Film Reviews by PV

This very dated film of its time (1970) is famous for featuring the first appearance of Bjorn Andersen, in a non-speaking moped-posing tough teen boy role, who the next year 1971 went on to star in Death in Venice and be leered over by Italian film directors and their mates. Watch THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD to see where that led.

This film is very 1970, very Swedish, and cringe-worthy - beyond the usual gauche teenage crush stuff. That infatuation and the things it causes are actually the least interesting part of this film.

The second half or last half house is by far the most interesting, a satire on the manners of modern Swedish society - I shall not say 'post war; as Sweden was neutral on BOTH world wars of the 20th C and in fat collaborated with Germany making a fortune manufacturing guns and armaments for them - how Sweden got very rich - by making the bombs and bullets that killed British soldiers and civilians, and other Allies fighting the Nazis which Swedes never did (unlike Norwegians). Someone tell Greta. No moral leg to stand on.

Sweden actually looks like a pretty awful place, all small dark flats in blocks, a deep class system where the workers stay in manual or sales jobs with no ambition for more, where so long as they have their country cottage and annual midsomer crayfish festival all is well with the world. Deeply conservative actually, despite the law 'anything goes' porn and sex laws of the time.

The father of the girl is the star character in that last half hour, who nails it.

This would have been 2 stars for the cringe-worthy teenage crush stuff. The dad's meltdown in the last half hour smashes through the cosy family set up like a fist. I loved that so 3 stars because of him.

This film would and could never be made now - they says a great deal about the flaws of our age, not those of the late 19th century or Churchill.

A truly great biopic, a brilliant cast, true history.

I watched this one Sunday and it was better than any single programme of film on the 200 channels I can access. Says it all.

Watch with Gary Oldman's brilliant DAREST HOUR Oscar-winning performance of the great man Churchill - who, by the way, led the great British Empire to liberate Western Europe in 1944 and free the slaves there.

Since 2017 when Darkest Hour came out, British society has been infected with the mind virus of woke from the USA, and divisive racist mob politics. I hope we get better soon - all polls show 80% Brits want no statues to come down or names changed. SO WHY then are the Woke Taliban and pc gestapo in charge of our clown councils, Brit0hating museums and charities, pc universities etc doing it?

Churchill may well have called it the enemy within or treason. I stand with the great Winston Churchill.

5 stars. A classic, ALL British kids and adults should watch this. to learn the facts of history, not the Brit-hating propaganda on TV 24/7 now. As Churchill says in the film: "British influence is a healthy and kindly influence'. Or was, in the days of the British empire.

This is a pretty tawdry awful 1997 sequel to the truly great dark comedy AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981).

The original film had brilliant stop-motion special effects and puppets and worked well. This has CGI and works badly - it shows too much too soon too.

The original film had a brilliant soundtrack, esp Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon. This has 'meh' forgettable tunes.

The original film had great believable characters. This has stereotyped grunge American embarrassment Spring Break spoilt slackers touring Europe.

The plot just about hangs together, and goes somewhere - the end twists work.

A silly subplot hinting at a a neo-Nazi-ish werewolf gang does not. Nor does the atrocious script esp the British driver whose lines are something out of a 1930s stage melodrama. They really should get some real Brits to write real British dialogue - then they can make the Americans say 'Swell' a lot like in 1940s US movies eh?

Nice to see Pere La Chaise cemetery and Jim Morrison''s grave again - the location looks real, no idea if it is. The original 1981 film was the last to be given permission to film in Piccadilly Circus, apparently. That is a great classic film. This is not.

2 stars. Just

This French film maybe tries a litle too hard to be quirky.

The 2 main characters remind of of Bill and Ted's adventures too - hapless slackers etc. Except a touch of real violence which jars with the film.

Some plot holes and convenient coincidences here, all a bit silly. If you can suspend belief, it's a ride. More a curio than funny. The sort of film idea scribbled down on the back of a cigarette packet after a boozy night down the local pub or bistro.

The plot is mostly nonsensical and its foundation is ludicrous coincidence. BUT I liked the fly, mostly animatronic not CGI which was refreshing.

The director seems to have a thing with quirky surreal films and things in car boots, looking at his other films made in the US.

This film badly needs:

1) an option for subtitles and the sound and mumbling make them necessary. Odd not to have that option.

2) to be edited - one could easily cut out 20-30 minutes of film flab here. There is no need at all for anything about George Orwell, whose clunky shoe-horned in appearance here jars - and anyway, Animal Farm was written much later in 1945, and not specifically about the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1930s which killed 3-5 million from starvation, thanks to Stalin's need to export grain to invest in industry and buy foreign goods. It is about the creation of the USSR, and a parable.

