Film Reviews by PV

This is a curiosity piece and has not aged well. It is so dated and is in the same camp therefore as The Magic Christian; No Sex Please, We're British; There's a Girl in My Sleep; and even the Beatles baffling Magical Mystery Tour TV film - and even Oh What a Lovely War, the film. ALL are very 1960s. Most are so stagey too, theatre plays not adapted much for the screen.

This is so long - I actually read a book while enduring all two and a half hours of it, because it was so meandering and, yes, dull. Not even an all star cast can save this from its overbearing tedium and failure as drama, however surreally clever it thinks it is. Watch Alistair Sim in the black and white 1951 Scrooge instead and the brilliant Dad's Army 1970s series, 'discriminatory language which may offend' and all.

Everything about it is horribly dated - the fashions, concept, music, even the satire because the elite now is not the aristocracy or the church or old white men dreaming of the British empire at all. No, the elite that rules over us now are those imposing the orthodox ideology of political correctness and wokedom on us all. In many ways, the Brexit vote was against their aloof smuggery. That is the new elite.

So this satire which may have seemed shocking in the last 60s (the theatre restrictions from the Lord Chancellor's office only ended in 1966) is now a museum piece and utterly irrelevant. After all, Eton now is at least 20% BAME and women dominate many professions too, many privately educated.

Listening to the random musical sketches in this I was struck by how it may well have inspired Dennis Potter to write The Singing Detective and his other TV dramas.

2.5 stars rounded up. Watch for curiosity, not entertainment or humour, because if you do the latter you'll be sorely disappointed.

This is one of those movies with quick-fire dialogue and everyone talking over each other. SO subtitles recommended maybe, and also rewinding and rewatching scenes. esp those discussing complex financial stuff (which even the moneymen and women do not understand when they sell them to the gullible). Written by Scott Z Burns. I liked the international aspect - ranging from Hong Kong to London and more.

Jude Law and other British actors excel here. The brilliant Bryan Cranston plays a general before Breaking Bad made him a superstar. 1970s Hollywood star Elliot Gould rocks up too!

Lots of rot has been written about how this movie somehow predicted the Covid pandemic.

Nope, it didn;t; it's just another viral epidemic movie (and ultimately an END OF THE WORLD fear story and they are as old as humanity). Many have been made. Flemish Belgian TV drama CORDON a decade ago; Brilliant British film THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (the best virus film ever and predicts the Covid19 pandemic better in a way than this); 28 DAYS LATER; and in 1975 SURVIVORS was terrifying at the time (ignore the woke pc remake). THE MAD DEATH (1981) another British TV drama back when they were good and concerned more with drama than ticking diversity boxes and preaching pc propaganda. Even INFERNO from the Dan Brown book covers the same ground. It is ultimately jet fear of death on a micro and macro scale.

This movie just shows how quickly a pandemic can spread. which is always terrifying. Epidemics and pandemics can and do happen - it was never IF but WHEN. One could say the same re the coming resistance to antibiotics which will kill many this century, and of course overpopulation which means Nature will cull us, sadly after so much of Nature has been destroyed.

Watch the EXTRA little film first before watching as that sums up how a pandemic starts, and we are living it now (and yet again, as with this movie, China caused it). This movie even shows a vile wet market where most thing coronavirus started with the animal abuse there and Chinese demand for eating wildlife. This movie is more civilised - watch the very end to see how it started. More viruses will emerge from the wild the more certain amoral empires deforest them and demand wildlife to eat. Blame where blame is due. Make them pay.

Music's a bit dodgy and I am no Soderbergh fan. But this is a decent watch.

4 stars

I loved this series and was sad to see it end BUT, as with so many US TV dramas, it went on a tad too long probably.

And a serious suspension of disbelief is needed - which is OK because it is drama. The same was needed with Breaking Bad. These are heroes or anti-heroes and live superhero lucky lives really. I think every single spy story was shoehorned into the plot in The Americans. Also some pc wokery with the female character taking the active role here and the male one staying home. This 'strong independent' female character in films, TV drama and books (for adults and kids) is now such a new cliche and stereotype - never are women portrayed as needy, teary ort asking a man to fix stuff (as in real life LOL). Just watch Indiana Jones to see how things have changed - and not necessarily for the better.

