Film Reviews by PV

This is quite an oddity, worth watching for curiosity value. Looks dated even for 1963 - but very ethnically diverse for then, via the unexplained conceit that somehow the children of foreign embassy staff in London are these 'special children'. Why? We are not told.

But it shows how non-ethnically diverse London was back then. Often films of 1960s and 50s, such as THE INNE OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS had to use embassy children as actors - Chinese in that case.

It's very much a B-movie, with a Welsh character defending children against heartless authorities. So there is the plot.

Watch Village of the Damned - a real classic - based on The Midwich Cuckoos and avoid the awful woke pc Sky Tv series made recently. Watch this as an extra.

3 stars. Just.

This film is too long, esp the last half or third. That loses it a star. Also a tad confused at times, and best not to think about plot holes (the cult would be closed down when police traced the missing students...). hey ho...

I enjoyed it very much, esp the first half. Well-filmed - very visual. Stylish tricks. SO glad it did not shy away from sex and violence.

And good to see 'the most beautiful boy in the world' Bjorn Andresen from DEATH IN VENICE starring aged 63 in an unspeaking role, though he is playing 72 and looks older. That documentary is worth watching.

Liked the plot, the acting, and willing to suspend disbelief here. Reminded of The Wicker Man and also a creepy horror set in a Scandinavian forest, THE RITUAL.

It helps to know some post WWII German history if you watch this film - the rise of the extreme left in 1960s and into 70s. The RAF = Red Army Faction, and Baader-Meinhof group (Baader features in this as does his girlfriend - both were jailed for life in 1972 for terrorist murders). That hard left which believed they had to fight against fascism - they feared Germany becoming fascist like Greece or Spain. They were loyal to the USSR though, so hardly libertarian. They were of their time. Strange the DVD description does not mention it is based on a true story.

The main character is a real one too - his book published 1977, memories of childhood and drugs/acid trips, fragmented memoir. His father was a loyal Nazi author, one of 88 authors who signed a loyalty oath to Hitler. He also organised book burning.

This is all a bit long, worthy and ponderous and could be cut down a bit - but i liked the real life clips of the time, from Viet Nam and news reports as it whizzes through the 70s.

All very tragic in the end. NO SPOILERS for the film but In real life, these people all committed suicide, ,main character 1972 and Baader and Gudrun 1977 in prison with others.

Good news though - the son Felix grew up and became an author.

Worth a watch esp for anyone interested in post war German history and literature.

I really enjoyed this, but no idea why 2 x 90 minute dramas of a Tv series cannot be on one DVD.

From the producers of the excellent German language ROMMEL and the superior German Valkyrie movie (watch if you only know the inferior Tom Hanks one) and from cast members of Berlin Babylon, Deutschland 83, and the superb 2013 TV miniseries Generation War.

Arguably part one is stronger. But it is hard to dramatise refugees fleeing - the German language original title means THE FLIGHT.

Let down a bit maybe by a focus on the aristocratic female main character's love life interest - but possibly as it was written by a woman, this is of more interest to women, as it's all a bit Mills and Boon. I felt the film sagged at those points. And the focus on the aristocrats - 2 families - is deliberate. Mills and Boon romances often do the same as does period drama (Bridgerton etc)

This is set in what is referred to as East Prussia in 1944-5. Yet it was Prussia, Then when Prussia was no more it became the west of Poland - and that is why Hitler invaded Poland. Central Europe is full of changing borders and populations and always has been. There were ethnic Germans in that area and northern Bohemia too - the Sudetenland and many more areas. Many central/eastern European countries have these ethnic populations who speak other languages - like ethnic Russians in the east of Moldova, bordering western Ukraine. A real headache and cause of wars really.

SO what can happen is populations just have to leave - as the exchange between Greece and Turkey of ethnic populations in 1923 at Smyrna.

Here the Soviets winning the war from the east, so push into 'East Prussia', reminds me of the end of Generation War (Classic drama, 5 stars)

Some great scenes and characters - the loyal Nazi teenager Fritz and the forced labourers, Polish, Russian, French.

