Film Reviews by PV

I remember watching this as a kid first time round though no specific episodes. I liked the complex dishevelled Eddie Shoestring character, created by a writer who'd been in TV drama since late 50s, and it does have that dated tone, even for 1979 and despite an ethnically mixed cast for the time.

Yes it is dated BUT not that much - funny how some jokes Shoestring males would definitely now be cut so as not to offend, esp jokes about women and gender - but all harmless actually. Just shows these days the world is too woke to take a joke! It adds to Eddie Shoestring's character and is true to it.

Great too to spot actors who found fame later - Peter Beale who got famous as Pete from Eastenders plays TWO characters in different episodes a copper and a wildlife park assistant keeper! Gordon Kaye aka Rene from Allo Allo rocks up in an episode as an unlikely ex-soldier. Harry S Corbett aka Steptoe obviously needed the cash to take a role in this.

Best of all is episode 9 which features TOYAH who plays a singer called TOOLA with her real band, who got famous in 1980 with IT'S A MYSTERY top 5 hit. Her manager is Christopher Biggins who does not quite convince as a violent womaniser drugdealing gangster. The same episode features Mick Jagger's brother Christopher. And also a bit part for Kevin WHitely - later Lewis in Morse after Auf -Pet - though the lack of continuity is hilarious. He plays a rich footballer and has 3 lines in a travel agent as a Geordie; later this character calls up the radio show and his accent has miraculously become pure London! Mad!

Great fun and I enjoyed it for the nostalgia and lack of woke pc nonsense of today's preachy box-ticking issue-laden TV drama which I have stopped watching. 4 stars.

This movie is a like a cross between ET, The Midwich Cuckoos (the original b + w film is the superior one), the Man who Fell to Earth and Superman (which gets referenced). Almost a messiah story metaphor really.

The title is awful - 'Midnight Special' sounds like another movie entirely. No idea why it was chosen. So unbelievably naff. Sounds like it should be a film about a jazz musician or some soft porn!

Anyway, the film starts so well - it does not give everything away so the viewer has to concentrate to work out what is going on, always a good sign. Act 2 keeps up the tension. The final act and ending however vanish into the usual swamp of cod-spiritual sci-fi sludge and CGI silliness common in Hollywood movies these days. Oh well.

Until then, I enjoyed it. Was 4 stars until then and the special effects are good if unintentionally funny at times. Never had swimming goggles seemed so glamorous!

However, the silly final act and ending reduced that to 3. I have seen worse scifi movies anyway, so worth a watch.

Watch this to see a stylised by highly entertaining history of the Tudors in England - though they were a Welsh royal family.

Glad to see this was made before the colourblind casting cult with Anne Boleyn played by a black actress in a Channel 5 drama which I shall not be watching.

All 4 series of The Tudors are wonderful - the only bad thing is they stopped at the end of Henry VIII's reign. I would have loved to see the reign of King Edward VI and the 9 days of Lady Jane Grey then Mary I's bloody reign.

The man who created and wrote this Michael Hirst went on to make the VIKINGS TV drama series, also so brilliant.

This is truly superb drama. Watch the extras on the final DVD to see the writer Michael Hirst talk of how he dealt with the end of King Henry VIII's reign - so wonderful the way that is done.

All 4 series of this are wonderful. Not 100% accurate but that is fine - 2 popes merged into one; Henry did not look exactly like the actor playing him etc. Lots of stuff made up.

But so what? There is no such thing as reality in historical fiction anyway. This series totally won me over though I sneered at it a bit in 2009 which is why I only saw one episode then.

I could watch it all again. I am sad they did not make more series after this about King Edward VI and Mary I - that could be 2-3 more series, before reaching Elizabeth I who has been overdone in movies to be fair.

Loved it. 5 stars - with bells on.

Things I liked about this film: 1) the impressive animation which we are used to from Pixar now. 2) The music, best original Oscar for a score by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails amongst others. 3). The cat, though it is rather an empty vessel (and miraculously lacks a bottom). 4) some of the script which is genuinely witty.

Things I dislike: 1) the lack of warmth in the animation (think back to the simpler Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio with Figaro the best animated cat ever!) and the way the piano playing scenes are so realistic they must be live action traced over digitally. The heaven/soul managers are pure 1950s animation too which is fun 2) the quasi-spiritual existential tricksy themes - common in many modern Hollywood films, all very self-focused and self-helpy; 3) the almost segregationist take on race with black only scenes and characters mostly (when no way would they were do white only). 4) the ending which drags on unnecessarily (no spoilers) as with so many overlong Hollywood movies now.

Some have claimed the themes are too adult for kids to enjoy and I can see younger kids being baffled at the fantasy soul segments. It is very like INSIDE OUT in many ways regarding that.

However, despite all this, I did enjoy the film, in part. Some scenes are beautifully especially when piano is being played. The moral and message is all self-helpy and icky as one has come to expect, of course.

