Film Reviews by PV

This made me laugh - especially the in-jokes about differences between Brits and Americans. There is a superb sequence featuring the House of Lords and the US Congress which shows how Brits can laugh as ourselves and our country.

Some 1935 special effects complete with toy model ships and all shot in the UK.

But fun, and a comedy that made me laugh - unlike most TV and movie comedies now.

4 stars.

I often had no idea what was going on in this BFI/lottery-funded film with a Spanish director - and often was past caring.

I think it seriously needed editing and development at the script stage - someone needed to manage that, as this is a vanity piece using public money (some, at least) and it is just not coherent. Maybe it is supposed to be several stories in one which link up, like those old portmanteau films, Hammer Horror did loads.

Do yourself a favour and watch one of them instead. Or the class DEAD OF NIGHT.

Or if you want this sort of post-apocalyptic shtick, maybe Waterworld, or Blade Runner or The Terminator movies.

Not this, It is dire. Boring and confusing. 1 star

This started well, but I hated this film - I did not believe the story or the characters, as if they were cardboard cut-outs plonked into the scenario created by the writer/director to make some points about race and social class.

It was, in a word, boring. And annoying. When the backstories kick in the movie loses all momentum and becomes al about woke virtue-signalling and box-ticking. It'd be less boring to watch grass grow, frankly.

The great-niece character looks remarkably pretty for a drug addict raised in poverty too, so that is all absurd.

AND this has perhaps the worst sex scene it has ever been my displeasure to see - it is not explicit. It is just absurd and SO badly-written I burst out laughing as my eyes rolled like pinballs. Just goes to show that even experienced directors can get it all SO wrong. It would have been 2 stars without that scene.

Also, knowing something about gardens I can say the assertion formal geometric gardens are FRENCH and wild landscaped gardens are ENGLISH is piffle. The Tudors etc loved geometric gardens which had control over Nature - read Shakespeare, as the garden metaphor is everpresent. The age of the Romantics in the 18th century meant the aristocracy grew to like natural settings, however fake and designed, with fake follies and even paid hermits on their land. All a romantic fantasy of the upper classes, like Marie Antoinette cosplaying a shepheress. NOTHING to do with nationality..

1 star

I had somehow missed this 2008 film which is a coproduction between Israel, Germany and the USA and filmed in Israel and Romania (hence the many surnames of crew & actors ending in 'u').

One big criticism - NO SUBTITLES OPTION. I often use them for English language films too, seeing as so many movies and TV dramas these days suffer from a bad dose of mumble-itis. But hey, I got most of it (I sometimes had to rewind).

Based on a novel, this is a quirky fantasy film. Watch the 25 minute MAKING OF doc on the DVD - it is worth it. There was no such institution in Israel in the 1950s and 60s - not until 1980s did anything like this exist.

I suppose this fits in with many fictional and supposedly factual takes of 'wild children' which date back many centuries.

Also a Holocaust film, with the Jeff Goldblum main character shown in Germany in the 20s and 30s - I always wanted to know more, but I suppose I'll have to read the novel to get that. So that pre-war and flashback to the camp is one part of the film; life in the psychiatric institution is the half that completes it.

This is a 2008 movie; I do wonder with today's hyper-sensitive sensibilities post-#metoo etc whether such a film could be made today. Everything is so po-faced and puritan now, and even if allowed needs multiple trigger warnings. Yawn...

4 stars

The Guardian gave this 1 star and called it "a deluded blend of magical realism, gratuitous violence and sentimentality"', while the BFI stated: "a ludicrous circus fantasy filled with lavishly orchestrated carnage". Well considering the sort of dire tedious tickbox films these rags adore, I thought that was recommendation enough so rented it! If the Guardian hates it, the film is surely entertaining and worth a watch! And I was not wrong.

Yes, it is overlong and a tad meandering; BUT it has a budget to enable the special effects of superpowers to look decent ( usually disliked such scifi magic realism, but I see the writer of this has only 1 other movie credit, for an Italian film about a criminal with superpowers! So s/he obviously has a thing...)

HOORAH that it is not dubbed; instead it has automatic English subtitles so bravo for that! I hate dubbed foreign films.