There is an old black and white Russian film about Napoleon's invasion where the Russians fire cannon at the ice on a lake into which the doomed attacking soldiers fall - and that has influenced all such scenes in later films, one is in this mini-series.

This film shows both German and Soviet brutality too. The war scenes are impressive if horrific.

The subtitles are often dodgy, with the weirdest translation of SILENT NIGHT I have ever seen, about a baby with curly hair. NO idea where that came from. Not the usual English lyric.

So altogether a good watch, but a tad too sickly sweet romantic soppy for me, 4 stars.

This six-parter (or sex-parter...) is often good and does not shy away from sexual scenes or violence. However, the pace slows and it all drags when the lesbian romance themes are followed.

The miniseries is written by a woman (a posh name, von Heinz too, so of the same upper class as the owners of department stores) so maybe that is why. It bores me.

When the focus is the history of Germany in the 1920s it works well, esp the WWI backstory of the main character Harry. George Karg is a great character too. Those two were real people. The others are fictional, SO it is rather odd to see at the very end what happened to them after this - because only those 2 are real. The female characters never existed. of course, gay life in Berlin did (Watch Berlin Babylon to see that).

Fritzi's life of poverty and forced marriage is portrayed well as is her inadequate club-footed husband. As is the rise of the Nazis of the time.

It could probably have been 4 parts or even 3, if the wallowing in romance was cut. There is just too much of it.

There is an unlikely black character I was not sure of - I very much doubt an upper class Jewish dept store owner would sate such a person - or if any such woman is in the real-life backstory of Harry. The disabled characters are fictional but could have been real.

So good, but could have been better. 4 stars. Just, and I like the music and credit sequences.

I saw this file recommended in a review on Cinema Paradiso for another film, and so glad I rented it.

A low-budget semi-improvised script, and I am glad subtitles were available. reminded me of the dialogue of David Mamet or even M*A*S*H*.

I must admit I did get lost at times, esp the very end (no spoilers) and felt maybe a tad more explanation would have helped. hence 4 stars. i may well watch it again some time. the end was utterly baffling to me...

BUT compare this time-travel drama to the dross that is Dr Who or the awful About Time by the over-rated luvvie Richard Curtis. JUST AWFUL!.

So many time travel/time loop movies and TV series - TIME TUNNEL from 1960s (now on LEGEND TV FREEVIEW CHANNEL); Timeslip (1955 movie shown on TALKING PICTURES sometimes); Groundhog Day; Planet of the apes; Timecrimes (Spanish), Time after Time (1979), Somewhere in Times (1980), LOOPER (excellent Bruce Willis film); and the brilliant 1960 British film The Time Machine, based on the 1890 HG Wells novel which started it all (would have won special effects Oscar if it had existed then!)

For those who like this, watch THE DEAD CENTER starring the actor/director/writer Shame Carruth - a 5 star brilliant low-budget horror/thriller.

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl who died in 2003 aged 101, this is master film-making. It does its job - it shows Hitler as a messiah come to save Germany at the 1934 Nuremburg rallies. It is hypnotic, mesmerising and the audiences at=re transfixed by their messiah and new Nazi god.

We all know what came later. BUT this was a year (19 months) after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. These rallies in 1933,34,35,36,37,38 ended when war came. Watch this to see the brilliance of Nazi propaganda courtesy of Goebbels who more or less created modern propaganda and advertising too.

NO political leader had toured a country by plane before Hitler or even car - this was the modern image that Germany wanted to portray, even though the army was reliant on horses and had much less modern equipment than the French army, say. The Germans marched into France in 1940 mostly on foot, horse and bicycle!

Of interest now s the various Nazi govt ministers giving little speeches - the one in charge or workers boasts about how many trees they have planted and how many farmers' fields and forests too - which shows how Nazis appropriated the very German culture of communing with Nature for spiritual and physical renewal. They were the proto-Greens - why German Green party is so strong and that green campaigning has come to the UK too. It has Nazi rootsl like it or not.

Classic clips of Adolf, introduced by Hess who was always mentally special, shall we say.

if you know about the history of the Nazis and WWII then you will get this all and appreciate its educational vaalue.

