Film Reviews by PV

This is a so-so low-budget Welsh film, one of the very few supported by Film Cymru (the likes of Canaries are not!). No doubt the producers had the right Cymru contacts...

Despite the acting talent here, it is overblown, cartoon character stuff, unbelievable plot, homage to Tarantino or even Sam Pekinpah, and all very silly.

Michael Smiley is one of Britain's best character actors, and watchable in anything he does.

The Elvis subplot is just plain silly, and the cartoon character English cafe owner played by Paul Kaye is borderline racist. The usual anti-Brexit stereotype.

Darren Evans - a great Welsh actor great in all he is in - is sadly underused here.

3 stars.

This is a confused film - with a lot of mumbling dialogue so use subtitles maybe.

It starts as a thriller, then morphs into an occult horror. Much is unexplained which annoyed me. I notice a lot of more recent horror films do this esp British ones - no doubt film schools tell students not to show the viewer too much as they can work it out., Well, you need to give the viewer ENOUGH to make sense of it and understand why, for example, a character is thanked by those on the Kill List, and why he seems to be worshipped by them.

I think it just aims to shock esp the final segment. Fine. But you can shock without baffling the viewer.

Decent acting. Many scenes and aspects should be cut - the Swedish wife background, no doubt to explain that she knows how to use a gun... And why is domestic violence when this wife hits her husband - on 2 separate occasions - acceptable? Imagine it the other way round.

Reminds me a bit of THE RITUAL - which is the better film, with Rafe Spall.

3 stars. JUST.

I was on the edge of my seat watching this film. It is genuinely spooky with lots of shocks.

The main actor Davis is superb, as are others. A refreshing change after all those predictable haunted bouse movies.

Interesting to see a film partly in English and partly in Yiddish and featuring Hasidic Jews, a community the main character has left after a tragedy (no spoilers).

Reminds me bit of the Golam legend. No idea if this malevolent entity has its roots in real Jewish legend and myth, but all faiths have demons etc as does pagan faiths and folklore, especially in pre-industrial pre-Enlightenment societies.

The best horror film I have seen for quite some time. I'd have ideally liked a bit more backstory re WWII and clarity, but the fog of horror makes it more intense maybe (watch to the very end).

Cleverly horrific stuff.

4.5 stars rounded up.

When I saw this was an Italian film about German Nazi spies in Britain 1940, I feared the worst.

However, despite some dodgy dubbing, it is all in wonderful technicolour, with some decent action scenes and explosions, and a plot which makes sense though it is fiction - all based on spies trying to sabotage RADAR during after after the 1940 Battle of Britain.

Real footage of WWII is intercut Ed-Wood-Style with newer flying scenes - some obviously filmed in a studio and some featuring model planes crashing into the see. Some showroom dummies are also blown up! Italian special effects but not bad for 1969.

I enjoyed it. The context of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz work, though maybe the 2 main characters look too alike and some 'British' and 'German' soldiers look rather too Italian...

So 4 stars.

This is a superb drama-documentary. It says it is a drama on the DVD and on the Cinema Paradiso listing I saw - but this is one of those drama-documentaries one often sees on TV with real-life people, now in old age, are interviewed re their experience of WWII.

A fascinating and overlooked area, the Jews who hid in Berlin, even though Goebbels stated in 1943 that Berlin was Jew-free. Most were found of course or betrayed; but some survived and four relate their experience here. Watch to the end to see where they went after the war.

I wanted to know more about those who helped them and how many Germans did. Anti-Semitism was rife in Germany as in the USSR in early 20th C and Hitler was massively popular amongst Germans - at least when they were winning the war (until Stalingrad early 1943, which had been on the cards since Britain successfully resisted invasion because no army can win a war on 2 fronts, as Goring himself said and knew, and yet he went along with Adolf).

A tragic period in European history. Oh to have all the Jews back - instead of more troublesome communities...

5 stars. Should be shown in schools, this.

What to make of this film?

Well, watch the EXTRA doc to see it grew from a bunch of scifi geeks who made computer animations then Star trek parody films in their bedrooms and basements, It grew from that computer game and graphic novel culture, which is not mine...

I love a good comedy esp with Nazis like the wonderful THE PRODUCERS musical. Or Chaplin's The Great Dictator which is referenced here. Or even the short-lived Channel 4 sitcom Heil honey, I'm Home (yes, really). But this? I think I cracked a smile once. Maybe twice.

The African-American character bounces around the absurd and often confused scifi plot - it is clear what matters most to this film's producers and director is the special effects and how to make this look like a $100 million movie (as it states in the EXTRA doc). Very odd that an unnamed Einstein character is in this - as Albert escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s...

