Film Reviews by PV

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

The writer/director was responsible for the awful LaLa Land and 10 Cloverfield Avenue BUT also great movies Whiplash and First Man. So...

Did I enjoy this? Yes. In parts. Is it a bloated self-indulgent mess of a movie which badly needs to focus and slice away the flab? Yes - it should be 2 hours.

It is lavish, for sure, and the budget must have been huge. A feast for the eyes - and ears with a great jazz soundtrack (though I do feel the predictable tickbox racial theme adds nothing and is so cliched these days when EVERY single movie has woke preachy themes about racism/sexism. Yawn. Just tell the story! No need for lectures about racism, Mexican immigration, metoo sexism etc! EVERYONE gets exploited, white males too, in the entertainment business).

The 1920s (mostly) setting is wonderfully realised too, with some fascinating characters, and the actors do well too. It is utterly believable.

BUT if you want to watch a better film about Hollywood at that time and earlier, watch CHAPLIN.

Hollywood LOVES movies about Hollywood - see the massively over-rated Lala Land. But here, a movie s 3 hours long because it drags out stories, character backstories, themes and does not need to. WHY even have a 30 minute prologue before we get to the opening titles?

So, in conclusion, yes it is enjoyable and watchable, esp for those who are interested in film history, but it is an ordeal to sit there for 3 hours watching it, especially when it drags. Maybe a NON-director's cut can be made - max 2 hours?

3 stars then.

OK so I always have a soft spot for low budget British films - and those made by the fwar film company TIN HAT productions set up by Callum Burn (born 1992) and his dad Andrew (each get 10+ multitasking mentions on the credits) cost £80,000 or so. It is possible, The very decent horror film CANARIES cost less than £30,000.

But, and it is a BIG but, it all looks very cheap and underproduced, with a risible script, even if the film is just over 70 minutes. The acting (which includes Callum and his dad plus those who acted in their other warplane films) is so wooden it could make a spoon to stir it up a bit - which is badly needed.

Worst of all is the script. Writers and authors spend hours, months, years revising and rewriting and perfecting novels and scripts and screenplays, getting professional advice and editing often. That does not seem to have happened here. The flimsy script could maybe carry a short film of 30 minutes.

The by-numbers script is designed to be low budget as most 'action' takes place in a cockpit. I was a bit baffled plot-wise as there seemed to be NO taking photos of Germany happening at all, and that is the whole point of the mission and this unit in the RAF - which deserves a decent film or at least a part in a war film, as it is a little-known unit.

Best watch BATTLE OF BRITAIN the wonderful 1969 movie then. Or Dark Blue World.; or Reach for the Sky. Or Angels One Five (1954); or Piece of Cake, 1988 TV drama.

I wanted to give this 2 stars but just could not bear to in the end. Maybe 1.5 stars for effort.

I must admit I hate Spike Lee films - about as much as Wes Anderson films. Just awful, What do people see in them? No idea.

BUT because I am a big fan of satire, including shocking near-the-knuckle stuff, I thought I would watch this. I gave up after 40 minutes.

Spike Lee has to be just about the most racist film director/writer in the history of the USA certainly in recent years. His complete lack of awareness (I assume) of his own racist stereotyping of ALL white people as ignorant clueless buffoons or out-and-out-racists (ALL white people in the world fit into these 2 camps in the Lee universe) is stark.

For GREAT scathing satire in movies watch TEAM AMERICA - WORLD POLICE. Or even DR STRANGELOVE. Or even PLANET OF THE APES (1967/8). Or even WHITE CHICKS (in which blacks white up, though that film which is occasionally funny steals a lot from the classic SOME LIKE IT HOT).

Not sure what this is filmed with - seems like a home video, The writing is dire, clunky and on-the-nose. The acting so wooden you could make an African mask out of it. The direction just so clumsy and amateurish. It was painful to watch even 40 minutes of this racist dross.

As for minstrel shows - a US tradition imported to the UK via touring groups in late 19th and early 20th C, this is ALL about theatre - makeup and facepainting and no different from African natives 'whiting up' (watch MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON or SHE to see it). The fake outrage by supposedly traumatised persons of colour who have glimpsed Al Johnson is pathetic and fake - pure manufactured racism. It is threat, not racism, and theatre and drama creates types for EVERYONE, all colours and genders. The way it is. STILL. See how white males are portrayed on TV drama these days (if you can find a white male) - all useless clueless buffoons (in adverts only that) though in drama they can also be abusive violent monsters, Yay!

Spike Lee seems to think being racist against all 'white people' (as he would call them to create the OTHER) in the world makes him non-racist, Not very bright then. But hey, it made him very rich as a professional victim.

I shall not make the mistake of watching a Spike Lee movie ever again.

This film and Lee think they are so clever. Nope. Just boring and worse, this sort of stuff incites division. Please keep it in the USA and stop importing it to the UK, which never had slavery (not since 12th C) and ended it all over the world. BLM etc is like that and has been SO damaging in the UK, like a viral pandemic actually, sowing the seeds of division and mate. The UK is a class-based society and that is where disadvantage lies - not race or gender. Socio-economic class.

