Film Reviews by PV

This film tells the little-told story of the members of the colonies who fought for the European powers against Nazi Germany.

The end of this film (no spoilers) reveals some shocking information. A necessary film to make.

As a film it is rather fragmentary and bitty, all leading up to the final campaign in France. (Alsace).

I really enjoyed this. The script is sharp and even made me laugh out loud a couple of times. The characters fun. Very tongue-in-cheek.

Made in 2014 and about pollution at a chicken factories infecting people - and in 2012 The Bay was a movie also showing how pollution from a chicken factory destroys a town via similar infection. Then later The Girl With All The Gifts is another child zombie infection shtick. All 3 films are a decent watch.

I liked the characters - all OTT and caricature. Except perhaps the druggie driver who seems a bit superfluous. Elijah Wood even gets to laugh at himself with a Hobbit gag.

OK so it sags a tad towards the end. As an odd plot hole here in that with a virus supposedly only infecting pre-pubertal kids, a boy kept down a year is clearly adolescent yet infected. But hey, maybe he had a growth spurt during production eh?

Slightly surprised it is made in LA as it seems more an indy production, often made in Canada. Set in Illinois.

This all ultimately works because of a decent script which is way better and funnier than most comedy horror scripts.

4 stars. 1 star off sure to the third act sag. Acts 1 and 2 are 5 star.

I was not sure what to expect from this film, but found it very dated indeed - with a showbiz star going from New York to Estonia of all places - with Nazis and then Soviets invading.

A very odd story all in all. Rather forgettable to be honest.

And I do not believe a word really.

For showbiz in Nazi Germany watch the TV series from Germany BABYLON BERLIN set in 1929 Germany.

2 stars

If you like slow arty French films where everyone smokes endlessly and looks philosophically into the middle distance spouting poetry, you'll be in heaven with this.

Me, I liked bits of it, when it focused on the story and events. Supposedly based on truth.

All about Paris in the latter stages of WWII. The wait for those who may or may not return from POW or concentration camps in Germany.

Some bits are baffling. The issue of how many French collaborated with the German regime has never ever really been explored much on screen, and it is good to have a glimpse of that here, at least.

2 stars

I have to agree that the best thing about this film is the title.

The only reason this is not 1 star is the cinematography - and it is almost 1 star anyway.

Why this has got great reviews from some, I do not know. It's a paper-thin idea which could make a half-hour film yet is dragged out with flabby fleshy S&M scenes to try and be radical - however it merely succeeds in being dull. Very.

I gave TOME OF FINLAND with the same actor and gave it 3 stars. It is better than this dross.

I really wanted to like this film. There have been some great films made about WWII recently - from Poland, for example, BATTLE FOR SEVASTAPOL, WALKING WITH THE ENEMY in Hungary, ALONE IN BERLIN, the great GENERATION WAR. And the Russian ATTACK ON LENINGRAD.

This however is not the cinematic account of the horrific crucial battle of Stalingrad I was expecting.

I did start watching it with awful American dubbing. Then stopped and changed the setting to Russian with subtitles.

That however did not get rid of the awful loud intrusive fake-blockbuster-soundtrack, or the stilted dialogue or the awful martial-arts-style slomo fight scenes which I hated.

Watch the great 1993 German film STALINGRAD instead. Or a documentary.

Some decent scenes but very disappointing. The whole thing is rather muddled and flabby too.

This film is watchable in parts and educational too to learn about the awful siege which killed 200,000 and left Warsow with only 1000 inhabitants., The whoel place was rubble at the end of WWII; now 2 million live there.

The film tells the story through a young male character and that often works though the flights of fantasy sometimes jarr for me - I dislike magic realism and fantasy films in general.

Some shocking violence depicted but this history must be known. Especially now, with more cities besieged again in 2022.

3 stars.

All about the battle in 1920 to defend Poland against the USSR and so retain its independence. Also references Kiev and Ukraine.

Interesting enough as seen through the eyes of a young soldier, with all the fog of war and confusing loyalties. But it does drag on rather, with endless 1920 battle scenes.

Probably a smash hit in the UK around 2011I think, as stated on the sleeve, due to the Poles in Britain going to see it.

Very dated to my eyes really. I would have given 2 stars for that but it just about makes 3 stars due to some great battle scenes.

Despite some atrocious dubbing, and a lack of subtitles for when actors speak English which would have been a help, this is an action-packed film which educates and entertains. Siege warfare is millennia old, used now in Ukraine and in WWII and throughout history - besieging castles to starve them to submit was an old war method many centuries ago.

The siege of Leningrad was one of the worst ever and lasted over 800 days, 1941 until 1944, as Germans retreated. It was truly horrific and 1.5 million there died of disease, starvation and bombing - almost Putin';s own parents (his mother was pulled from a pile of dead bodies when she moved).

Having visited Leningrad when it was called that, before St Petersburg was restored as its name, I recognised many statues etc. The hell of the situation is seen through the eyes of an 'English' reporter and her female police officer Russian friend who rescues her, the 2 children they hide out with, and her lover Gabriel Byrne. Watch to the very end to discover their fate. This personalises what could have been a structureless story - as sieges are not that cinematic after all. Wavering loyalties on both sides brings home the foggy morality of war.

It could perhaps have been a tad shorter. And English subtitles would have been great.

But 4 stars anyway. Worth a watch.

I knew very little about this or the history of Finland, which pre this involved a civil war in 1918 when the new USSR first tried to take it over - after centuries of Swedish empire rule.

