Film Reviews by PV

This director made the best film about addiction to hard drugs ever made - 'OSLO 31 AUGUST'. But his later films have always disappointed as does this.

If you sent the script of this to a producer to try and get it made, you'd get nowhere as the voiceover tells, the action does not show, and it flits around from one character to another going nowhere. Not sure I believe these young men would be authors either.

I like the actors both Anders and Odd-Magnuss, all good. Sometimes it is fun. But ultimately, it is a film of random scenes, some of which are of interest and others of which drag badly.

So 2 stars

There is a short film made by the director at the UK National Film School on the extras which is also rather pointless.

This is such a great film. Launched the careers of Rupert Everett and Oscar-winner (the King's Speech) Colin Firth playing an interesting posho leftie schoolboy character.

All very ETON and 'If', so in a schooldays genre of cinema really, more than a spy genre or queer cinema.

Yes, it's romanticised, and influences the Style Council's LONG HOT SUMMER song/video for sure.

Watch with 1983's An Englishman Abroad to get a less romantic more drunken waster portrait of Guy Burgess after the spy ran away to the USSR.

The quality of the writing by Julian Mitchell and his stage play shines through here - Everett played the lead on stage too in the West End. His big break.

4.5 stars rounded up.

This is a superb film and SO important. Many WWII films have been made about how the Nazis killed Jews, one of two about how they killed homosexuals or Roma/Sinti in camps. This is the only one I know to focus solely on the Nazi T4 programme to kill disabled people and the mentally ill, plus vangrants, alcoholics and other 'shirkers' and to use their words - 'useless eaters'.

The main characters really existed. The boy Ernst Lossa was real, the son of a Yenish - a cultural group really and language in Germany of people who were mostly homeless/pedlars so did not fit in with Nazi Germany and were sent to camps with other vagrants, like Roma and their subgroup the Sinti.

Wait until the end of the film to see what happened to the real people. The main actors are great in this and, rather spookily, both the hospital director and the boy are the spitting image of the REAL director and the real Lossa (I searched for information online).

Genuinely shocking in parts - what is perhaps most shocking is that the killing went on for a month and a half after the end of the war. SOmewhere between 200 and 250,000 people were murdered in the T4 programme - yes the diabled and mentally ill, but also tramps, vagrants, alcoholics, the homeless and eccentrics. Ironically that could apply to Nazis themselves, as Hitler was considered a real oddball when he served in WWI, and Goring was in a mental home twice in the 1930s for breakdowns and drug addictions. The Nazis as per usual full of contradictions, Goebbels had a club foot too, so was disabled!

The only document on which Hitler;s signature approved an order to kill is a T4 one from 1938 too.

Essential watching, 5 stars. A shame this film is not more well know. ALL teenagers esp should watch it.

OK so first to say, I hate much modern art and do not think much of what this artist made tbh. The world of modern art is a circus - all about money. But it could be worse - it could be conceptual art!

Anyway, a decent-enough biopic though I wanted to know more about his childhood and his Haitian accountant dad and mum too.

Decent music in this and Bowie does fine as warhol, the darling of the deeply pretentious New York arts scene. Loads of other famous actors pop up here. Hopper/walken/dafoe and Brit Oldman perfectly cast.

3.5 stars rounded up. worth a watch

I really enjoyed this. I loved the kid's uncle character who tells the boy how hard a life in art is. I was irritated by the mother!

Spielberg was born in 1947, When I think I was born over 20 years later and in a late 70s childhood my family had but ONE smell 24-cartridge camera to take occasional snaps on holiday. Stephen S had a FILM camera in 1960. Perhaps why I am not a film director.

OK so this may be self-indulgent but why not? Spielberg is 75 so can do this. I love his early films,. Best action director in Hollywood THOUGH he did not WRITE the screenplays from many of 'his' films - like ET or Jurassic Park (David Koep wrote the classic screenplay from the novel). Screenwriters always so ignored - directors merely INTERPRET what the writers write, they do not create (though Spielberg has also written - Indian Jones co-writer etc).

