Film Reviews by PV

I usually really hate very sentimental family films - and this trowels on the schmaltz, for sure. But this, I liked, with reservations. Sometimes I felt my teeth rotting with the sweetness of it all - but hey, most Hollywood films ladle on the schmaltz and maybe always have.

Yes, it is overlong - maybe because John Krasinski is the writer, director, co-producer and even plays the dad character. So it does need cutting.

BUT this is the perfect Christmas family film really.

Kids will love the CGI creatures - as in the Toy Story films or Monsters inc. Adults will appreciate the magic of it, the sweetness and a decent plot and acting.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Well, set in a boarding school it may be, but Harry Potter it ain't. In this original, wordless (and no subtitles), nihilistic Ukrainian film, feral deaf kids go on a rampage and run amok in what is a special school but more like a prison.

I admire independent films, they take so much effort to get made over years. And this is a well-made film, a truly unique experience, wordless, no subtitles, all set in a special school for the deaf (which resembles a prison more). I did think I would not follow the story, but I did, partly as the director spells it out, many long scenes with a static camera, like Chaplin films or that contemporary French director whose name I forget.

This is a miserabilist, depressing, nihilistic movie, where all characters are amoral or immoral. The criminality, violence and sexual exploitation runs rampant, and the main character wants to belong to 'the tribe' so gets sucked in. The actors are great, all amateurs, but really superb.

But really, at its core, the plot of this film is all about JEALOUSY and the poisonous toxic effect it has on this one young man - who is an outsider, like Othello (a play from an old story about JEALOUSLY not race - that is our age's projection. Othello is a Muslim convert to Christianity to belong, but never trusted because of that, which feeds the seed of jealously planted in his brain by a malicious enemy Iago).

Anyway, it is a film to admire rather than like, with a director and actors who have never made anything else. This won many awards and is a unique cinematic experience but not pleasant, and is deeply depressing ultimately with shocking violence. Amorality infects everything here. SO be prepared.

reminds me a bit of the great 1979 UK film SCUM or prison dramas about abuse really, or maybe DIRTY PRETTY THINGS.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I mostly enjoyed this film, with reservations. It is better than most BFI/lottery-funded films BUT not on the level of truly great road trip movies like WITHNAIL AND I or THELMA AND LOUISE. Very 2nd division. There have been loads of films recently about people going off on long walks, the mediocre schmaltzy UNLIKELY PILMGRAMAGE OF HAROLD FRY and the D-Day films two of them, one with Michael Caine.The best of all is FIRST AND LAST (1987) with Joss Ackland.

In particular, some male characters the two women meet on their roadtrip are cartoon character baddies - just absurdly so. Real misandry really, from a female writer/director there, I felt. Not necessary. To try and balance that obviously, there is a kind male policeman (ironic, as the real Audrey Amiss was often arrested for civil disturbance by police and locked up in mental hospitals; she even got deported from China for that when on many travels with her mother). Other very unrealistic and posed meetings with various groups - I doubt any of this really happened but Audrey Amiss did exist and was severely mentally ill.

Her archive is in the Wellcome collection - not as art, and scrapbooks of chocolate bar wrappers is what I did as a very small kid, so not art. But that collection has artefacts which link art, life, mental illness, so...

No idea how true to life this is. Audrey Amiss born 1933 died 2013, started scrapbooks late 70s - lived in Clapham near/with her mother, so not short of money really - they travelled the world together, exotic trips.

The performance of Monica Dolan was superb - and that carries this whole film really. I found her companion and former nurse annoying. I thought the mental illness and delusion was handled well. Always tricky to do, that.

So good in parts, annoying at times, great acting in main role, 3 stars. Almost 4. Great music too, oldies and newer songs too, one from Boy George plays over the credits (watch the end to see real art by Audrey and her photo).

I have read RED DRAGON, the 1982 novel by Thomas Harris, the first appearance of Hannibal Lecter (Leckter in the novel). Many claim Brian Cox's performance in his 3 brief scenes as HL are better than Anthony Hopkins in the next novel Silence of the Lambs. WHAT ROT! Cox is passable but the hints of a Scots accent are annoying to me.