The truly great actor Franz Rogowski stars - and I would watch a film about paint drying with him in it. The plot is basically 4 super-powered misfits have to evade the six-fingered leader of a Nazi Berlin circus (Franz Rogowski) . And it is BIG, bawdy (surprisingly so for a 15 cert) and an action-fantasy. which could have started life as a graphic novel. I hate Marvel films, but this is fun at least.

Some vague references to The Wizard of Oz are here too in what is a quest story really. They even mention Dorothy!

Maybe watch with BLOODSTORM (2012, and also called Nazis at the Centre of the Earth, so see Adolf Hitler ride a T-Rex in Antarctica. Errrr).

The difference is that this movie has a big budget, some famous actors (I think Claudio Santamaria is a big veteran Italian actor) and very VERy Italian, as it is OTT and has that visual comedy which in the UK has vanished mostly, but which survives in many Italian and other fori

Nice soundtrack too which includes CREEP by Radiohead and I think NOVEMBER RAIN by Guns N Roses too, oh and a Nazi Rubik's Cube and a smartphone tone in 1943 - but it has a timeslip theme too via the ringleader Nazi...

Just suspend belief, do not think too hard, hide your copy of The Guardian and go along for the ride! Great fun. 4 stars.

The best biopic about Billie Holiday is LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972) - a movie which succeeds in making Diana Ross almost likeable.

This film is about drugs, specially the socalled war on drugs, which has been going on for over a century in the ever-Puritan USA, starting perhaps with Prohibition 1920-33. African-Americans - as black people are called now, or N-groes as they used to be called by white and black alike in America (I use the hyphen to placate the snowflake censors...) - were a target for the war on drugs, because for whatever reason, their inner city communities is where drug use happened a lot.

Though it did happen amongst well-off whites - remember Cole Porter's I GET A KICK OUT OF YOU and its mention of cocaine, or how Judy Garland et all were injected or pilled up to give them that ZING. But if you research it, a lot of black musicians and actors too from the 1920s and 30s got into heroin especially - a lot of black child stars in those 1930s US films did. Why? Poverty? Bad upbringings? Well Louis Armstrong was born in a brothel and grew up there like Billie but did not fall victim of drink and drugs like her and others.

ANYWAY this is based on the non-fiction book CHASING THE DREAM by Johann Hari, a white British gay former journalist who used to write for The Independent until 2011 when he was exposed as plagiarising some of his articles and fabricating interviews etc in others - his Orwell award was withdrawn for that. I have not read the book but that is the source for this film - a book by a white British man.

What annoyed me most here was the reference to STRANGE FRUIT as Billie Holiday's song. Well yes, she sang it as her trademark song BUT did not write it, or any songs.

STRANGE FRUIT words and music were written by a white Jewish man Abel Meeropol (1903 –1986)whose songs were often published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. Like Leiber and Stoller, white Jewish boys, who wrote most of the early Elvis hits, and at age 19 wrote HOUND DOG for black female Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton - in which she scolds her man (so 2 teenage white Jewish boys wrote as a black woman! Reminds me of NATURAL WOMAN, lyrics by a man). The Elvis version sold 10 million copies.

This film is too long and too political for me, like a BLM-approved flick - the predictable GASP moments of lynching are there, and it does seem sometimes like a lecture or even sermon as SO many woke political films do - as if they are yelling at us YOU SEE,. RACISM IS BAD. No, really?

What annoys me most is this VERY American culture gets imported and grafted onto the UK which has never had race laws, segregation, or lynching (actually whites were lynched too in the USA at times, in 18th and 19th C, via various immigrant groups fighting or attacks on Brits - no films about that).

The music however is great - a shame about so much padding and the political posturing, and the love triangle stuff drawn out.

3 stars

If you want a movie about poker and gambling, then maybe watch CASINO or THE STING even or MISSISSIPI GRIND.

What we have here is a character study, and perhaps a none too believable one, which entangles poker-playing with the Gulf War and specifically the torture meted out by US Servicemen and women at Abu Ghraib (which means father or little crows in Arabic, parently). Not sure if it works.

Did I believe the inevitable revenge tragedy plot? Nope. Did I believe the romance part? Nope.

But it is entertaining in a brooding aloof way, and has a great soundtrack too.

3 stars

Watchable but ever-so safe, predictable and thus annoying D-Day veteran tale.

NB: The Last Rifleman is loosely based on the true story of British D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan, who left his care home in England to travel to France. Another film based on Jordan's story, The Great Escaper, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, was released a few weeks earlier.