As so often in films these days, there is a requirement to shoe-horn women into the story and push them forward, even though they were not part of the real-life story. It stinks of gimmick when they do that. I cannot find evidence Gareth Jones ever had a girlfriend or fellow female journalists in Russia. The Anglo-American Walter Duranty is all too real and reptilian with it too (though in real life he had more than a limp - he lost a leg after a train crash in France) - most think he deliberately covered up the Ukraine famine to kowtow to Stalin, as the New York Times main man in Moscow. Probably true.

David Lloyd George was Prime Minister 1916-22. Not in 1933 which this film seems to claim. he was a maginalised spent force by the 1930s really.

Gareth Jones was a great journalist, and a master linguist, whose life was ended when he was very young (no spoilers, watch the film to the end to find out his fate, possibly on Stalins orders as revenge for what he did here). He should have a statue in Wales - it is a disgrace he does not when other lesser people and pc boxtickers do. He has a plaque at Aberystwyth uni only.

The scenes in Ukraine are superb and shocking. Not to mention timely. The film can be a bit worthy and plodding, which a quick cut of the unnecessary bits would sort wonderfully.

4 stars., Important as a film but flawed.

The last of the Saints and Soldiers series of films, made in Utah and no doubt funded by the Mormons.

Not as effective as the previous films really. Too worthy and pc.

Not sure the race theme works all that well and the main black character seems highly unlikely to me.

An obvious Aussie actor plays a posho officer Brit in an almost-comedy accent. THOUGH it is correct in stating the British army had no segregation (Britain has never had race laws), though it did have Indian units etc. Not a large black population though unlike the USA which did have race laws and segregation and separate black units in the US army - though Churchill famously would not permit them on Britain. Maybe BLM activists need educating about that history.

The twee ending is unlikely too.

So-so, but probably best that this is the last of the 3 part series. 2.5 stars rounded up.

This is a very silly, grand guignol gory, horror with a feminist angle which just does not work.

It is almost like a reality TV death game, done several times before in novels and films (Rasmus - a Television Tale, the Running Man, Death Race 2000, the Hunger games, Jurassic Games etc) and now TV hit Squid Game.

That works OK but the agenda here is a feminist one, or even a misandrist one - men referred to as monsters and all wearing ugly hideous pic/baby/monster masks - can you see what it is yet, this clunky symbolism? All men are monsters etc etc who prey on women who are always victims, which is in fact misogyny too really).

That makes the film silly - and needlessly political. It could be young women and men being chased, by men a nd women. That'd be more interesting. As in recent horror ALIVE! (2018).

Wolf Creek also springs to mind, which is way better than this - a movie which got me rolling my eyes more than once.

Nice nasty gory horror effects, i suppose, if that is your thing. 2 stars.

I think critics have given this film 4 or 5 stars solely to follow the crowd and heap praise on the massively over-rated Mexican director Del Toro. His movies are always overblown and indulge in silly monster stuff, and even his influence on the Jurassic Park sequel was silly, much as I love dinosaurs, Critics bang on about his dark Mexican roots and the day of the dead blah blah blah. Not a style I like anyway.

This film is a mess. It is 2 films really. Or the first hour is a prologue - lasting an hour, Then a new film stats, drags on for an hour until the climax and predictable socalled twiest ending.

I did not believe the characters, esp Blanchett which seems to be a feminist nod to metoo, women in charge etc - the film poster (3 female faces and 1 male) would be part of that trend too.

I now want to watch the 1947 film of the same novel which I am sure will be better. Based on a novel of the 40s.

Watch the drama version of Barnum;s life if you want circus (not the Greatest Showman, the version without songs - I cannot remember the name). Or Return to Oz. Or Freaks. Or Dumbo, Not this.

I do not like using this word but this film was BORING.

Cut an hour out and it would have got 3 stars maybe, As it is 2 stars.

Over-rated and forgettable.

This film is overlong - it is also rather confusing. I'd suggest adding LONDON or WARSAW or ITALY or whatever on the screen in a caption when location changes.

I found some of it confusing, esp with the female characters. Subtitles were prone to error too.

However, it is worth watching, together with various BATTLE FOR WARSAW Polish films.

The Winston Churchill here is possibly the worst fictional portrayal I have ever seen, however. It is a Polish film and so there is a fair bit of Brit-blaming - but in reality, no way could Britain or the allies stop Stalin's USSR in Poland.

These films are all made in Utah and no doubt paid for by the Mormon church. That is why the 3 SAINTS AND SOLDIERS movies have a Christian angle and always feature a minister or priest soldier.

Nevertheless, they are decent war films, esp considering they are filmed in Utah - which passes well for Southern France here.

The first hour of this I'd give 4 stars.

The last haf hour seems like an epilogue and theological discussion, rather than the same film - tacked on maybe.

