Film Reviews by PV

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.

I did not expect much from this BUT it is one of the best horror films I have seen for ages. So many twists and turns in plot and characters - I was on the edge of my seat.

The last third loses it a tad. However, a nice little coda epilogue at the end is fun.

The music is great; the script classy and imaginative, twisting and turning like a horrific worm.

Barbara Steele (born 1937) was the British Queen of Horror in the 1960s - after a hiatus she came back with this and a couple more films at age 75. Sheer class.

The best horror film I have seen for yonks, and made in 2012 well before Metoo, though it is a very female-focused horror film.

I could watch it again right now! A modern classic.

Just great. 4.5 stars rounded up

The first half of this film is superb and classic - for a low budget feature, the sense of tension, horror, confinement is achieved with great skill. The use of sound and cinematography is excellent. That it is based on a true story makes it all the more moving - wait to the end to see what happened to the 2 Slovak escapees.

Just a note: Auschwitz (the Germanised name of the nearby Polish town of Osweicim) was 3 camps - this one, the original small concentration camp where from 1939 political prisoners and others were held and often shot. That is where the sign stating ARBEIT MACHT FREI is above the entrance. This film is set here - there are sections for each nationality at this camp and no train tracks. (Auschwitz II-Birkenau is the huge camp with the famous train tracks and crematoria, as featured in Schindler's list; Auschwitz 3 was a chemical plant - not open to the public now).

The issue comes in act 3, the final third of the film where the decision seems to have been made to assign blame for the camps not to those who created them and killed millions, but to the Allies (esp British) who did not bomb Auschwitz. This is 1944 of course and the Brits and other allies were rather busy liberating slaves in Europe after D Day and needed all their planes and bombs for that brave crucial policy, and the Soviets were rather busy on the Eastern Front.

And the producers made a great error in putting speeches by modern politicians over trhe end credits. Being against irresponsible mass immigration to your country does not make you a Nazi - in fact, it is obvious that if governments do this, tensions rise and extremism is more likely, Moreover, most anti-Semitism in Britain in recent years has come from the hard left, not the right.

But anyway, I was going to say this was the best film I have ever seen about Auschwitz or concentration camps until that final third of the film. SO Schindler;s List is still the best though very high budget. The producers of this film do brilliantly in making such an effective film - part financed and supported by Michael Douglas, I notice.

4 stars. Best film of this year so far.

This is supposedly based on a true story, from a novel called GIBRALTAR and the film was called that in French - I suspect the name was changed as it does seem to pin blame or incompetence at the door of the British customs authorities there.

It's a decent enough thriller though one has to pay attention as the rival gangs operate - French, Irish, British - or it can be confusing.

Believable events - portraying all the deals the big fish do with national customs.

Best watched with the great TV drama NARCOS, the story of Pablo Escobar who gets a mention here re a cocaine shipment from south America.

4 stars

I recommend watching the EXTRAS here, the MAKING OF interview with the director (who also acts in this) which explains the inspiration for the film - letters written by a man called Arthur which led the director on 8 years of research.

The result is a slight, modest, low-budget biopic which is only just over an hour long. The story is possibly not strong enough to sustain more, fascinating though it undoubtedly is. For me, this would be perfect as a docu-drama for TV.

Lots of hand-held camera footage and fascinating detail. They use what they have to best effect.

Interesting as the only Dutch film on WWI I know of - perhaps because Holland was neutral in that conflict so any Dutchmen who wanted to fight against Germany had to sign up with the French foreign legion.

Worth a watch esp for anyone interested in films about World War One. 3 stars

Watching Anthony Hopkins play Hitler is odd, even though he won an Emmy for this performance - it is in the 2nd or 3rd division compared to the brilliant Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Downfall in 2004 - a true masterpiece. Not one of Anthony's best performances- he is an adequate Hitler at best, perhaps half a Hitler - but no more.

By contrast, this is a French production- 'Le Bunker' - though most of the cast is British, except a distinctly odd Josef Goebbels played as a Chicago gangster. Weird.

Character actors aplenty here - Julian Fellowes (Oscar-winning writer of Gosford Park and Downtown Abbey) plays a decided camp Nazi, and we have Pat from Eastenders (Man St Clement) as Adolf's cook. There's Robert Pugh and also Michael Sheard (Mr Bronson from Grange Hill) as Himmler (odd as his most famous role came as Hitler in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade). Martin Jarvis plays Hitler's unlikely boilerman and Michael Kitchen plays a Nazi, no doubt practising that worried scowl for when he played Foyle in Foyle's War.

A long film worth watching before Downfall perhaps just how to realise how magnificent the latter is.

3 stars

This film is based on a classic novel, apparently - which no doubt goes into more depth regarding each character.

The end notes make clear this is about the scouting movement in Poland and how they resisted the Nazis then the Stalinists. If so, the actors cast are rather too old - though I'd need to check the source novel and history before asserting that really,. Surely scouts are 11-16 or so? Not 18/19/20? Anyhoo...

Film-makers have to make choices when adaptations from novels are done, so a main character must be chosen and certain aspects highlighted but others dropped. This is possibly why much of this film is fragmentary and sags towards the end. Novels do not have to have the simple 3 act structure of screenplays.

I liked the high production values of this, esp re the music used - which is in contrast to some other Polish movies set in WWII and Warsaw. The quality of the novel shines through, though I suspect we only glimpse its poetry.

One very annoying aspect of this film - the overweight character is always eating, because that is what anyone slightly overweight does, right? This is pure cartoon character stuff and cringe-worthy.

But all in all a fascinating film that made me want to find out more. 4 stars.