Film Reviews by PV

I really enjoyed this. To make a 90 minute film which never leaves the inside of a buried coffin (albeit a big one) takes some skill. I was expecting wildlife to appear at some point - and it did!

A dark comedy for me and for anyone who has had nightmares being put on hold on the phone by companies (my record is 90 minutes with BT listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons!!! And charged for that time too).

The phone is the star here. The call with the employer is hilarious and dark - as I found it all. It is satire really.

It is real edge of seat stuff and the ending could go any and either way until the last moment. Tense and fun.

Reminds me of famous 1988 Dutch film 'The Vanishing' (remade in English in 1993), and maybe 1970 film 'And Soon the Darkness', AND an episode of Beck - the buried alive in a coffin trope is not new.

4.5 stars rounded up.

If I'd had to rate this low-budget WWII film halfway through, it would have got 2 stars. It meanders a bit, with no stand-out characters.

But then something happens - it improves!

The violin theme appears and we have some beautiful Christmas scenes with the violin. Then some character development amongst the US and British POWs and their German/Nazi guards.

Watch this film at Christmas - I'd call it a sort-of Christmas movie really.

It all reminds me of a short story I once read called THE PRAGUE VIOLIN too. In that story and this, the violin an its music is arguably the main character.

The ending shows the real Clair Cline who died in 2000 aged 92. This story is, somewhat incredibly true - they really did manage to make a violin in a POW camp. It's now in a Louisiana museum.

Hated the scene with the cat though.

This is from the same writer who gave us the SAINTS AND SOLDIERS films, with a Christian angle. This thankfully lacks any such preachiness.

3.5 stars rounded up

I was going to give this 2 stars as I do respect those who make low budget films. However it is just too bad. And that badness starts with the bad writing and structure.

This just meanders all over the place, no clear 3 act structure, random firefights, and very confused. Dreadful special effects esp the added-on snow!

Watch BAND OF BROTHERS for the same Battle of the Bulge and Ardennes forest attack done well, or watch the 1965 film.

This one is bad. 1 star max.

I think it is made like many of these low budget war films by a religious evangelical Christian group in the USA - they bankroll it.

Ed Wood got money the same way., That does not bode well...

I really enjoyed this film - it is well-made, well-written, well-acted as a group of 5 US GIs are tasked with guarding a mansion which becomes the archetypal haunted house.

And then, well. NO SPOILERS here but let us just say that it is a helluva twist, and one which will divide people. I was not sure about it at first. In fact, I rewound the film a bit before then as I was not sure what I had seen briefly flashed up.

But when I got used to the twist it sort of made sense.

I suppose another version could be made without it, and so then it would be a WWII haunted house horror film only.

A memorable film anyway and well done. I really enjoyed it,. 4 stars.

As another reviewer has stated, the review notes state this is the 1987 film directed by Jack Gold with Rutger Hauer. This DVD is not that one! I have seen that film and this is so much better than that 1987 film.

This is one of the best WWII camp films I have seen, really original, heart-breaking, fascinating. Researching the true story of some names on Wiki or elsewhere is fascinating as they were real - though some characters are made up for the drama, I think, too.

OK so it is a bit o a mess in parts with the editing.

However, overall, this is a must-see.

4.5 stars rounded up

In general, I liked this film, but found 3 things massively annoying:

1) the jarringly lewd, crude narration - the sort of thing posh writers in north London think is arch and funny, but which is neither.

2) the way dialogue is very 21st C middle class British, yet the film is set in late 19th and early 20th C Britain mostly. Some may like that, as stated on an extra MAKING OFF film here; I do not.

3) the usual woke pc colourblind casting. Again, very on tread and fashionable BUT Sir Henry Wood was not a black man - no more than Nelson Mandel was a white man, and no there were no black paperboys - or girl paperboys - in late 19th C London. It matters. Casting is visual - would anyone ever cast whitw actors as Zulu warriors or Indian Maharajahs? Nope. So why is the reverse considered cool?

BUT I loved the cats, and when they are there the film is perfect - the subtitle scenes are hilarious. I also enjoyed the extended 3rd act and the electric/mental illness theme.

I knew a lot about Louis Wain (and cats) before watching this, so also know which parts are true and which are not (the scandal re his marriage was because the governess was 10 years older tan Louis, so not about class). It is somewhat doubtful whether Mr Wain ever even met anyone black or Asian, to the absurd invented 'non-white' character he meets on a train is pure fake wokery. Pity. It is also not really true he 'invented' the keeping of cats as pets. Many had done that, and I could name scores from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries who did (authors etc).