The main character is winning too and I love the way they call him 'teach'.

Worth saying though that the black female sassy singer is a real stereotype - how many mor times are we going to see sassy black women in movies, and why is that stereotype NOT deemed offensive.

Maybe I am being too harsh - but I watched this yesterday evening and find that I have already forgotten most of the film, the contrived convoluted mock-heaven SOUL stuff especially which did make me roll my eyes.

Incredibly, the token white man in this is voiced by Graham Norton. Richard Ayoade also voices a character and there is a fun Kiwi manager too.

I love this whole series - brilliant acting and plots, which they say are based on real events, though of course all added together into this one family and couple.

Fascinating rather than factually believable, and always playing with the 'will anyone find them out and expose them as spies' tension, so effectively used in TV drama like Breaking Bad.

Very tense at times and violent. Class.

There has been a lot of hype about how wonderful this series is. Well they must be watching a different one from the series I watched which managed to be so dull, boring, predictable and uninteresting, I gave up after 2 DVDs. I so rarely do that.

My advice is watch THE AMERICANS instead or THE SOPRANOS.

Excellent and highly entertaining crime drama set against the backdrop of 1929 Berlin, and its famous nightlife (see the movie CABARET).

OK so there are some faults. The subtitles are clearly not written by a native English speaker as there are some really odd phrases included. Also, there is some padding to create more episodes, I suspected - I was not a fan of all the extended dance routines in nightclubs. And Bryan Ferry makes an appearance with his 1970s song done in the style of 1929 (the word WHY entered my head at that point).

And for me, and with such a complex plot meandering around with so many characters looking the same or similar, it was a tad hard to keep up with it all at times.

However, overall very watchable and with the same actors one can see in many other German TV series such as GENERATION WAR (the main actor plating Gereon in this played Winter in that).

4 stars

I missed this when it was shown on TV over a decade ago so am catching up now.

It is a brilliant drama, totally stylised and playing fast and loose with the facts all over the place (eg Henry VIII was red-haired and famous for it; forks were not used to eating at the time; guns were not used either; the Vatican's St Peter's Square and church had not even been built in the 1530s and 2 popes are merged into one character here). But hey, all history is bunk anyway and the impression and the style is what matters. The basic historical facts are right.

The writer who came up with The Tudors went on to create VIKINGS, another utterly brilliant TV drama - and thankfully both were made before the colourblind casting craze came along. I dread to think how this would all look if made now.

Great stuff! 5 stars

More brilliant drama on The Tudors.

Forget absolute authenticity - yes, Henry VIII had eye-catching ginger hair in real life. BUT his mercurial nature is well depicted here, and the coiled spring of his character is ready to strike at anyone at any time in his court. The world of the Tudor court is a slippery place, where someone in favour one day can be taken to the Tower the next to put their head on the block.

Anne Boleyn's character and fate are brilliantly portrayed.

All actors shine here and the writing is superb.

5 stars

Enjoyable but very violent drama portraying the super-rich Russian mafia who have gravitated towards London-o-grad in recent years.

Not sure it's all believable, but the mafia and the super-rich have long held a fasciation over people - lots of mafia violence here too.

4 stars

This movie is just awful - one of a new crop of socalled black-centric movies where all or almost all cast members are black. That is within the US segregationist tradition but I find it extremely distasteful at best, racist at worst, and also deep hypocrisy as no white only movies are allowed.

If you want to watch a decent time-slip drama where people message each other through time then watch FREQUENCY (2000) a seriously slick and clever US time travel drama set amongst US firefighters and a cross-time radio link. This movie just changes it to mobile phones. People phoning each other through time first appeared in a 1961 short story but time travel has been a theme in stories since 1880s, via The Time Machine to many MANY more TV series and films. This is one of the very worst.

I dislike the aggressive in-your-face culture here and sympathise with none of the characters, most of whom and 2d cartoon cutouts.

This is dross, with a teenage girl actor doing the worst over-acting I have seen for quite some time. Dare I say it, but if this were not black-centric with an all-black cast it would be called trash by critics too.

A shame to see Brit actor Alfred Molina - a decent actor and the token white face here (though he has Spanish-Italian parentage) - fall so low. No stars.

I enjoyed this despite the flaws - a meandering plot, dragged out perhaps too long; too much wallowing in the theatrics and dancing of the nightlife as with series 1 and 2. Probably being too loyal to the crime novels this is based on maybe?

Not sure it's all quite believable but it's certainly theatrically eye-catching and watchable, with some interesting three-dimensional characters such as the chaotic Jewish journalist and the various underworld characters, and the crime investigators complete with drag queens!

The subtitles are sometimes really bad - obviously written by someone German whose first language is not English, though with translation one is always meant to translate into one's first language. Some really clunky phrases and wrong tenses. One example: "The girl hasn;'t invented the deep dish". WHA? Anyone got any idea what that means> Literal translation from a German idiom, I presume. Very sloppy - get the subtitles checked by a native English speaker maybe?