The first half is great and loyal to the novel/. Of course there is not much backstory of the life of Francis D which in the novel make the reader have real sympathy with him - one effective scene here covers that.

The second half cuts out lots of flights and stuff with the William Blake painting (in the novel Francis D visits a New York museum and gets a private appointment, knocks out the female staff member then eats the DRAGON WITH WOMAN drawing). The film rightly focuses on the visual, the home movies aspect.

but boy do the actors mumble! I had to rewind more than once to understand what was said and something did not even then. Maybe use subtitles.

The ending is extended in the novel, like the false ending in the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS film. Both work, book and film - the latter has to cut the flab and make it a mano a mano battle. But I think the end weakens it somewhat as does the not-very-good theme tune, though the synth music throughout is great.

So 4 stars. Almost 5 but not quite. I shall now rewatch the later film RED DRAGON to compare.

I sort of liked this - a flawed film, fore sure, maybe because the writer is the director's husband, and oh-so-cosy set-ups like that rarely lead to well-edited scripts or movies - usually too much flab and meandering is the result, as here. Focus lacking. An independent editor needed for the script, to 'kill the darlings' and het rid of extraneous scenes.

The plot here is a young innocent gallery worker Dali nicknamed San Sebastian (one of many young men & women chosen by the Dalis supposedly for sexual purposes - this nis 1974 New York, so not illegal or ignored if it was). Definitely exploitative. Christopher Briney is EXCELLENT as the lead, really - he'd only acted on one other film too (MEAN GIRLS) which I shall watch now.

The plot, and all narrative films need them, hangs on the dodgy dealings of Dali prints in 1970s, which could be classes as fraud, with Dali signing many pages of blank paper to ship on to various parties to photocopy paintings on - the difference between a lithograph and off-set printing and photocopies is explored here. And all Dali's signatures. I do wonder how many supposed 'Dali' pictures hanging in posh homes and galleries are mere photocopies now! Modern Art is Rubbish - as Blur said... AND as Banksy shows, art is ALL about money now.

Most fascinating for me was not cabaret act show-off Dali or even Alice Cooper, who the actor captures well in his pre-golfing days, but Dali's Russian wife played by Barbara Sukowa. Should have got a supporting actress nomination or won it for this performance. Dali's wife was 10 years older than him, a well-off Russian from a family of intellectuals, in France/Paris from

Rupert Graves is here as he is in lots of TV series now (incl Midsomer Murders and more) as a 60+ greying paunchy man but he'll forever be the ebullient young man/teen in Room with a View in cinema history.

So this film is not as bad as some reviews claim but maybe mostly for art lovers. I was very frustrated the actual paintings were not shown - copyright issues, I suspect, the galleries said NO or demanded too much dosh. A shame. His CHRIST OF ST JOHN ON THE CROSS from 1951 is sublime, a truly original take on a crucifixion alter piece. From above. After that and esp in 1960s/70s/80s, Dali became a parody of himself, a cabaret act. Silly lobster phones and dressing up as an Arab (the middle class Dali son of a rich lawyer claimed Moorish decent).

THE GREAT MASTURBATOR (1929) with the melting faces and clocks in a desert - so influential. Dali in his younger days was a massively influential artist, one of the founders of surrealism, all the melting clocks etc (done cleverly here with the early day scene of cheese melting in the heat of southern Spain). The relationship with fascist Franco and Spain is not mentioned at all though - Dali stayed strictly neutral despite friendship with Lorca, the Republican poet murdered by the fascists.

His CHRIST OF ST JOHN ON THE CROSS from 1951 is sublime, a truly original take on a crucifixion alter piece. From above. Dali also got involved in film, doing sets for Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND (1945) and before that Un Chien Andalou, 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Salvador Dalí.

Worth a watch, 3 stars.

Loved this. I watched it as my a Russian teacher recommended it to me, with reference to an army going through the ice as shown in Napoleon film recently and others (Napoleon did fire cannon at ice to deliberately do that). It is great - really.

At the 55 minutes to 1 hour mark, the music starts. By Prokofiev no less, which sounds JUST like the JAWS tense two-note soundtrack (which many claim is from Ravel's music). Brilliant, nicked by John Williams from somewhere anyway...

