Film Reviews by PV

This is neither a horror or a thriller - no scares or thrills. Not a comedy either. No laughs at all,. Not a satire that I can see either.

SO what is it? a pompous pretentious mess is what.

I only give this 2 stars due to the great cast esp George MacKay who I first noticed in PRIDE (2014) though he was a child actor before that in PETER PAN and more from age 11. The THE THIEF LORD and JOHNNY AND THE BOMB aged 13. It sure helps to be posh and at private schools agents visit and to have parents working in the TV and film industries...

Paddy Considine phones it in (watch THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS instead, a great virus end of days film). Johnny Depp's Nepo-baby gets a starring role too.

I see it has been compared to the awful film called THE LOBSTER which I have 1 star and reviewed thus: "This film is called 'The Lobster'. It should be called 'Preposterous pretentious unfunny Eurotrash fantasy drama'. It clearly thinks it is so clever and original - but it really is not. Theatre and film have done all this surrealist absurdist stuff a great many times over the last 100 years."

I really wanted to like WOLF but would recommend people watch AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON instead of maybe GREYSTOKE if they want a wolf shot.

1 star; plus 1 more for George MacKay who will win best actor Oscar one day for sure.

I really enjoyed this. Maybe it is my age - I suspect younger viewers will not get it.

From a novel, a penny thriller a bit by-numbers sort of plot-heavy derring-do story BUT none the worse for that. It has a story, and is exciting (if a tad confusing sometimes). I liked the film in a film trick too (Tropic Thunder before its time).

Czech-British actor (1917-2012) who was so good in the later The Ladykillers and most famous from The Pink Panther films is superb in an early role. He often played baddies but his English was superb, only slightly accented. He escaped the Nazis to come to the UK in 1939 then could not return of course as the Communist dictatorship came. Last seen in Miss Marple in 2002 aged 85.

The ending is abrupt BUT this is a watchable thriller nonetheless, and I loved the snow - must have been filmed on location in Italy or Switzerland or somewhere post-war in a time of real austerity.

if you like old black and white thrillers, this is for you, If not, maybe go watch CGI Marvel mush.

4 stars

This film is funded by the BBC in its pre-woke days, and looks it. Based on a novel by Matt Thorne with a screenplay with a fellow artiliterati, it proves it is great to have contacts. The BBC runs on such crony-fuel.

Riding the 90s/00s focus on what men are, a la Nick Hornby Feverpitch, or High Fidelity or maybe David Nichols' Starter for Ten.

There is just not enough here to sustain a film - or a novel, one suspects. It just tries way too hard, with subplots galore, stretching the plot out over almost 90s minutes and that felt long. A TV drama of an hour of half and hour is what such a story needs. It is a sitcom basically and not a very funny one.

Some funny moments and the actors do well with their cartoon characters Tom Hughes has played big roles since, Robert Graves in a recent film.

But in general, it is all as limp as the main character - get another wimp loser man portrayed in film (TV drama now only has those or men as incompetent buffooons, as in TV ads). There is a very long British tradition of this, think Some Mothers, Norman Wisdom and Chaplin etc. But they did it well.

The cat subplot is silly and not realistic too. And the one with a make underling and female boss would be considered sexual harassment at least if the sexes were reversed, and maybe even sexual assault or rape. But when a man is abused it is comedy, ha ha.

And they probably wouldn't get past the woke pc metoo new puritan police now with the lewd images, subplots and attitudes, oh no matron! Me I prefer Are You Being Served for innuendo.

2 stars. JUST.

OK so at the moment I record every week the 1994 French-Czech Maigret TV series on Talking Pictures (82 freeview) Tuesday evenings. That is variable but watchable.

This is dire. Slow, just boring. a paper-thin plot and story, and characters it is hard to care about. A bit confused too.

I suspect this is a Gerard Depardieu vanity piece.

A film to watch to pass the time but do not expect much.

Some viewers gush about SUCCESSION - me, I lasted half the first series, then stopped watching, - very rare for me to do that. Just not for me.

Why? Because unlike many it seems I am not obsessed or fixated with the super-rich. I am just not, I did not watch Dallas or Dynasty on TV either.

This has good bits to it, the finance scenes, the amoral money men. AND we always love a baddie. I am not a fan of Damien Lewis in general but his character here is well drawn with a Gatsby-esque backstory.