5 stars.

Hmm well this is pretty awful as a Dinosaur movie, all absurd really, but in its favour the plot makes sense and the CGI dinosaurs are not bad.

It is what it is, and mercifully short. the end seems to suggest a sequel that never got made.

Makes you realise how great Jurassic Park is, even the sequels.

2 stars - just.

This film is based on a novel and looks it - these family dramas are often from novels and of course, in the book, the author can reveal backstory and motivation and multiple points of view far better than in linear, 2-d film really. It shows and some events here seem way too out of the blue.

Anyway, excellent for the genre - though rather forgettable. only half-way through did I realise I watched it before, on TV. It is a so-so family drama.

No subtitles which is annoying as much dialogue is naturalistic AKA mumbled.

Excellent acting BUT the teenage boy looks nothing like either of his parents, which niggled - he actually looks rather like the director, actor Paul Dano, which is even weirder. Maybe Dano was originally cast as the father?

Good to see 1960 USA, though the whole wild fire motif blows itself out pretty quickly.

I remember other films set around the same time, like Pleasantville, Diner, Gods and Monsters, others.

3 stars

I do not think I have ever seen a Lebanese film before - so glad I saw this.

It is probably the best film i have ever seen which portrays poverty - real poverty, as opposed to that in the west where we have a benefits system and free healthcare in the UK etc. Child abuse and the issue of people having too many children which causes both.

Superb from beginning to end, brilliant acting from everyone esp the boy Zain al Rafeea, but everyone else too. So authentic. Deal with real issues of desperate poverty and survival, with a final monologue to match Charlie Chaplin;s final speech in The Dictator.

The writing and cinematography is superb and it SHOULD have won the 2018 Oscar. Roma won that, no doubt as it was about Mexicans coming to the USA. This was the real winner.

This film is perfect. Direction, music, acting, script - everything.

5 stars. Brilliant.

Awful script; wooden acting; wordy scenes lacking action, no subtitles.

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.

Not this. I liked the planes, even if CGI. But the script is wordy, slow and, frankly, boring. The acting is so wooden it could make a table.

This is very much the Paul Gross show - I'd never heard of this actor, though he stars, directs, wrote the script and even half the feem toon!

The extra shows him explaining some of this is based on what his WWI Canadian veteran grandfather told him about his experience of WWI, esp one event - at the start of the feature film. The extras also show how they constructed the WWI battlefield on first nations land in Canada which is fascinating, though the blessing woke witch doctor ceremony is beyond daft.

Special mention for Joe Dinicol who plays the young asthmatic soldier to perfection. Others act well, and it is generally well-written and directed. Some decent war scenes.

No spoilers, but I disliked the quasi-religious/Christian symbolism end scenes. Some may like it. Many of these low budget war films are funded by Christian organisations so have that aspect to them. Here, it may be because of the writer/director's faith. Anyway... I dislike stuff like that.

Watch the end credits with real WWI footage which is fascinating.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Very low budget; rather unbelievable plot, no subtitles so some dialogue incomprehensible.

I've seen worse. But then again, I've seen a lot better...

2 stars for effort

I almost gave this a 1 star. It really is absurd.

Vaguely scifi, and cartoon character at that.

Low budget WWII fantasy complete with strong role model women - or one anyway, an evil genius etc.

All Utter Hokum. But it passes the time.

This is fiction. Dedicated to all who were tank soldiers in WWII, but the connection to reality ends there.

Pure action movie fantasy - the central conceit is absurd. In 1944, the Germans were too busy losing the war and running out of resources to do silly training exercises as portrayed here.

The lack of subtitles grates. The Dubbing is SO awful, and I mean horrendous. Real Yee-haw cowboy stuff. And often so unclear I had to rewind to understand it. This distracts from the whole.

If you can get past that and the fantasy element, there are some good action sequences - and thankfully NO attempt to woke it up, with the new cliche of 'strong independent female characters' shoehorned into the plot, or characters of colour.

2 stars. I have seen worse.