At this time, 1938, the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 had not been made, so maybe Russia and Stalin feared German invasion - here we have 13th C Russ defending themselves against German invaders (Catholics wanting to merge with orthodox Christianity - worth looking at the BACKGROUDN extra to read before watching this). The German invaders have typical Nazi Wehrmacht helmets and a priest even has near-swastikas on his hat! Of course, one name in german for that sign is 'crooked cross' or 'hooked cross' It is a cross in a circle.

if you like old films then this is a classic. 4 stars.

I really liked this film. The (white male) writer has written one other scifi WHAT IF... movie, reminiscent of many dystopian scifi films tb.

One can see HAL in 2001 here or AI as a robot takes over, and even THE SHINING at one point.

Because I really get the writing process, good and bad, the struggle, the stress, the frustration, I could relate a lot to the main character so maybe I warmed to it more than others would - though yet again this is an all-female film, with the only man black, and even a short TV clip is an Asian man and 2 women. WHY? This is not even state-funded. It is bare racism/sexism to deliberately shun white male actors or characters surely?

Anyway, the first half hour us superb. It sags a bit then, due to the backstory of the author's supposedly early life. That was weak I thought. And why does the young girls have a posh public school accent and her mum a working class/lower middle class one. it does not make sense. All a bit overwritten and overdone.

this would make a decent theatre play to be honest as it all takes place in one space with few characters.

I liked the twist at the end. Reminded me of YOU WILL MET A TALL DARK STRANGER just about my favourite Woody Allen film.

4 stars - just. 3.5 stars rounded up.

I would advise anyone interested in the V1 and V2 rocket campaign to watch BATTLE OF THE V1 (1958) (also known as Battle of the V.1, Battle of the V1, Missiles from Hell and Unseen Heroes) which also uses authentic WWII footage, but of actual V1/V2 rockets flying and where they hit. This film uses some of British guns shooting them as they approach the coast.

German TV series BABYLON BERLIN also features the 1927/8 rocket mania in Germany, where the posh privileged assistant was Werner von Braun, aged 18, who went on to design the V1 and V2 rockets and was then poached with his team (and helped them escape justice and the Soviets) by CIA/USA to work for NASA - it was he who put man on the moon in 1969 really. Werner von Braun was a card-carrying member of the Nazi party and the SS.

Anyway, the worst thing about this film is the title, which was the real title for the operation to bomb the V1/V2 rockets development and manufacture centre at Peenemünde in Germany of course in summer 1943 and 1944. When the Soviet's liberated the plant, they found it 75% destroyed.

Some background. After D-Day landings 1944, the allies liberated France, incl Paris, Belgium and the southern Netherlands up to the Arne river, the famous Battle of Arnhem followed at the bridge. SO the Nazis still help northern Netherlands and that is where the rockets were made in underground networks. Not only London was targeted with the rockets, also Antwerp in the south of the Netherlands. As well as the terror and deaths wreaked on London, the massive destruction of these huge rockets contributed greatly to the post war housing crisis.

Of course this film is a story, fictionalised, with heroes infiltrating the plant which never happened. Operation Crossbow was the name of the bombing mission. In reality, 2 Polish janitors passed plans of the plant to their Polish Home Army Intelligence service, and separately in 1943 the same year an Austrian resistance group gave plans to the British too, and they were in contact with head of US secret service in Switzerland too, before they were discovered by the Gestapo and executed.

SO the story of the Brits and an American parachuting in is all derring-do hokum, to create narrative tension and suspense - fair enough. It does not try to deceive (as some movies may do when faking real events, like Argo, or U-571, which claim Americans did stuff done by Brits, Canadians and Poles.

Great cast. Anthony Quayle almost replays his ICE COLD IN ALEX role; Tom Courtney is superb. Reminds me of THE DAMBUSTERS in its higher-ups cynical of success while the better junior officers are proved right in the end...

Amazing to think Sophia Loren is now 90...

Anyhoo, I liked this for what it is. Not a classic but watchable. 3.5 stars rounded up.