SO 2 stars for the film (it could have been 4 without the above issues), and an extra star for the cats. 3 stars.

This is a superb film - also called "I Am a Teacher / Ya Uchitel". Rare to have a teacher as a hero in a movie, but here it is.

Superb direction in this. The same director of the brilliant BATTLE OF SEVASTOPOL about a female sniper.

Genuinely surprising and shocking - who knew 200,000 Russians joined the Nazis in WWII? Maybe after being captured. And this is Russia, not Ukraine.

Pushkin gets mentioned and featured, in a classroom. Famous Russian poet.

How a small community deals with invasion and rule by both Nazis and Communists is deal with here. As in another great film The Occupation (also called My Name is Sara from 2019) set in Ukraine.

It plays with ideas of loyalty. It also features Russian women transported as slave labour to Germany - 8 million forced labourers were sent to the Great Reich in WWII - it needed workers and so many young men had been recruited into the army to fight the USSR.

I was not expecting much from this but it is one of thr best recent Russian films I have seen and one of the best ever films set in wartime.

Dreadful subtitles in parts and none for credits at end.

4 stars., Maybe 4.5.

A wonderful film from 1956. Back when they could make great film with no preachy woke agenda.

Loosely based on facts. However, stretched. Why they claim the body of a man was Scottish I do not know, In reality he was Welsh, a tramp who had a life of abuse and depression, and poverty - a TV doc on this a few years ago:

The body was identified in 1996 as that of Glyndwr Michael, a Welsh homeless man, and recognised as such by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Some great actors here BUT not Peter Sellers as the DVD sleeve claims - I thought that was odd. Fake news!

Michel Hordern already looking 70 in 1956, a look he had until the 1980s I think!

Loved the story - the British really were brilliant at this sort of thing. British war films from 1950s and 40s and 60s and often 70s were and are wonderful!

I am so glad I watched this before the new movie OPERATION MINCEMEAT - I hope they get the facts of who the dead man was in that, and I sincerely hope they do not woke it up. One reason old films are so great is they bare free of all that.

No subtitles but these were the days when actors actually spoke proper English clearly, did not mumble behind overloud 'background' music. Sigh...

4.5 stars rounded up.

It is such a shame that what could have been a really great modern Ealing comedy is spoilt by the writers pandering to the modern obsession with pc and woke. My eyes were rolling indeed when the cliched racism story butted it - which was so clunky and not based on any facts.

It's all part of the 'oh wasn't Britain awful and racist back then, unlike the woke pc utopia we live in now'. SO self-righteous and smug. EVERY TV drama is like this and most new Hollywood films, It has infected everything.

Also, as per usual, female roles are invented to make female characters more important than they were in the real story. The criminal son's girlfriend did NOt do what she does here in real life at all - that is as purely fictitious as the racism subplot. One wonders of the clerk of the court was female in early 60s too.

So cut that all out what is left is a half-decent film. I very much doubt a man of Kempton Bunton's class and time would have used the F word so much though - there were other words, b-dy, b-gger, d-mn etc which people used. Not the F word. Sloppy.

Helen Mirren is wonderful as the wife with a perfect Geordie accent - though none of it was filmed in Newcastle (Leeds, Bradford and London) and Jim Broadbent too. Glad that authentic casting has not meant actors are no longer allowed to put on accents (at least regional British ones) and y'know., ACT.

The screenplay is cowritten by Richard Bean who is a decent comedy writer for theatre and film, with Made in Dagenham (I prefer this to that) and England People Very Nice.

Some laugh-out-loud funny lines., the deadpan cynicism of the wife. Watch the extras to see the grandson speaking though not the son JAckie himself (a 2012 freedom of information request revealed him as the thief and not the disabled 17 stone 60+ year old Bunton senior).

Another untrue thing is how the painting is given back. In reality, Kempton Bunton had it for 4 years and returned it anonymously via a left-luggage office at Birmingham New Street railway station. He also gave himself up to police 6 weeks lkater. So the trial is 1965 not 1861. BUT I can forgive that sort of editing of the real story. I cannot foprgive the tiresome wokery and pc vandalism here.

3 stars. Could have been 4.

This is a great film - a fascinating Second World War and its aftermath story I knew nothing about. I knew German soldiers taken prisoner by the Soviets were sent to camps, often until 1953 ( when Stalin died) and even 1855/6. 95% of those prisoners died - starvation, disease, murdered by Russians.

I also knew Hungary as well as Romania were Nazi allies - sent to try and reach trapped German soldiers at Stalingrad. Hungary had an Arrow Cross fascist party in power 1944-5. The USSR took its revenge., At the end the stats are stated - 700,000 Hungarians sent to slave labour camps in USSR; Only 400,000 returned after years of slaving in the camps in mines etc. I assume most slaves taken were men - but here the focus is on women.