The acting is great - the main leads incl the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys and the boy and girl too who grew up with the show from 2013-18. I also loved Magdelena (I think that;'s her name) the older female Russian KGB woman.

But tbh I think the 'secret' was staring the world in the face for years - so much so that even my late Aunt Betty could have worked it out (and was deaf and blind, and is rather dead too). So Stan and the other FBI ''experts' must be the slowest dimmest FBI spy-catchers in history! Not quite sure I believe the final episode either and the behaviour of Agent Beeman. BUT as I said, this is fantasy and fiction. It is drama not documentary.

Nevertheless, t all works rather well, despite some flaws, and is way superior to ANY UK TV drama esp anything on the woke preachy pc BBC these days.

A great box set. I could watch it all again! Great 80s music too.

4.5 stars rounded down.

This started poorly, I thought - no spoilers but to be honest I almost turned it off at this point. Glad I didn't as the drama and characters develop well telling a story I didn't know.

No exact dates given but it seems like the late 80s - the Mitterand years in France anyway when, shockingly, it seems the French rates of HIV/AIDS were double what they were in the UK and Germany. This is no doubt because, despite all the avant-garde posturing smoking Galloise in dark cafes discussing Jean-Paul Satre and Simone Beauvoir, France is really a deeply conservative place (women got the vote way later than in the UK). It is in essence still a rural and southern European country with Catholic values, despite a secular state school system.

Of course, Paris is not France, as any French person will tell you. This is set in Paris.

Anyway, all interesting and some superb scenes using special effects in a nightclub (no spoilers).

At first I thought the third act was extraneous and unnecessary, but as it went on I realised it is what makes really this film. No US movie or UK TV drama probably would dare to do this. So BRAVO!

Reminds me a bit of the best film ever made about drug addiction (forget Trainspotting nonsense). 'Oslo 31, August 2011'.

4 stars. Would be 5 if the very many word political meeting scenes were cut down. Some flab needs losing there.

OK so like most of these excellent TV drama series, the last couple of series lose it a bit, go a bit OTT, like Breaking Bad and more. It gets increasingly unbelievable - though of course it is fiction, though maybe based on facts, and I watch it as such. Sometimes it just jumps the shark a bit in this series, I think. The first 3 series are the best.

However, even as a 4/5 scoring series it is streets ahead to the very inferior drama available on the BBC and UK TV.

The actors are great - the Welsh actor Matthew Rhys in the lead and his wife, and the FBI staff.

The dramatic tension is maintained with WILL THEY/WON'T THEY be found out - so just the same as with BREAKING BAD. It lags a tad in later series but this is still fine drama.

Love the 80s music too!

This TV drama series set in 1980s Washington with Soviet spies embedded in American life is fascinating and fun - very exciting and tense at times and occasionally violent.

OK so one has to suspend one's disbelief - it's a tad like superhero films at times - BUT no doubt all this spy stuff happened to certain people ar certain times, This story brings it all together in telling the tale of just 2 main spy characters.

Great acting here and very exciting. WAY superior to ANY BBC or UK TV drama.

I love this series - it is brilliantly realised, exciting, happily unwoke and non-pc, and genuinely scary at times.

Believable to a point, though no doubt many real spy stories have been condensed into this one.

One of the best TV drama series I have watched in the last decade, and WAY superior to the awful pc world woke nonsense of BBC and UK TV drama. This is in the premier league. The BBC is not even in division 4 for its mediocre drama now.

Just great and WONDERFUL 80s music too.

Well I suppose if you like fashion and dresses you'll like this filme.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a decent story - a BELIEVALE story - then forget it. Acts 1 and 2 are all very restrained, elegant, with Daniel Day Lewis and the actress who plays his sister of this rather precious spoilt self-obsessed family stealing the show.

But Act 3 is a nonsense - lost my inability to suspend disbelief completely there. I'd rather watch an episode of Poirot or Miss Marple, frankly.