So you wait ages for a film about an old boy returning to the Normandy beaches and then two come along at once eh?

The added twee oirish-ness annoyed me often in this, epecially as this is Northern Ireland AKA British and all the British Isles too, even though the teen thugs on the streets are shown to try and balance the tweeness.

Also annoying was the utterly gratuitous shoe-horning of a black US GI meeting the main character in France - who has just got a medal for being the first African-American on the beaches on 6 June 1944 (Omahaa and Utah were the US beaches; Brits and Canadians were on Gold, Juno and Sword). Sadly, THE GREAT ESCAPER was also obsessed with tickbox diversity and parachuting people of colour into the cast and background, which is not realistic at all (ever been to Normandy? Well I have! Brixton or Hounslow it ain't).

In WWII the US army was segregated so the black (or 'N-gro) units as called then, (have to use a dash so snowflakes do not have a meltdown and report the review) were separate and DID NOT take part in front line fighting at all; they had support auxiliary roles, loads of African Americans in the medical core or catering or logistics/transport/supplies or here putting up barrage balloons. What worries me is now kids are taught at school that the D-Day beaches were a multiculti operation, with lots of black and brown faces. THAT IS JUST NOT TRUE. Saving Private Ryan got it right. I dread to think of a woke remake, maybe 40% black/Asian and 50% female, plus wheelchairs of course - it could almost be the BBC newsroom!). ALL added to boost the US PR no doubt and get that funding?

There is maybe room for a separate movie about that black barrage balloon unit BUT there already have been many movies about black-only units in WWII in the segregated US army/. Plenty of Jewish troops fought and died and also what Americans call Hispanics, which is what we Europeans call 'white'.

Interesting, the German soldiers defending the beaches on D-Day and killing Americans and Brits were much more diverse and ethnic, as many were central Asians or from parts of the USSR the Nazis invaded - such as Ukraine or further easy. D-Day at Normandy was a surprise attack (watch OPERATION MINCEMEAT or the better THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS to see how the Allies fooled the Germans into thinking the landings would be to the south). SO the ethnic German troops were elsewhere and the beaches of Normandy were defended by many central Asian troops with high cheekbones who looked like Yul Brynner (A Russian who wonderfully played the King of Siam though these days the woke gestapo would make that VERBOTEN in their pc fascism eh?). US GIs were often puzzled when they took prisoners who they said looked 'Chinese'.

As for UK troops. In 1939 there were ONLY 6000 black people in the UK (and some very well off upper class Asians - incl 2 Asian MPs in the 1920s and many at top public schools). Of a population of 44 million. GI mixed race babies made that 8000 at the end of the war. So SHOW THAT not a diversity-worshipping fantasy of what YOU the woke taliban want the past and history to be. Very Hitler or Staling, rewriting the past how you want it, thee knows...

This all matters in terms of accuracy so I find the endless shoehorning of race issues and non-white characters into old stories silly and wrong - because the young and ignorant will believe that is the truth.

But as a film it passes the time, though I prefer THE GREAT ESCAPER which I gave 3 stars.

This gets 2.5 stars. Good in parts.

This is the debut of jobbing TV advert director Michael Pearce (b 1981) who won a best newcomer BAFTA in 2019 for this, which he also wrote.

It is based on the true story of THE BEAST OF JERSEY, Edward Paisnel who terrorised that Channel Island from 1957 to 1971 when he was caught, only after an innocent man was accused, and sentenced to 30 years in prison THOUGH he was released and then moved to the Isle of Wight where he died in 1994. He did not murder anyone, however, though did enter strangers' houses masked at night and abused/raped/assaulted many women/children.

I found it rather overlong to be honest but enjoyed the first two acts. When I was watching them I was saying to myself 'please do not follow the typical trajectory in act 3' but THAT is precisely what happened, which was annoying. I had seen that template in act one and as sad the third act followed it and also jumped the shark rather, to make things more exciting. Act one is brilliant'; act 2 is good. Act 3 - oh dear, not for me, way too predictable and OTT (NO SPOILERS).

It reminded me a bit of the great SIGHTSEERS.