I just do not believe the backstory of the govt lawyer character Paul Giamatti or the depiction of his wife in her job (no spoilers). Honestly that is not realism or believable and would never be allowed.

I dislike the personal stories and backstories,. Like most TV drama now we have the obligatory 'strong independent' female characters taking up too much screen time arguably, and this is often done via wives and girlfriends of financiers (as the world of trading is very VERY male, most maths/economics graduates male too, the way it is).

SO as in The Sopranos we have the female counsellor subplots etc. That is all flab and makes this too long- it really could be a 6 part series or even 4 part, so it is all a bit waffly and bloated.

I was 50/50 about whether to bother with the 2nd series.

For a great film on finance watch the movie MARGIN CALL which is brilliant and does all this series does in just 2 hours.

For a decent tense series on corruption, watch HOUSE OR CARDS - UK version or US version (until the great Kevin Spacey was kicked out).

3 stars.

This is a fascinating if flawed film. Made during the war and shortly after the actual assassination of the hangman of Prague Heydrich, it is clearly propaganda for the war - it was shot in 1942, released in 1943.

Could be compared to the wonderful WENT THE DAY WELL made the same year, the first ever film based on a Graham Greene short story, to mention a Nazi invasion (lots of speculative novels and films since).

In reality Heydrich was not shot but died a week after a grenade exploded under his car in Prague. SO watch the extra here, a German professor with wonderful English explaining the history and context for half an hour.

Fritz Lang made classics like Metropolis (1927) silent film and the brilliant 'M' which made the German actor Peter Lorre a star - great films both.

Of course, there are many cartoon characters here, caricatures of Nazis, partly because it is anti-Nazi propaganda and partly because many silent film stars and directors did that - see Chaplin.ls the Great Dictator. That care get tiresome these days.

Some classic shadows and angles of Lang's German Expressionism too, making Nazis characters seem sinister just from shadows.

I am sure Mel Brooks was influenced by this to make THE PRODUCERS (original title Springtime for Hitler) - the OTT caricatures for one, but also the music, the song at the end - reminds me so much of HERE'S HITLER in that musical!

A great watch, esp for war film fans, maybe a tad long but 3.5 stars rounded up.

Hmmm this is a real mess of a film, maybe from a novel not sure. Seems to have some Irish loyalty inn the 4 star reviews maybe.

It falls between 2 stools - sometimes it tries to be a comedy, but is lame and very cartoon character caper, like Scooby Do in parts, just silly scenes, utterly unbelievable. At other times it is a violent revenge thriller.

The voiceover supposed twist is not clever, it is pathetic - voiceovers are often a sign of desperation to clarify a confusing film.

Great cast. No idea what they are doing in this dross which I note is state-funded by Irish govt and FilmFour (a UK-Irish coproduction) But maybe should have been a cartoon.

1. 5 stars rounded up.

This film is so timely - the invasion of Israel by Arabs of Egypt and Syria in late 1973 is portrayed in a realistic way, often wordlessly with the horrors of war.

Watch to the end - it does sag a bit in the middle but make sure you watch that.

Important and timely movie.

4 stars

This film is just awful. Beyond awful. It is a total mess - it makes Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FRO OUTER SPACE look well-structured and coherent.

Just a series of pointless scenes about - well,. nothing. It thinks it is clever but is not, it is pretentious, deliberately obtuse and inchoate, pointless, silly, boring but yes, expensive - who funds this trash? - and with a top notch cast.

Now I have always hated Wes Anderson movies and am genuinely baffled why anyone would like them or fund them. BUT I thought, look at the great cast - they can't all be wrong. But oh they are, this is SUCH A TURKEY.

Watch THE TRUMAN SHOW which makes the same points about reality and artifice I think this pretentious mess is trying to make but in an entertaining, well-written, coherent, funny and moving way. Or GROUNDHOG DAY (based on an old idea in old 20th C novels actually). Or the original STAR TREK series. want desert, watch CHINATOWN or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or LORDS OF WAR. or hum SANDY, from GREASE. Anything is better than suffering this.

Or just watcn the wall for hours in case a spider crawls up it - because that will be more exciting and be a better story than anything in here.

1 star. Avoid.