Some fun references to the films, esp ET, with boys on bikes in Arizona, and a hospital scene.

Enjoyable and nostalgic.

This is an odd little film, shot in weird film too - not sure what but it looks odd.

The director has directed no other films so maybe that is why it is amateurish.

Not a patch on the great VIKINGS drama series - but a interesting curio to watch alongside it.

The Viking influence to Ukraine and to found Russia is covered here.

2 stars, Just.

First off shall say I have never liked Robert Graves much - very pretentious, arty, cliquey set,, upper class, monied, swanning off worshipping the muse in the Med in arty communities, Yawn. I have read of some of GOODBYE TO ALL THAT too and many war poets.

This film is very slow, overlong too, very wordy and a very female film - the writer/director has written/directed nothing else, so must have great contacts.

I just did not care about the characters and some were beyond annoying I wish they'd go back to the front (the women esp, the American one). Watch to the end to see what they did after WWI. Not a lot really, as they were upper class rich so just played.

Watch 1917 instead or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930 version is the best of 3), or The Burying Party (2018) on Wilfred Owen, or the great Benediction (2021) all about Shellshock (or watch Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser in the class Gods and Monsters.

This? 2 stars max.

I had no expectations about this film but it is really excellent, based on a play and the credits show doctors advised on it - why the psychosis seems to disturbing and authentic. No idea who wrote it but I bet it reflects their life.

Filmed in one of the more awful areas of west London, down by the Westway, the sort of London of chicken shops and noisy messy high streets I hate. No wonder they all go mad.

A 2000 film so Daniel Craig here 5 years before Casino Royale this first James Bond. Goes full naked here too which was a surprise.

A very authentic and perversely entertaining film. Great music too.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I thought this was a film when I rented it BUT it is a a 2017 TV drama in two parts. Based on a novel.

The first part, 90 minutes, is SUPERB - I loved it. I was surprised as I was expecting a rather tedious historical romance aimed at women as so many of these things are. but no, the first part was amazing, intriguing and I was hooked (though I did guess the plot maybe more than many would).

The shorter second part loses the plot a bit - gets a but pc/feminist lecturing and moralising, and some typical boxes ticked. I was really not convinced by the miniaturist character parachuted in (NO SPOILERS) and the whoe attempt to make it mystical/magical. Maybe I should blame the novel though - ditto for the very unlikely relationship twist (no spoilers).

This is set in 1686. In 1688 Catholic king James II was deposed, William or Orange married Mary Stuart, and The Glorious Revolution meant they ruled as joint monarchs of Britain.

Knowing Amsterdam I found this all interesting THOUGH why they make the streets in these historical dramas so clean is beyond me. The streets would have been filthy back then.

Anyway, the superb first part is 5 stars, but the 2nd half lets it down so 4 stars overall.

Fun but sometimes plodding Northern Ireland-set story of a record shop, and how punk - especially The Undertones and their first single Teenage Kicks - put it on the map.

The first half is great and has pace; that goes in the second half which drags a bit - the direction is workmanlike (though it seems a couple direct!)

The main actor irritated me or at least the clueless innumerate character - I wonder if that record shop is still open. If so, how?

Probably the first time I have seen muso DJ John Peel portrayed in a film, and the accent is bang-on - having talked to him in 2004, i can confirm that (though John was actually from a rather posh background are affected that accent).

Watch the film '71 (2014) if you want the Troubles politics. Watch The Crying Game (1992) if you do not. Watch Sing Street (2016) to see similar in Dublin. Watch Killing Bono (2011) for the best film made about NI music via a U2 failure, and about the shark-run rapacious music business in general.

Watchable punk-birth biopic. 3 stars

OK so if you like football this may be for you. This footballer was a star player of Juventus in 2004 or so apparently. No doubt famous in Italy and Sweden.