Interesting this black character, as he does #whiteface in the manner of the movie White Chicks (heavily influenced by some Like it Hot). One to cite when people get hysterical about white actors wearing make-up (socalled #blackface).

Bizarrely, made in Australia a lot, prob top get the tax breaks...

One for the computer game nerds really. Apparently it is also a computer game and comic. Fine. not for me. 2 stars. JUST.

More interesting than entertaining, this is the later-made prequel to the absolute classic Zulu, Stanley Baker's utterly brilliant 1964 film, made from the days when the British were proud to be British - and thankfully before the diverse nonsense of colourblind casting. I shudder to think how they'd make Zulu now. This film depicts a big defeact of the British by the Zulus - something they paid for later.

In both films, real Zulus are cast thanks for Chief Butalezi and others (The Zulus opposed the ANC and dealt with the South African Apartheid govt which left them alone in their lands). The Zulu slave empire (like the Nigerian Benin empire) were more or less destroyed by the British by the end of the 19th century. No bad thing, as they were brutal slave-catching slave-trading empires. ALL of the native African empires and kingdoms were. The racist romanticism of them - the 'noble savage' trope - on TV docs is a disgrace. The British empire mostly did good - it was of its age and time. But compare to what came before or other empires of the time (German, USSR, Japanese, Arab/Asian). It was the most benevolent empire in history (of 85 major empires) and the ONLY one to ban slavery.

I want to watch Zulu now - a 5 star film and then some.

A all-star cast does not save this rather plodding and flat film - see Bob Hoskins here pre-fame and a very young Phil Daniels.

3 stars

I was not aware of William Shirer - maybe because he was a US journalist in Germany of 1930s until early 40s. Remember, he was in Germany AFTER Britain went to war with Germany as the USA was neutral (the US eventually joined in after japan attacked them late 1941, 2 years late as with 1917 when they joined in WWI).

Anyway, all fascinating. Not sure I believe the actor cast as Goebbels is the best version I have seen though.

4 x 90 parts here and quite a bit of padding re personal lives and romances. However the historical bits are fascinating - esp the end re the possibility (or not) of German invasion of Britain and the fake news of the time.

Well worth a watch for anyone interested in WWII. Based on the book of the same name - Shirer has writtten a few, all from a very American perspective of course, and brits need to remember that (US finally joined the war over 2 years after Britain had stood alone against Hitler).

4.5 stars rounded up.

Makes me want to read the famous BERLIN DIARIES book Shirer published in 1940s. Wiki helps with researching some characters here, some of whom have featured in other films, such as Ernst Hanfstaengl, US-German art dealer friends of Hitler who fell out with him and escaped to the USA.

I was hoping this film wold be better. Instead, it seems to think creating some exotic Japanese backstory of a couple of characters will compensate for the two-dimensional cartoon characters which proliferate. It doesn't.

Sure, some tense nail-biting moments - the usual really for a shark movie.

Jaws is still the bar to reach re Shark films though The Reef (2010) covers the same territory as Great White with more believable characters and events (and based on a true story). Open Water is also great. The Shallows is passable and 47 Metres Down forgettable nonsense.

Disappointing, so 2 stars.

This film is too long as usual with so many modern movies - and like them, feels it has to invent female characters (all 'strong independent women' who tell men they do not need their help multiple times). This gets SO tiresome and is preachy pc 21st C feminism - NOT how women behaved in 1943.

The scriptwriter (female) obviously feels she has to puff this out to make it all about love affairs and petty jealousies of men, and probably invent female characters who never were too for the sake of pc boxticking. Shame. It spoils the film. Watch the FAR superior THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956), a 5 star film, to see the real story, minus the silly romantic subplots and pc girl power posing.

I was not sure whether to give this 3 or 4 stars. In the end it is 3.5 stars rounded up - because the direction/acting is excellent and I loved the later parts of the film set in Spain (Huelva, now famous for strawberries and heavy industry) which I did not know about. Great to see Churchill given respect too, as is right.

And I can even forgive the in-jokes about 'spooks' - the TV series that starred Matthew Macfadyen.

I enjoyed this - it's possibly the best prison-break film I have seen since PAPILLON.

Watch to the end to see what happens to the escapees, and real photos of 2 of them. None of the 3rd and no future story, which makes me wonder if he (French prisoner) was made up by producers. I have no idea.

All filmed in Australia too. Watch the superb music documentary SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN with this and maybe MOFFIE too about conscription of whites into the army.