OK so first thing, this is a short 'film, 50 minutes, and I assume only got made with public money courtesy of Lottery and Arts Council Funding and I think Channel 4 is because it is all about the 80s in on-trend Manchester AKA Madchester in the Hacienda club etc. TV often has a Manchester bias as so much based there - Granada TV and now Salford BBC Media City. I was oop north late 80s to early 90s in a city NOT called Manchester and we were sick of the constant focus on Madchester then and we are sick of it now (Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool people may well agree).

Well no doubt if you were there in 1980s Manchester Hacienda club and band scene it's interesting, a bit like people looking at their own holiday snaps or videos, of family photos, For the rest of us, this is BORING. It's a bit like when people relate their dreams (boring to you) or smell their own f-arts - no doubt pleasant for them but not for anyone else. Yes, this is an egofart of a film. And so BORING. It takes no talent to get drunk a lot, go to clubs and sleep around and very many people did it. The difference is, they do not claim it makes them special and talented as this alleged film director does. It takes NO talent to do. None.

This is really a BORING documentary, much better suited to TV and local TV at that. I suspect the director being female aided production funds too.

Watch the 2 short films on the DVD - one is narrated by John Peel with what sound like unusual stories from his own Radio 4 show tbh. A bit misandrist really some of them but good to hear John Peel again (died age 65 in 2004).

Lots of people featured here died relatively young - Pete Shelley (born MacNeish, named himself after the poet) died aged 63 in Estonia in 2018; Alan Wise, the Jewish promoter of the Hacienca and Nico in late 80s died age 63 in 2016 3 months after his 22 daughter killed herself jumping off a bridge. Nico who he promoted as heard on ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES and FEMME FATAL and SUINDAY MORNING by Velvet Underground died aged 49 in 1988 of a stroke while cycling in Ibiza, and her son died age 60 of a heroin overdose in Paris in 2023.

Nico gets a mention here as Alan Wise was Nico's promoter and she stayed in the shabby box room bedroom at his house whose next occupant was the egomaniac attention-seeker Carol Morley who directed this. i took an instant dislike to the manipulative seemingly parasitical director, who seems so egotistical that she thinks her life of getting drunk and sleeping around is interesting. It isn't. It is boring, BORING! A shame the likes of this get public funding when talents writers/directors struggle to get a bean in public money or private funds to make films (esp non-BAME men...)

2 stars only, one for the interviews with some interesting people, Pete Shelley etc who she manipulated into having a fling with, and Alan Wise AND one star for the short film narrated by John Peel. The stuff about the director is so tiresome and boring.

I have to admit I did not finish this. I did know the story, written by great writer Paul Gallico, American but lived in UK for decades. The best writer on cats EVER - things like THE SILENT MIAOW and JENNIE and THE ABANDONED. Also wrote THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and made a fortune, moved to Monaco in early 70s, died 1976.

There is an old film of this with Angela Lansbury I think, TV movie 1992 which is fun, and now a new musical too. Probably for a female audience really. Very sentimental and heart-warming, so if you are in the mood for that, this is for you.

As I knew the story and had seen the older film, I decided I'd had enough!

It is what it is! If you like fashion, clothes, slushy positive stories, this is for you.

It's years since I visited Paris in 1990s so this was a useful tour!

It reminds me a bit of that film by Robert Altman SHORTCUTS with 9 short stories intertwined, or those old portmanteau films.

Yes, it is overlong esp the second half. But it was suitably varied with multifarious characters - and ones rarely seen in films, market traders etc.

Also I did get confused by so many characters esp the women looking SO similar!

Some of it was predictable - as soon as I saw a motorbike I know the story arc.

Some famous French actors here, but I cannot put names to faces, sadly!

Could be paired with LAST CHRISTMAS what with the heart disease/transplant issue.

3 stars

This is a 1970 film based on a novel. I love the soundtracks of films of the time (like late 60s Planet of the Apes) so loved that.

WARGAMES in 1980s is sort of the same idea, and its computers also seem massively dated now. This is more dated, with the usual fake computers with pointless flashing lights. The master-brain Colossus computer presages AI, but its messages look like those digital signs at train stations or bus stops saying when the next service will arrive! It is all unintentionally funny.