A decent film. Watch with WALKING WITH THE ENEMY movies to learn more about Hungary in WWII and after. The Music Box (1989) is about a Hungarian war criminal who escaped to the USA> The Fifth Seal and older Hungarian film about the time.

I am not sure if this is all fiction or if the woman featured was real. Her decision at the end left me shocked (NO SPOILERS) and I thought it so unfair on her lover... That fo me changed how I saw her - no longer was she really just a victim. Her lover was a victim - of her!

Anyway, 4 stars for a decent film.

This is watchable as the animation is superb as per usual.

The problem with this is someone has demanded this sequel be hip and street and so we have silly woke casting - FYI English villages are not 40% BAME except here and in Midsomer Murders.

The use of laptops and mobiles again all intended to make this hip and on trend - for me much of it is just annoying.

The song that ends the film is however probably the worst theme to a film I have ever heard - they have tried to make the Shaun the Sheep theme hip and grime and rap and it is just so AWFUL. One star off just for that.

There are some neat visual jokes here - and I loved the snails and the sheep.

Funny in parts. A thin plot but enough there for 80 minutes - the in the city first Shaun the Sheep movie is way better though.

The alien characters are perhaps weak but good enough and funny. References to ET etc and Dr Who (Tom Baker;s 1970s years when it was worth watching!)

3 stars.

OK so VIKINGS this ain't. This is all a fantasy drama and adapted from a comic book from 1979 apparently. That tells - it is very cartoony really.

Think Lord of the Rings - with giants, magic, gods etc.

But it is watchable and not overlong. Reminds me of WILLOW or The Neverending STory.

I liked the actor playing the main character boy (displaced by the girl maybe) Saxo Moltke-Leth. Convincing.

Liked the gods too. and the goats. Clever stuff. Subtitles were good too.

But fantasy not my thing - if it is yours then you'll like this more, esp kids and teens.

3 stars

First point: the sleeve claimed this film was 110 minutes. Nope. Twas 2 hours and 20 minutes and felt it too! Overlong. I stayed with it, clock-watching.

Very wordy with lots of trials. I suppose courtroom dramas have to be, though these are intercut with some mafia action, various murders and one of the famous car bombs - another was in Naples - that the mafia planted to kill judges, and make Italian people rise up against Cosa Nostra in the 1990s. I was on a coach which passed the site of such a devastating road bomb when going Naples to Pompeii.

But this lacks dramatic tension really. It is all interesting rather than dramatic. NARCOS it ain't. Nor Breaking Bad.

I did like the various flashbacks. To the main character's childhood, youth, twenties in 1974 and before and after. Though the viewer has to keep on their toes or it may get confusing.

Watch to the end to see real video of the real-life character and fo find out what happened to many characters.

Worth remembering that the US in effect strengthened the mafia during WWII when in Italy - its fight against communism after Germany was gone was paramount. The main character was born in 1928 and in mafia by 1943/44.

Plus the subtitles seem to have been written by a semi-literate Italian - the rule is to translate into your first language really. Some of the subs are written in pure gibberish.

3 stars.

This is a fascinating film. It is talky, yes, but courtroom dramas are. The law matters and the arguments are facsinating - and who makes the law? Dictators do if they are in power, and Hitler never did anything illegal therefore...

Many have played Hitler, and the core of the man is how to do it - not to be a cartoon character. Ian Hart does that here.

Other actors spot on, and Bruckner as Hitler's aide is a fascinating character who fell out of favour in 1940 and suffered no Nuremburg trial or any punishment post WWII (died 1954 aged 70). 97% SS men did not either.

The actors are first class. The script from court transcripts. Litten is from Konigsberg - now Kaliningrad a Russian enclave. many cities in central/eastern Europe have German and Russian and local names.

Also worth watching the drama documentary about another lawyer Josef Hartinger - who survived the war and died in 1984! - who in 1933 tried to stop the Nazis by using the law to investigate and prosecute SS guards for murders at Dachau, where Litten ended his days in 1938 by his own hand apparently. Watch "The First Six Months in Power", the second episode of the 2019 BBC documentary Rise of the Nazis which describes the investigation into the murders at Dachau when he was deputy state prosecutor

OK so I turned this off before the half hour point.

Not my thing. Probably a B-movie of the genre too.

If you like fantasy and chasing demons etc, and such like, try it.

Not for me. Annoying subtitles too. And that rock soundtrack. Very Russian, probably.