Of course, this is a complex issue - now South Africa has corrupt elite governments, a surging crime and murder rate, and state racism - against whites. Which is why one third have left that country in the last 30 years.

There are 2 white 'tribes' in SA. The Dutch/Afrikaans Boers who have been there 300 years, often poorer farming folk, deeply religious - they came up with Apartheid and all prison officers here are from that heritage. They cannot leave. Then the more affluent British-heritage whites - they can and many have. It may shock some to realise the whole reason SA is the richest country in Africa is because it had Apartheid and white rule, so avoided the Cold War communism etc and the native tribal disputes/dictators which have ruined so many African states.

This film about warrior queen Boudica (formerly known as Boudicea or Buddug in Welsh which is the nearest to the language these British tribes would have spoken in the 1st Century AD) has about as much connection to reality as Star Trek and is about as historically accurate as Wonder Woman. She was a real warrior queen of the Iceni tribe of modern-day Norfolk, and one tribe which resisted the Romans. Most did deals, in 54-55BC and in AD 43. Those who refused did not end well...

It reminds me of the absurd TV series Britannia which also believed it had to cast a pushy 'strong and independent' female as hero.

It is yet another film ruined by pc metoo issues - though thankfully there is no woke colourblind casting.

I understand it is low budget, but why have characters speaking 21st century minor public school English? And the laughable therapy-speak - eg 'let go of the past' and 'I know you're going through a tough time right now' made me laugh out loud.

There is a nice twist towards the end )no spoilers) which I liked and the male actor excels. The actress playing Boudicca is way too home counties stage school for my liking - there has to be some authenticity! Watch the VIKINGS TV series to see how it can be done (yes that if often fiction but they aim for some authenticity too).

Would have been 1 star, upped to 1.5 because of the nice twist.

There is a great movie yet waiting to be made about the warrior queen Boudicca. This is not it.

This is low-budget stuff, a tale mostly told in flashback - though I was very annoyed at the seemingly random behaviour of the serial killer. WHY is he doing this? Nothing is explained or even hinted at.

Quite confused at times.

Tbh the best thing about this film was the trailer!

I think the best under-the-ice scene in any movie is from the second OMEN film. When Damien is a young teen...

A totally wordless script and one has to admire the courage and audacity of the film-makers to be experimental like that - so hats off to that and an extra star given to the one for the actual film, so 2 stars is fair.

OK so first criticism - though there were women serving in the US military as nurses, they were NOT in combat zones., Most women in the services as nurses were back in the USA or well away from the front lines and danger. Just over 500 US women died serving in US military in WWII. Compared to over 400,000 US soldiers and over 380,000 Brits. I dislike the way the pc demands create fantasy like this to tick boxes.

Supposedly based on a true story BUT that is not true.

But anyway, this film suffers too from very VERDY low budget and VERY talky - no much action for an action film. Lots of sitting around in forests (no doubt in the US or Canada standing in for Belgian-German border).

Very irritating background music throughout too, low volume as on a computer game. And no subtitles.

Mercifully short. 2 stars for trying. Some good stunts and fights, I suppose - but if you wait till the credits you'll see the producers play Germans and also do the stunts!

OK so this film was original in its depiction of German soldiers in WWII who find themselves in a village of ethnic Germans within the Russian borders. There used to be a lot of such colonies of Germans in various countries eg Turkey - now just the graveyards remain. Ditto for the British in many African and Asian lanes and the Caribbean too. The German colonies tend to be in eastern Europe as far as Turkey (And of course lands neighbouring Germany like the Czech Sudetenland from which German-speaking ethnic Germans were expelled at the end of WWII.

I enjoyed this film despite the rather clunking deus ex machina which kicks everything off. No explanation or reason behind it.

Anyway, it all flows from there and is interesting - though not sure how true the story was. A clip at the end (no spoilers) would seem to suggest truth here.

One BIG issue I had was that all the pretty young women (very unrealistic for Russian peasants who in real life would be toothless and sunbeaten so prematurely aged) all looked so similar, I wanted them to wear name tags at times. It was really confusing.

Sometimes I had the same issue with the German soldiers too.

But fascinating as well as tense and watchable. It's a bit like a WWII Agatha Christie wondering who'll be done in next...

I would compare it to excellent Russian/German films like The Occupation and Occupied, also set in such Russian/Ukrainian villages caught in the middle between the Nazis and the Soviet Army in the Second World War. Or the wonderful 5 star GENERATION WAR TV series.

SO 3.5 stars rounded up