The pretty waitress character is utterly superficial, a cardboard cut-up, very 2 dimensional- I had hoped her character would be developed, esp as there are some dark references to the war (and selling visas to Jews) but this is never explored. That is a shame.

At the end of this film I felt like I'd be watching the laborious process of one of those fluffy puffy evening dresses being made - and it was all as boring as that.

1 star for the story; 1 star for the very elegant costumes. 2 stars total. Avoid unless you like fashion and have plenty of patience.

This film is old but still works. It is wonderfully imaginative with the special effects as the main character shrinks. Very clever use of clothes and household items to show that and not tell it.

It's all great fun too, with dramatic music and jaw-dropping (for the time) special effects. It is way better than the modern Mat Damon movie DOWNSIZED too which went on and on. No flab on or in The Incredible Shrinking Man!

I actually turned off a modern film which was boring me to watch this one. I had seen clips before but never the whole thing. I am so glad I did.

It's very 1950s with the nuclear threat and cold war hanging over it like a cloud - literally.

They get the media circus just right - it would be the same but worse today.

And how refreshing to watch a great entertaining film with no agenda to push, no boxtick casting, no yawnsome CGI effects.

But what happened to the cat? That's what I want to know.

The ending is of its time, I suppose. Based on a novel by the man who wrote the screenplay, apparently.

Classic stuff anyway. I could watch it all again now. 5 stars

This is a decent monster movie, way better than the tediously silly movie CRAWL.

One reason this works is the fact that it is based on reality - in Australia's Northern Territories there are saltwater crocs which are massive and do kill people every year. I remember a real-life story about tourists trapped on an island fending off crocs all night - maybe this tall tale is based on that?

This is very geared to the American market and produced by the Weinsteins.

However, the leads are decent and the plot holds water more than the boats LOL. The dramatic tension is nail-biting and the jump-out-of-your-seat eye-popping shocks are well-staged.

I enjoyed it, as a trashy horror flick.

4 stars

I am hooked by this series as I was with Breaking Bad - it shares the same multi-layered complex plots and violence with that show, and for that reason keeps up momentum with random new events and characters appearing regularly.

Both shows rely on someone with a secret life they want to hide. The 'will they or won't they get caught' issues and the near-misses make some scenes nail-biting. This is dramatic irony, much used by Shakespeare and theatre for centuries - we, the audience, know things about the main character/s that most other characters do not know, Watch Richard III.

Great stuff, with Matthew Rhys a Welsh actor really excelling in the main role - a new Alec Guiness who really inhabits the various characters and identities he plays. The girlier emotive parts play less well and I hope they do not come to dominate things, as happened in later series of Breaking Bad. I hope too there is now token metoo and ethnic quote box ticking.

For me, from the UK who was at school in the 1980s they don't get the British experience of that time right exactly but I assume this is the more paranoid anti-USSR USA, with a real fear of commies from the 1950s McCarthyism still lingering in the air.

For now, 4.5 stars rounded up. Highly enjoyable hokum - though based on some true stories of spies, but all condensed into these two. But hey, it's a story not a documentary, so I willingly suspend my disbelief.

It's great to watch series 6 of th magnificent VIKINGS at long last - and who knows when or if we shall see any more, now Covid has ruined filming for, well, everything. How on earth can you have socially distanced Vikings in battle?

Anyway, while not up there with the best series of Vikings, this is still pretty decent. A tad too much focus on 'strong' female characters in highly implausible all-female Viking battles - as if. Could be worse, though.

I loved the Vikings Rus scenes and Ivar and his brothers brilliant as usual.

Better than any drama on BBC TV or ITV.

4 stars

OK so the technical side of creating this movie with very long takes and no editing was a masterful use of technology - watch the EXTRA documentaries on the DVD about this.

But and it is a big but, the film and story oddly fail to really engage - and the CGI is massively used (done in India I see from the credits). Maybe because it's a thin story - 2 soldiers on a mission into enemy territory to deliver a message to stop a deadly doomed attach by the British on the Germans in 1917 (not a spoiler - the blurb states this). So that is what it is. 2 hours of it.