A flimsy take dragged out to 90 minutes - his upbringing seems fairly normal, and not so underprivileged really. Had 2 parents, after all. Refugee from Yugoslavia wars so richer in a Sweden council flat than in Bosnia or wherever no doubt.

The main character's main problem is not poverty or circumstance, but his own vile, selfish and disruptive personality.

Anyway, pretty predictable stuff. Watch ESCAPE TO VISTORY from 1981 to see how football films can be made entertaining, or THE KEEPER (2018)

Hard to make films about sport BECAUSE they have to be about something else - adventure/war/love story etc.

This script is basically a rewrite of Rocky with football.

3 stars, just.

I hate dubbing so watched this in German with English subtitles, I recommend that.

I found this film to be overlong, it dragged badly at times, very wordy and, worst of all, there was a lack of emotional connection SO even though there are CGI horrors of the first world war, it was all visual rather than emotional for me.

This is the third version of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT I have watched.

The best imho is the 1930 version which, despite its lack of CGA (or perhaps BECAUSE of it) is more shockingly gruesome and affecting AND there is emotional connection too. And humour, which this film lacks - the black gallows humour of war, esp with scenes with 3 French girls (omitted here). There is also some male nudity in the 1930 film which this German movie aimed squarely at the US/international market does not dare show. There is emotional connection with characters in that 1930 film SO it is more shocking what happens to them.

The 1979 US TV movie version - with Richard JOHN BOY off The Waltons - Thomas is also a puritan film as so many American TV films and Hollywood ones are. No male nudity

there either and santised for violence.

SO this film I give 4 stars, just BUT way too long and no emotional connection of characters or humour.

The 1930 film I gave 5 stars - please watch it. This version is the best.

The 1979 version I gave 3 stars I think. Watchable too.

Anyway, not sure how it swept the board with awards at BAFTA. It is a good filme yes, but not a great one. The 1930 version is that.

I turned this off after half an hour.

Beyond boring, also deeply precious and pretentious - the point at which a chair Bergman once sat in is worshipped was too much for me, and out came this DVD.

I suppose for deep fans of Bergman only.

Everyone else should avoid.

Maybe watch MISOMMAR instead - or old ABBA videos.

The USA does not DO poor - Hollywood films show magic, rich people, winners. The archetypal main character in British comedy is an Everyman little guy, often a loser (think Chaplin';s tramps, Frank Spencer, Pitkin, so many more).

So this sort of kitchen-sink film about poverty is unusual for the USA. A bit of a novelty therefore, showing a side rarely shown on TV drama (reality Tv is another matter) or in movies from Hollywood.

It juxtaposes a rent-by-the-week welfare/poverty motel which is right by Disneyland in Orlando - which many Brits go to for holidays (and a brit features too). No shock to us Brits as poverty and great wealth live side by side in London, But anyway, the point is hammered home here, in what can only be called a clunky way. Social issues are shoehorned into the stew throughout.

All a bit long-drawn-out and desperately stapling a plot on a 'poverty porn' which has very little in the way of story (a bit like the tedious NOMAD which I turned off after half an hour). I watched this to the end (though dislike the ending - NO SPOIILERS).

I suppose such films are necessary and unusual really for Hollywood, but I would not call it all that exciting or great entertainment, Largely a movie to be endured rather than enjoyed.

So 2 stars

I suppose I'd enjoy this more if I were from Chile. It takes place at a specific time, when a middle class woman is forced to see her own advantage in a Chile now ruled by a fascist regime - though to be fair, this was the Cold War, and the communist regimes around the world were just as brutal.

It brought to mind the superior Argentinian film THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES from 2009.

Also I could not help thinking of recent south American TV dramas like NARCOS about Pablo Escobar.

More like a TV drama than a film really. Worth a watch but probably only for fans of Chilean film or those interested in South American politics and history. 2 stars