Watch Dr Strangelove (1964) for a class classic version of the same sort of thing, with a Doomsday Machine. Also based on a novel. Worries about nuclear war were great back then, in 1950s, 1960s 70s and 80s. People have forgotten the nuclear warheads are all there and still exist, many controlled by Russia and China, India and Pakistan, as well as France, UK and USA. All it takes is one mistake or madman or woman...

It is a slight story, which becomes bogged down in the main character's lovelife and relationship, which is tiresome. But where else can the story go?

Of course no-one then expected the Soviet Union to end in 1991 or Communism to collapse in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down - we live with the consequences now, re the Ukraine-Russia war. Putin is bitter Gorbachev gave Ukraine away and let them keep nuclear missiles, and Crimea (only transferred to The Ukraine in USSR in 1950s by Khruschev for easier admin).

A curiosity piece. Reminds me of 1970s classics like WESTWORLD (with primitive computers, the first special effects Oscar winner, 1973), and CAPRICORN ONE.

3.5 stars rounded up

This is a truly terrible film. I am not familiar with the Jules Verne story this is based on, but it is clearly not one of his best, The Hokum science actually made me laugh out loud as did much else.

Neathderthals portrayed as ape men; big busted blonde totty cavegirls and bearded cavemen from two tribes.

As for the monsters - well, reminds me of the end of one version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth where they filmed live lizards near small rocks to made em look big. That is the playbook here except for some bizarre flying dragon thing, parallel evolution 'parently, and some cartoon mammoths.

Tbh I felt really sorry for the animals used. An elephant with fur stuck on to create a little mammoth; a crocodile or smaller caiman more likely with a fin glued to its back which fights a lizard to the death (animals were harmed making this movie!) and a snake killed by a lizard. NOT one for sensitive animal lovers/.

A curiosity piece. 1.5 stars for effort.

I loved this. Co-written by ay Harryhausen himself, this is the first time we see a skeleton come to life and fight, which presages the classic Jason and the Argonauts (1963) final dragons' teeth skeleton battle scene.

This is 1958 and part of the 1940s and 50s quest by studios for the most lush colour system, e.g. Technicolour - hence lots of Arabian Nights stuff with magic carpets and lush exotic costumes and colours. I think this is the first of the Sinbad films. 1977's Eye of the Tiger was also co-written by Ray Harryhausen.

The characters are three-dimensional and really work, well-played by the actors, as does the story - the way people get hung up now on 'authenticity' but only for characters of colour (though when white characters are concerned the opposite is demanded - colourblind casting) is petty and absurd. AS IF Will Smith is an authentic black genie! I like the old way better. It works.

Great score and settings - I spotted THE ALHAMBRA in GRANADA, and the famous 14th century lion fountain (so much for Islam not allowing the artistic depiction of living things - well, the Caliphs did in 14th C with the lions. The Palace/Court of the Lions" or "Court of the Lions" is at the centre of the ALHAMBA complex where Muslims ruled southern Spain for 600 years (and all but one Caliph in 6 centuries had blue eyes, highly values by them, hence the white slaves taken from northern Europe - the mums of all Caliphs). SO a pale-skinned blue-eyed actor playing an Arab of the time is very authentic actually, as the upper class Caliphs looked more 'white' than Arab/black.

4 stars

OK so this movie has, for reasons that escape me, won awards and got a great critical response - I think that has something to do with the woke metoo revenge themes ticking dem boxes. Because really, this is pure shlock horror, peak B-Movie. Nothing wrong with that BUT that is all it is.

One aspect of this film I liked was the handbrake turn new scenes and settings - which happen twice (no spoilers). It jolts the viewer out of their comfort zone which is nice.

But really, the plot of more full of holes that the potholed roads of Detroit, and do not even start thinking about timelines or you'll enter a rabbit hole of "how can that be when..." and "why is is that...". Just let it flow over you...

I could predict the fate of one character here as soon as they appear - the new woke revenge trope is now often used in films. The issue of the decline of Detroit is interesting, though the imagined past with a bit too Truman Show.

Utterly unbelievable from start to finish, but entertaining enough for horror fans - though it's very panto horror, a bit like a Michael Jackson video.

I liked the moments of dark humour and this film has the best use of a tape measure in a plot I have ever seen!

3 stars. Solid horror.