The Soviets invade and lose the Winter War, which is now known as the Finnish Miracle. 105 days of fighting in harsh winter weather.

Very timely with Ukraine now the victim of Russia;'s expansionist ambitions, as Poland was in 1939 too and after World War II.

This movie is from 1989, and includes a helpful starting section with a map and basic history.

It can go on a bit and be repetitive, maybe a bit long - but nowhere as much as recent Hollywood movies or Bond films which last 2 and a half hours.

3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a fascinating 2 part TV drama, 3 hours in all, though a rather Americanised version of 1920s/30s German history.

Great focus is put on the American wife of businessman Ernst Hanfstaenghl, a close friend of Hitler from 1923 until he defected late 1930s, no doubt for a US TV audience. Their son, whose godfather was Adolf Hitler, only died in 2007. That was an angle unknown to me before this TV drama.

Thomas Sangster plays the child Adolf - he later played Paul McCartney in Nowhere Boy.

3.5 stars really and it seems to end rather suddenly too. Perhaps part one is more interesting.

Fascinating to watch together with classy TV documentaries such as Rise of the Nazis, or the ones showing just how sneakily they took power after 1929.

Although it is slightly plodding, this is a film based on the final novel of troubled author Hans Fallada who lived through the Nazi regime in Berlin in the last years of his short life. He was and is well known in Germany.

There are many small stories of bravery and resistance from WWII. I had never heard of this one before. And it started early, in 1940 when Germany were winning the war, so unusual - there was much more resistance in 1942 when Germany started really losing on early 1943 when it lost at Stalingrad - Germany had lost WWII at that point really though it dragged on for over 2 more years in Europe.

Based on the true story of a working-class husband and wife Otto and Elise Hampel who, acting alone, became part of the German Resistance. Fallada's book was one of the first anti-Nazi novels to be published by a German after World War II. However, in real life it was Elise's brother who was killed in 1940, so the novel changed that.

Maybe best watched with 'Sophie Scholl: The Final Days' a 2005 film about resistance by the White Rose movement later in the war, from 1942 when Germany was losing. That movement though was 5 students and 1 university lecturer, and 6 were executed incl Sophie, who maybe gets most attention as she was female.

Anyway, I enjoyed this film and learning about an early resistance to the Nazi regime I had hitherto been unaware of.

Not 100% sure about the main character castings. Hence no 5 stars.

This film makes me want to read the novel.

4 stars

What I liked here is that the viewer is given a choice between dubbing into English - which I hate usually - and original German with subtitles, which I would always choose. Far better than dubbing and and most subs OK, a few small errors but...I I have seen a LOT worse.

I'd much rather watch this than the Hollywood movie with Tom Cruise too - which is bigger budget, noisier etc.

This was fascinating - and I have just watched the main actor here playing Rommel in another German film.

An interesting chapter in German and world history. 3.5 stars rounded up.

This film reminded me of old Twilight Zone episodes, and they probably inspired it.

It also reminded me of Norwegian movie The Bothersome Man, also about a parallel reality where everything is odd and strange. Vivarium is a Danish/Belgium production, I believe. Also reminds me of some Hammer horror films where people cannot escape the area where a big haunted house has trapped them - early 70s. And also other circular films like Looper and more.

I dislike films which suddenly flip into fantasyland esp when no explanation is given, as here. Trying too hard to be profound, but really gimmicky.

On the plus side, the child actor playing the boy is superb. I was much less convinced by the adult version and the estate agents. Why the couple would not notice the weird set up is very unrealistic - so that meant I could not suspend disbelief. People just would not behave like that.

Much of this is all style and no substance - makes no sense really. Overlong at 2 hours and the last part loses any suspense built up - and predictable too, for me.

2 stars

A very timely film showing how united Russia and Soviet Union member The Ukraine were in WWII. The languages are almost the same - as with Croat and Serbian, the big difference is the alphabet used for writing it (Cyrillic for Russian, Serbian; our Latin alphabet for Ukrainian, Croatian etc). I wonder what she and all the loyal Soviet/Ukrainian soldiers would make of the new war in early 2022.

The facts here are distorted with fictitious characters added and the story Hollywoodised and romanticised - too much really, and it seems focused on her as a woman proto-feminist rather than as a soldier - hence Eleanor Roosevelt book-ending the film. Yes, Lyudmila had a son - in 1932 aged 16 in a short-lived first marriage which gave her the Pavlichenko surname. No mention of that. She married again age 25 but her husband was killed in the war. She later struggled with alcoholism and depression and died age 58.

She had 309 confirmed kills as a sniper - impressive for sniper. Most snipers were and are male - excellent spatial-awareness is a must. But she was the exception which proves the rule maybe. She had 187 kills at the siege of Odessa. The USSR fought Romanians (fighting for Germany) there - the latter won. There followed the siege of Sevastopol in Crimea, where she only trained snipers in real life. So fiction is bent to a new convenient reality in this film.

I enjoyed the movie - and interesting to see Woody Guthrie and hear his song about Pavilchenko, who visited the USA to speak and garner support for US troops to open a second front in 1942. Fascinating., I wonder how true it all is. It is true she said these words to US soldiers: "Gentlemen," she said, "I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don't you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?"

She also visited the UK in November 1942 - and spoke at Birmingham and Coventry.

Some awful dubbing here and casting Russians/Ukrainians to play American journalists as they have some English is a woeful error.

However, 4 stars.