But worth watching as a war film esp as it features the south of France, Vichy, rarely featured in WWII movies and not much talked about in France now (maybe because French gendarmes helped round up Jews to send them to death camps and many collaborators there).

. 3 stars

This film dates from 1989 - one reason it perhaps feels a tad dated. However, it is well worth a watch - right up to the end when it reveals statistics about persecution of gypsies now and then.

Interesting to watch and learn.

DREADFUL dubbing - subtitles are cheaper to do. A shame they are not available.

4 stars.

I did not expect from this. I do not like the 'torture porn' Saw movies much.

However, although occasionally gruesome, this is way more clever and neat that the Saw movies.

Angus MacFadyen plays the mad doctor with aplomb.

And unlike most budget horrors, this film keeps you guessing and the final reveal is fun, however absurd. I sort of saw it coming but enjoyed it nonetheless.

A decent watch. 4 stars.

OK so on the credits one can see the same guy (a US TV actor) wrote, directed and stars in this low budget film which no doubt he and the many extras (who look rather well-fed) paid for too.

I very much respect low-budget films and those who make them. It's all very well for Hollywood stars to make movies costing millions; others have to use what they have imaginatively, and this film does just that. I am not technical but the film stock used lacks the glass of the high budget films from Hollywood.

The film depicts the same scene as at the start Saving Private Ryan at a fraction of the cost. The first 15 mins of that movie are classic of course -the rest of it meanders. And as annoying as that film, no mention of the British or Canadians who landed on Normandy beaches in June 44 and died there in multitudes. or that Britain stood alone for 2 years before the US - and the USSR - joined in the war against Germany. Hey ho.

Some wooden acting esp from the female interest. I suspect lots of relatives and friends got cast here.

But it correctly shows how many Germans knew the war was lost and also how many Russians/Ukrainians and Nazi-sympathisers from the USSR and central Asia fought for the Germans - most 'German' soldiers defending the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 and shooting Allied soldiers were NOT German. Most were from USSR, Ukraine and central Asia. US solidres report being surprised taking soldiers who 'looked Chinese' prisoner - those high central Asian cheekbones...

3 stars./ 2 for the film and 1 for effort.

The trailer for this film makes it out to be a spooky horror film set in WWII. It isn't.

It is instead a fair to middling war film set in WWII - though not sure how much it is based on truth. The Germans did massacre British escaped prisoners from Colditz on Hitler's orders as he was so annoyed they escaped and humiliated Germany. Not sure that ever happened with American soldiers or prisoners of war.

I enjoyed it as a simple war movie, relatively low budget. I have seen worse and it is exciting at times, what with some cobbled together jeopardy as a Brit who's parachuted down behind enemy lines is found by the small band of GIs and has to deliver something to someone, or else. All very vague. Stapled-on jeopardy.

I did not like the spiritual angle, with a Christian solider (Deacon) who is a deacon the hero of the piece. The more devout may. I note at the end that it was filmed in Utah, Salt Lake City, and no doubt paid for by Mormon churches there.

But what WERE they thinking casting an American actor as a British soldier, complete with moustache (no bowler hat surprisingly) and an appalling British accent as learnt from some LA stage school teacher who teaches AMericans to do bad British accents no-one here has ever spoken it. Pure comedy, chaps.

2.5 stars rounded up. I shall rent the sequels (x2).

This film would have been so much better if it had stayed loyal to the true story of James Brooke, an upper class Brit born 1803, who, as many in the British Empire fought to end slavery - and pirac.

He restored the Sultan of Brunei to the throne in the far east, and was made the Rajah of Sarawak as a thank you.

He was Probably gay or at least bisexual too - he retired to Devon and evidence is from there, plus possible relationships he had in Sarawak. Of course, that is left out of this film though a native young local member of the nobility comes on to him.

He Also met and knew Alfred Russel Wallace who with Darwin came up with the theory of natural selection for evolution, yet that is left out. His nephew and his son succeeded him but the son was deposed. Fascinating stuff.

This film however chooses to make this a derring-do swashbuckler with glimpses of fact but mostly fiction. Made for a US and Chinese/far east audience no doubt. Hence the often anti-British rhetoric. And it is shameful that Britain is referred to as England throughout esp when they want to portray a baddie - it was the BRITISH empire. Not English and a great many Welsh, Scots and Irish involved. This is the 1980s for goodness sake, not 2014.

But as a starter for research this is a useful film. Errol Flynn was supposed to make a movie of this called the White Rajah in 1936 but it was never made. Joseph Conrad based the hero of his Lord Jim novel on Brooke.

It really could have been so much better. 2 stars. Would have been 3 but for the appalling reference to England instead of Britain and the lack of union flags.