A great cast including the wonderful young actor George Mackay almost unrecognisable for his role in Pride as a young shy teen. One to watch - an Oscar one day for him, I am sure. BUT this over-rated and over-praised movie is not the one.

A couple of niggles. I HATED the superhero movie soundtrack - it really spoilt so many scenes (and no I do not care what won a BAFTA).

Secondly, it is wrong to show Indian soldiers mixed in with young British men - it did not happen like that. There were Indian units, for sure, separated - by colour, yes, but mostly by religion due to deep ancient hatreds of Indians by Indians (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh). That is another film, so show that. Ditto for the black soldiers - there were separated West Indian units in WWI (not WWII in the UK - in the US< yes) as well as a TINY number of British-born blacks reflecting the tiny number of blacks in the UK in 1917 to join up. There are too many here and yes it does matter as it would matter if white faces were shown in a film about Zulus or native Indians, non? It seems to me people pick and choose colourblind casting as it suits them and their agenda. If it doesnlt they yell about 'authentic casting' - well this casting was not authentic and it spoilt the film as it is promoting a pc woke imagined and wished-for truth rather than a historical one. Shame.

3 stars. A bit meh and feels oddly lacking in emotion and flat. I cannot work out why.

I enjoyed this - a neat little simple story. It's be ELI ROTH who made HOSTEL so we know what to expect. Grand Guignol and then some.

But the story was solid, the character arcs efficient, the costumes, make-up and special effects fun, and the lush seething rainforest as horrific as ever full of creepy crawlies and dangers unseen.

No doubt the usual pc woke BLM academic types won;t like the portrayal of native tribes as blood-thirsty barbarians - however, that is what so many were like in pre-colonial lands, with slavery, massacres, torture, and human sacrifice standard in pre-colonial Africa, for example. Cannibalism too. So good to Eli Roth for running with it. Romanticisng such lost tribes and pre-colonial Africa/Asia is actually deeply racist. Pre-colonial lands were NOT Wakanda or a Michael Jackson video in real life actually. They were monstrously awful mainly. Watch Mountains of the Moon.

The green theme is there, especially green hypocrisy and the way zealots can lose their humanity - no coincidence that the fascist and Nazis and Hitler were closely connected to the Green movement (back to the earth, blood and earth etc). Not so sure re the FGM theme - one to tick the #Metoo femi-box, that one - but absurd it's made out to be the worst thing ever - when compared to the other horrors portrayed. I think a horrible death trumps circumcision (and millions of boys mutilated against their will worldwide every year too).

A great shame it is all spoilt by the epilogue - ending (NO SPOILERS). My eyes rolled and heart sank at that trite twee finale so I docked a star, so I give this 3 stars instead of 4.

Reminds me of a film whose name I cannot remember about human organ harvesting in South America. Watch with the sublime APOCALYTO, maybe Mel Gibson's only decent film as director.

I enjoyed this spin-off movie, as I enjoyed the spin-off TV series BETTER CALL SAUL. Of course, neither that nor this is the sublime wonderful US TV drama series BREAKING BAD, just about the best TV drama of the last decade, despite the soppy slushy later series - the pilot of BREAKING BAD is the best pilot for any drama I have ever seen - ever. Brilliant!

So this movie recreates some flashback scenes from BREAKING BAD - and suspension of disbelief is needed as the character Jesse Pinkman looks much older as, naturally, Aaron Paul has aged in 5-10 years. Never mind. Flashbacks are needed in a drama like this and BETTER CALL SAUL. The way it is.

There is enough in this movie to make it work, to be honest - some neat set-ups and a quest for Jesse. Some old friend characters pop up again too - and amusing that some who died in the TV series also appear in newly-filmed flashback, including Walter White himself played by Bryan Cranston, brilliantly - always.

I was hooked and glued to my seat at this and it's a satisfying watch/. Some great music as usual on BREAKING BAD (and lots of US TV drama series which are SO superior to UK drama series, esp inhouse pc woke BBC nonsense which feel like 4th rate preachy lectures).

Not quite 5 stars but a solid 4. Watch it! Recommended.