No stars

This is an effective haunted house film, in effect, funded by BFI and BBC.

It leans heavily on THE TURN OF THE SCREW and also THE CEMENT GARDEN (though no way was Ian McEwan the first to explore that theme).

Actually, all a bit tame. I had expected more nudity and violence really. This could be family viewing at 7-8pm on terrestrial TV. Most actors here have UK TV pedigrees. The acting is great however so no fault there - the kids are suitably deranged and creepy. As I said, very TURN OF THE SCREW (watch the 1961 movie THE INNOCENTS which is based on that Henry James story - it is the best version).

HOMEBOUND is BY THE BOOK in terms of character arcs and journeys - the thing is, that arc is just not believable at all, the way characters switch so suddenly Sometimes the logic here is nonsensical too. They have phones. So someone would have been on to social services pronto in real life.

This is not really a horror - there is one great JUMP moment which effectively uses sound though! I love it when directors use sound well, so full marks for that.

3 stars overall

I really enjoyed this film. It was genuinely original, though perhaps could have been a TV drama. The director/writer is clearly drawing on lived experience - and the street featured is just like the ones I knew when I lived opposite Palmers Greek, I mean Green, in north London! Many Cypriot immigrant families in north London - most Greek but also Turks, as at Wood Green.

Is is believable? Not really. These Saul on the road to Damascus do OCCASIONALLY happen in real life, but not often. Very rich people tend to stay very rich and will do anything to keep it that way! BUT it is a story and fiction, so...fine. It's fun! Nonsense but fun.

I saw the end twist coming miles off, from act one actually. So many PLANTS in the early film re the geek boy in the family playing the stock market.

SO best to see it all as a fantasy, or IMAGINERY REALITY - there are roots in the real world here, yes. Despite the morality-tale-cum-fairytale which follows.

The actor Stephen Dillane stars here with his real-life son who, to be fair, is not the spitting image of him, no more so than the daughter. All actors do well.

The Greek-Turkish beef (or doner lamb/mutton) gets referenced. Though I do wonder how many Muslim Turks marry girls from Greek Orthodox families.... How many Muslim families are happy for daughters to marry non-Muslims? Yes, for the sons, so long as the wife converts to Islam. That is the sad reality. There is a GREAT deal of bigotry, racism and faith hate amongst London's and Britain's multicultural communities - often hidden when ethnic/faith groups are in a minority. When in a majority as in certain northern English towns and cities, then we get separate societies, ethnic and faith enclaves living by their own rules and values and not integrating into British or Western culture. Just watch the news. Any decade.

SO do not overthink this. Do not worry or fuss about the ethnic stereotypes (especially as ALL stereotypes are based on truth even if just part of it or an outdates truth - just see how white Brits are portrayed as Imperial bowler-hatted gin-swilling racist stereotype buffoons in ALL Asian and Bollywood).

I liked the amoral financier characters - so close to reality, it is scary. Though no way did I believe the character arc and journey of the woman who was supposedly employed to work for the accountant firm. Fairytales like that just do not happen. People - male and female - in the City wallow in their amorality out of pure greed and self-interest. My lived experience, that.

I also LOVE the fact it was self-funded, so no state subsidy from BFI BBC FilmFour etc - which these days would lead to preachy woke sermons and colour-blind casting. This low budget British film mostly avoids that (except a bizarre scene of some hawker selling household goods door to door - which happens in the suburbs, though does not tend to happen when huge houses with long drives and big gates are on a street!)

The ending is eye-rollingly silly slushy (NO SPOILERS) BUT it is actually very Hollywood movie and MAMA MIA so many will love it, no doubt.

So flawed but watchable and yes, original. Reminded me a bit of another semi-autobiographical self-financed film, SIXTY-SIX (2006).

If the ending were less toe-curling it would be 4 stars. 3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a brilliant film, harrowing but true, well-written, well-directed and well-acted, with real heart and focus. It matters.

I did think it would be dubbed when I saw no subtitles option BUT thank goodness it had subtitles and is the German. Its cast has many familiar faces for those who know German films and TV drama.

Buchenwald was one of the lesser known concentration camps, because it was not a death camp like Auschwitz and others - it was a work camp, though 50,000+ people died there of 250,000 sent there 1937-45.

The way the war ends in chaos, panic and uncertainty for all, the SS and German soldiers and inmates works very well.

This is directed by the same guy who directed the brilliant 2013 TV miniseries GENERATION WAR.

One of the best wartime concentration camp films ever made. ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR (1978) is also superb and there are others. This is up there with the best of them.

4.5 stars

I have not watched any of the TV series at all, so came to this film totally green really.

I enjoyed it. The characters are genuinely quirky, funny and strong as individuals. The usual types, and cartoon character sometimes, but that is fine - it is comedy and IS actually comedy and made me smile and laugh (unlike so much modern comedy esp onc pc BBC TV).

The plot is silly, but why not? Have you watched BRITANNIA? And that is not even comedy.

Nice and compact in length too, no dragging.

3.5 stars rounded up