5 stars rounded up.

And a lovely lack of CGI here, maybe the last time we shall see that - ever. Great set pieces, superb and vast sets.

I enjoyed this but found the tone rather odd. Or odd-ball. Not sure which.

Yes, it is a comedy and I LOVE dark comedy, the blacker the better. But the tone here, with quirky offbeat humour and gags (some very lame ones too) juxtaposed with a murder of a teenage boy. I am not offended in the least - just taken aback really, as it was jolting.

It was sort of family comedy, almost Spielberg-esque, or a bit like Ground Hog Day or BIG, but strangely intertwined and mixed with talk of murder, abduction, suicide and paedophilia. Interesting really, if odd. Maybe just Canadian eh?

Some nice scenes but for me the comedy worked more than the emotion or love interests. The regret of an adult and his yearning for the simplicity and success of his childhood will strike a chord with many, I am sure.

The ending (NO SPOILERS) reminded mf of the great 2009 Argentinian film THE SECTRET IN THEIR EYES which is far superior.

3 stars

I loved this. Really REALLY loved it. In colour for 1962 and stuffed full of great scenes and set pieces, wonderful British character actors galore, genuine humour and it is REALLY funny - except for the po-faced who may object at common sense 1962 portrayals of men and women in the dating game.

A lovely reference to the Common Market here by Leslie Philips whose character would probably be arrested for smiling at a girl these days.

Clive Dunn does an early Jonesie from Dad's Army too - 6 years before it was made - as an old man. The brilliant neglected Dick Emery is here too.

Loved it loved it LOVED IT! Great to see Britain how it was in 1962 as well. I dread to think what this would be like if they remade in now.

4.5 stars rounded up