No idea why anyone gives this 5 stars - it is a film with NO STORY just a string of vignette comic sketches which are pure slapstick visual humour, Tatis does his funny walks a lot - no doubt what he did in the theatre and the circus.

barely raised a smile. I enjoyed the old-style holiday resort though.

But come on, Is this REALLY funny? How? Why?

It is very silly clowning visual humour. 3 stars max. And that is generous.

I enjoyed this, Pure 1986s shock shlock horror. Pre CGI which I prefer.

A later 1990s film SLITHER influenced by it. TREMORS was earlier. the BlOB much earlier.

I liked it anyway. Good fun Friday night fare,.

4 stars

I would say this - watch the brilliant movie MARGIN CALL. It does everything this first series and no doubt the followed 3 or 4 or 5 do in 2 hours.

Never been the biggest fan of Damian :Lewis and I am not fascinated by billionaires and the super-rich, I hated Succession - stopped watching halfway through series 1.

I dislike the way this is all dragged out, with the personal and unlikely sex lives or the main characters.

A baddie is always dun, the more amoral the better. But this does drag.

The writing is by numbers, all planned in detail on charts - I can almost smell them, The character arcs, the almost Marvel battle between goodie and baddie.

Watchable but forgettable and not great drama, try THE AMERICANS for that.

3 stars.

This reminds me of the best ventriloquist doll film ever DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) and an Anthony Hopkins film heavily influenced by it, MAGIC (1978). each deals with mental illness BUT the questions hangs there about whether the doll is actually alive.

The same here though it confused me to start with. Set in 1981 (with improbable scene set 15 years later) this started very well, and only later does one realise an anatomical doll used to teach is just that.

I am so glad I watched this superb spooky creepy movie - not sure how I missed it over the years.

Brilliant use of a digital bleeping watch in the plot too, no spoilers. VERY 1981! As are the big 80s hairdos.

What I especially like about this film compared to so many modern movies is that it is not all manblaming - the horrendous controlling mother and the aunt are truly monstrous, not just the father. These days, a similar film would manblame and show all males as bad and useless or monsters and all women as victim angels. Why I avoid them, esp the preachy metooboohoo woke ones, with stereotypical 'strong and independent women in control' as contrasted with the clueless useless men (who invented human civilisation of course but...), Bye bye Barbia - not bothering with you, doll! I have got PIN instead.

And Leon is a sympathetic character, despite everything. Not sure the law would have let the end happen (no spoilers) but anyway, it is Canada eh - not the USA.

4 stars.

OK so this won an Oscar probably to tick a box BUT THEN we have seen that a lot with black nominees undeservedly winning in recent years imho. Diversity destroyed the Oscars and BAFTAs - not based on merit alone any more. BUt were vthey ever? Very few comedies ever win; they loved movies when an actor tgransforms, diabled or ages or gets fat (the Whale which stol the Oscar from Elvis!_.

Anyhoo, this is a passable film. Not classic or stunning but covers new ground in the age of trans-activism. well acted and written. Each country has different laws though so who knows what would happen in the UK in this situation. And I dread to think what would happen in most Middle Eastern, Asian, African states - most cannot even tolerate gay people, and death sentences for that exist in so many countries there.

Like it or not, medical science and meds make it possible for people (who may be just confused, and most trans autistic I believe) to change gender BUT NOT sex. If you are born male then male you stay no matter what, like the man here. Society needs to address certain issues (toilets, changing rooms, prisons, sport) and work it all out - the radfem/terf wars against trans are not helpful at all. And this is not a men versus women war, MOST wanting to go trans are girls and women wanting to be male (goodness knows why in today's manblaming boybashing misandrist society). Issues re children being on meds and girls having breasts removed as teens are serious, 70%+ patients at Tavistock clinic (now closed) in London were female. Not male. Someone tell the terfs.

Anyhoo, I found it all illuminating. But oddly coy re full frontal nudity, unlike the Belgian film GIRL which has set the bar re trans issue films. Watch that.

So 3.5 stars rounded up, The man looks very old for 57 though...

I enjoyed this, esp the first half. The second half goes OTT (no spoilers).

I love timeslip time travel films and try to watch em all. This is silly but starts well, then sags and drags.

Some decent CGI 'Day AFter Tomorrow' type special effects if you like that sort of thing.

But maybe just watch CLOSE ENCOUNTERS instead.

Watchable and passes the time. 3 stars