But then the subtitles are as bad sometimes as the villainous facial scars are good. It's set after WWI but it seems a great many German survivors of that conflict suffered facial scars as there is quite a collection on display here. Also rather Shakespearean, as with Richard III deformity showing his evil, so the baddies here all tend to have scars or birthmarks on their faces. Very 16th Century! Not pc and all the better for it!

SO glad there is no colourblind casting ruining this - (can anyone imagine the rise of the Nazis with BAME actors playing Hitler youth, for example?) - for 1929 Berlin the actors all look the part, even though some actors are familiar (Gereon is played by the main actor from Generation War and the landlady actress (a very good one) was in Deutschland 83/83/89). Good actors though! And the 1929 technology is fascinating - audio and crime investigator stuff, with focus on the 'man machine' and robots etc. This is the age of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

SO not brilliant but watchable. if you liked this, watch VIENNA BLOOD. Also watch the Liza Minelli musical CABERET maybe or read Christopher Isherwood to get a taste of 1929 Berlin. Crime novels need 3 things - 1) plot as they are by nature focused on that; 2) strong characters; 3) a sense of place in a specific location. All top crime writers achieve this, and this TV series and no doubt the books do too.

Sometimes a bit drawn out and wobbly, but 4 stars.

The massive irony of this metoo movie, deliberately written and directed by women, and focused on attractive young women in a beauty contest is 1) a man steals the show - Rhys Ifans as the Miss World Mecca boss is brilliant, and the man who plays Bob Hope is great too; 2) it's deeply ironic when actresses who owe their careers largely to their looks (looking at you Keira Knightley) then star in well-paid roles in movies moaning about how women are judged by their looks! I couldn';t help but smile wryly at all that irony overload.

Anyway, it's so-so, but does feel it;s written by numbers, ticking off issues one by one as so many of these metoo movies or BLM ones too - and that is boring, not a story well told. It';s like being lectured of preached at. This film, too, tries to ride too many hobby horses arguably, and falls off, resorting to crude stereotypes esp of men. The most interesting story was not told - the hinted-at corruption of the corrupt president Sir Eric Gairey of Grenada to get himself on the judging panel. It's obvious from the first act who will win even if you do not know the true story. However, in real life the woman who won was a token who was scored 2nd,3rd, 4th by most judges. Miss S was robbed!

And of course, all men are paperthin 2-D misandrist stereotypes of bigoted sexism. The only woman condemned is the mother who is shown to 'think correctly' eventually - where in fact women tend to be way more socially conservative than men, and in the 20th C and before it was an aspiration for women to be middle class and NOT work. Working class women always worked! Most men who worked for next to nothing in dirty dangerous jobs, if not killed in wars, maybe wished they didn't. Middle/upper class women had it easy compared to the vast majority of men. And for a film to condemn half the world's population is rather, errr, sexist too.

There are so many movies mocking traditional societies and socalled 1950s values; However, back then most kids grew up with two married parents and were not disturbed and anxious as so many seem to be now. I bet they do not feel very liberated by their misery.

I remember Miss World of late 70s - watched on black and white TV with my sister. Just cheesy fun. But then feminism has always been pofaced and puritan, not to mention massively hypocritical - see The Chippendales, for women leering over male stripped and The Girlie Show, Naked Attraction etc. Compared to now, the 1970s seem an ideal age of restraint and good taste!

Miss World still happens in less puritan parts of the world and is massive - run by founder Eric Morley's wife (who no doubt also inherited his wealth). It started in 1951 and is still one of the big 4 beauty pageants which are more popular than ever, even if banned by mainstream TV and, of course, the BBC (AKA the BB-She).

Having heard a radio documentary on this, I know the protest only momentarily alarmed the host Bob Hope and it really was not the massive disruption it is depicted as here. The documentary is better than this mediocre movie which is largely fiction.

1.5 star rounded up.

I read a couple of the reviews here who hated it and suspect the reviewers are too pofaced snowflake wokie to GET Jewish humour. It is NOT racist; it is caricature WHICH IS NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.

Unlike most Hollywood comedies, esp the awful black-centric 'comedies' and the metoo ones, this film REALLY made me laugh. Yes, it's silly - but so what? Silly is good when you're in the mood. The ending's a bit weak BUT compared to the usual unfunny Hollywood movie 'comedies; this is great.

A happy fantasy which some lines that mane me laugh out loud! Seth Rogan is great as the 1920 immigrant from fictional East European country too (could be Ukraine or Moldova or anywhere like that).

Good simple fun. Great caricature. I HATED 'Knocked up' and some other Seth Rogan films BUT this is one of his best. IF you are not a po-faced puritan wokie who sees caricature and satirical comedy as racism, that is.

A great MARMALADE song in there too. REFLECTIONS.