I worked a summer on Jersey where the (no doubt rather well off director/writer grew up) and nodded with recognition at some of the island snobbery which I witnessed first-hand. I remember the strict bouncers (often Irish) outside nightclubs and just pubs in St Helier stopping anyone entering who was wearing trainers - I hated that but we found a decent pub with 3 floors and club atop which let you wear anything! Like normal people. The no jeans rule enforced here made me laugh out loud. Geraldine James as the controlling social climbing mother is superb.

I actually watched Jurassic Park 2 in a St Helier cinema - a standard price red velvet seat on row 3 of the circle. if you wanted a SUPERIOR yellow seat on row 1 and 2, it cost 31 more. LOL. That petty social snobbery is endemic to Jersey and such small rural communities maybe. The Portugal agricultural worker aspect is authentic too - Jersey imports workers from Madeira especially, a Portuguese island, to pick potatoes. Winters on islands can be tough, and they're used to it BUT no doubt blamed from crimes as many such immigrant workers can be.

All in all, a decent watch and on trend with the domestic psychological thriller genre, which has become massive in eBooks especially of late, and esp with main characters who are female (which will get the funding from the Lottery and BBC too no doubt).

3 stars

I really enjoyed this film - one of the best spoofs of the music business I have ever seen. It is all there - the vanity, the delusion, the tiffs, the dodgy manager, the jockeying for position, the falling out, the falling in, the TV/media circus - and all made weirder by being in Japan and featuring one of their insane TV shows (I think ENDURANCE was the one Clive James used to feature on his ITV show; and The Simpsons MR SPARKLE/Homer have been there too of course).

Like the hilarious drug smuggler Channel 4 comedy series THE CURSE, it stars Allan Mustafa, with Hugo Chegwin and Steve Stamp who also write episodes of that and this too. Decent writing is key, and some fun impro no doubt. I laughed out loud several times. Asim Chaudry plays the sleazy band manager to repulsive perfection.

AND the hit song that gets them noticed in Japan is not bad either! Better than most UK Eurovision songs anyway!

I now want to watch the TV series of PEOPLE JUST DO NOTHING which I missed as I watch little terrestrial TV these days (it is mostly so rubbish).

4 stars

I enjoyed this - a good old late 60s war film, set mostly during the Second World War in Poland and Paris, and then later in a contemporary (1966) setting. Those time shifts are handled and signposted well - other directors please take note!

An all-star cast here Peter O'Toole (still in his wildman drinking days), Omar Sharif (oddly believable as a Nazi, seeing as he is Egyptian), Tom Courtenay, Donald Pleasence, and recognise-the-face-not-the-name actor Charles Gray, plus Gordon Jackson.

The backdrop is the almost-successful attempt on Hitler's life at The Wolf''s Lair in East Prussia (Poland) - that story is covered in VALKYRIE (2008) and the German TV movie STAUFFENBERG (2004). This is actually filmed in Poland under Communism in 1966, which is quite an achievement, so is really authentic re locations etc. No CGI fakery in those days, and no western or British city standing in for it either.

However, this is no historical biopic. It is a crime drama, really, against that backdrop. I liked it. The same sort of thing is done well in TV series VIENNA BLOOD.

A bit long, yes; a tad meandering maybe. But still better than the woke dross pumped out these days. So 4 stars.

This is a superb biopic, with some truth in it - some events are absolutely true as is the dialogue of TV appearances shown here. However, some claims were from a biography written by a friend after Farmer's death so may not be true (the abuse at psychiatric hospital). She did star in films with Bing Crosby and Cary Grant; she did visit the USSR in 1935; as a senior at highschool she did win a prize for writing an essay called GOD DIES. And she did at a low point end up working in the laundry of the hotel where her biggest high COME AND GET IT had its premier. In later life she had a TV show and found some peace, gave up drinking etc.

Anyway, I watched this film on TV decades ago, and always remember the night-time psychiatric 'ward' (dungeon) scene with US serviceman paying orderlies to 'enjoy' the fallen Hollywood star.

Farmer's life was absolutely fascinating and very disturbed, with alcohol and drugs making an unstable person even less stable until, inevitably, the police and law bundle in to destroy her reputation and life. They do seem rather to enjoy doing that.

Having read up on Farmer's life I now know which bits of this biopic are true and which are not.

But the actress in the main role is superb and the spitting image of the doomed actress.

This is one of the best biopics I have ever seen anyway (up there with Chaplin).

4 stars.

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...