Film Reviews by PV

I tend to dislike far eastern movies because of the vast spectacle and gloss, with way too much CGI - plus the Chinese nationalism often, and thin character development. I and dislike martial arts etc.

However, this is a German film set and filmed - brilliantly - in China. It is, in a word, a cinematic classic so I have no idea why it has passed me by until now.

It follows the fascinating story of German Siemens manager in Nanking, John Rabe, a man of his time - 1937 - a loyal Nazi who has to confront his own conflicted loyalties as he endures the infamous 'Rape of Nanking' in December 1937. His story was unknown to me - but I knew of Nanking, a prelude to WWII really.

This whole film is brilliant - the writing, acting, sets, locations, the music (some written by the brilliant actor who plays Rabe) - massive international casts too. The CGI is there - as to be there - BUT is well-done and not intrusive. It is just right.

Watch the EXTA half hour film on how it was made.

One of the best war films - and best German films - I have ever seen. A very intelligent, balanced telling of a little known story. I shall probably watch it a again soon.

You can also watch Steve Buscemi drunkenly dancing and singing 'Hitler has only got one ball' (which we used to sing as kids!) accompanied by main actor Ulrich Tukur on piano (which he plays very well). What more could you want in a movie?

Watch to the end to read what happened to some characters.

My only gripe, and it is a small one, is the very end scene (no spoilers). No need to quite so slavishly follow clappy-happy Hollywood modern movie convention.

5 stars.

Tbh this film should have won best foreign film Oscar (though another excellent Nazi-set film The Counterfeiters won that year).

I found this film irritating and think I know why - it is a romance padded out to try and pretend to be something more, with a confusing flashback spy story. It seems the film's writers and director is also its author, a rather privileged south Asian British woman helped by her same sex spouse who is also a film producer, Hmmm. Always rings alarm bells when the screenwriter and director also wrote the novel...

Some interesting bits but a rather cartoon character version of life in the USSR with clunky dialogue an a wafer thin plot.

It was so-so but John Le Carre or Fred Forsyth this ain't. Watch THE AMERICANS DVD box set instead or a film based on real cold war thrillers.

It is a mills and boon romantic story really. 3 stars max. Some nice falling snow...

This film depicts the start of the Second World War when on 1st October Germany invaded Poland - usually we see that from the south and west. Here it is in a seaside resort near Gdanck (Danzig in German). Remember too that the USSR was in cahoots with Nazi Germany to divide Poland up between them.

This is an important film but is way overlong. Could cut half an hour from it.

Not sure about some filming techniques either such as fake black and white newsreel footage or dream sequences.

It tested the patience so 3 stars instead of the 4 it could have been.

A derring-do tale, with plenty of stereotypes. Mot sure all the stuff re the operation is true or not. Certainly the Battle of Norway 1940 is too much forgotten even though it mattered greatly re German decision not to try and invade Britain in the summer of that year.

Danny Dyer is one of those actors who always plays himself - Michael Caine is arguably the same, so fine. But Danny with his same late 20th C London accent and words - 'innit??' - is so not 1940, innit? Ahe even uses the word 'f-aggots' - which did not even start to enter British English until well into the 1980s or later. If you do not think such things matter and just want a shoot em up war film then you'll like this.

James D'arcy good as ever in his role - seen him in many an Agatha Christie Miss Marple on TV.

A shame some characters seem to fade out and vanish, so we do not know what happens to them.

The main baddie Nazi could be been focused on more - he is underused and lost in the big bang war stuff happening.

But passable so 3 stars

The worst thing about this film is the title which is misleading - possibly chosen for marketing reasons. Most of the film is the 1930s life story of Young Perez the boxer in Tunis and Paris. A small portion is at Auchschwitz.

Based on a true story and see the real man's photo at the end.

However, it is a very messy fragmented film - it almost wants to be 2 films. Maybe a TV drama could have covered all this in 2 or more episodes?

In French with subtitles which is great. I hate dubbing.

The acting is great from the lead and others, esp the gold-digger actress.

The use of modern pop music at one stage jars badly though.

2.5 stars rounded up.

The 2020 movie THE CHAMPION OF AUSCHWITZ about a Polish boxer at Auschwitz is mostly set there and a better film than this: It is "The incredible true story of the Polish pre-war boxing champion Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski (Piotr Glowacki), who, early on in the Second World War, arrived with the very first transport of prisoners to the newly created Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where he became known as 'The Champion of Auschwitz'."

This is the final series of Vikings - the second part of series 6. And what a finale!

OK so best not dig to deep into how certain characters survived. Or indeed get too worked up about the romanticisation of the lives 'first nations' north American tribes, though Viland was a settlement by Vikings in Newfoundland so that is accurate. This is a Canadian/Irish co-production, after all. The woods and coastline and seas. rivers and waterways are all Ireland - a very rural place, remember.

A genuinely moving finale esp the final 2 episodes.

I am glad Vikings is stopping here. The first series were superb though some pc metoo stuff did seep into later stories though thankfully not any absurd colourblind casting. Some middle episodes of later series dragged a bit.

Nevertheless, a superb series - I could watch it all again from series 1. In fact the biggest problem I had was remembering who was who as it is so long since I watched the first part of series 6 and 5 too - months, in fact years, thanks to the pandemic. Hey ho...I shall have to check who is who when I rewatch it all.

Not sure why they remixed the feem toon for this final series - it was better how it was.

This has been a superb drama, way better than most TV drama now

The big battle would seem to reference the Battle of Edington in 873 AD though that was led by other Vikings Guthrum; another great battle was 867. So history may be mixed an confused, which is fine as this is not a documentary but a drama. And I loved the cheeky Hvitserk's fate (though historical records claim he was executed by the Russ by burning alive).. Ivar the Boneless was in fact a king of what is now Dublin, slave market central in the 9th century.

All semi-mythical iron age characters and peoples anyway! Best watched for the drama alone.

5 stars.

I hate dubbed foreign films - why no option for original language and subtitles?

That lets this down. As does the episodic nature of the film - which comes from a novel by a Latvian Nationalist in 1920s/30s - watch until the very end to find out what happened to that author when the USSR invaded at the start of the Second World War.

Probably reads better as a novel, to be honest. No attempt to hide the Latvian nationalist bias of the film as that is the novel - I am sure it is a better read than this film is a watch. Screenplays have to have clear 3 act structure and focus, so much of what is in novels has to be ditched. For better or worse.

Some jumps here between episodes and confusing politics - so best familiarise yourself a bit about Latvia history pre and post WWI and the Russian empire and 1917's effects there with Lenin's Bolsheviks to fully appreciate it.

Watch together with MR JONES maybe about a Brit Welshman exposing the famine in Ukraine post WWI too, caused by Stalin and USSR.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 - JUST.

This film stands out as the concentration camp prisoners are not Jewish - their red triangles symbolise political prisoners, maybe communists and socialists. The Auschwitz here is the first one, with the ARBEIT MACHT FREI sign above the entrance, opened in 1930s for political prisoners, not Auschwitz Birkenau II which is the larger second camp.

Fascinating story - there are so many from this time, The usual callous brutality on display.

A slight film, but the main character and the teenage boy in particular are superb actors.

Watch till the very end to see what happened to the boxer.

3.5 stars rounded up.

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.