Film Reviews by PV

I have no idea why people think this is a wonderful brilliant 5 star film - maybe just because it won at Cannes (which gives awards to some right dross, and no mistake).

This is not a bad film BUT the first half is overlong - you could cut 30 minutes or even half an hour from it easily; far too many scenes of people sitting around talking and eating.

It gets interesting later but time really dragged in the first half.

Also, I am not sure I believe the story - which means I cannot suspend disbelief. Overall, PARASITE is far better.

3 stars. JUST.

Very interesting to see the poor side of Japanese culture though - different from what we usually see. Poor working class/underclass Japanese people struggling to get by in a law-abiding society. Smalltown Japan.

It was fascinating to see them also drinking from CODD BOTTLES - the glass ones with marble stoppers. Common in the UK in 19th and early 20th C. You can buy them from antiques shops at £5 each or less.

I saw this film mentioned on social media in the light of all the woke BLM banning of whites in 'black' roles and the demand for blacks in traditionally white roles, so thought I'd give it a go.

And I must admit I enjoyed this - as a trashy Friday night movie.

Some laugh-out-loud moments here. Some clever stuff, and gags. Acting very visual as is needed. Lots of jokes re race relations in the USA - which do not apply as much in the UK (which is 3% black only). But I laughed! It's funny, in parts - and the make-up etc is impressive, to be honest.

Of course, this movie could only be made with black actors becoming white not the other way round, not these days anyway. So a massive double standard there. I think Michael J Fox played SOUL MAN in the 80s? Then there is the classic TROPIC THUNDER - though these days people would be too scared to make those movies, sadly.

The characters, voices and even plot if lifted from probably the best Hollywood comedy ever made: SOME LIKE IT HOT. And no worse for that. Gender bending is an ancient tradition, used in Shakespeare and ancient Greek drama, and this is part of that tradition.

Not sure if the WAYANS actors are sons of the director or related? A family affair, it seems.

3 stars anyway.

This follows the usual biopic template: start in the messed up resent, then flash back to the past and childhood to explain the present mess as it gets worse with flash forwards to the present. Baddies needed, whether or not the real life facts support that - cf Rocket Man.

That is not to say this pattern is bad, necessarily. But what is bad in this movie is the unbelievably cringe-worthy and crass ending (no spoilers). Really, it was like nails being drawn down a blackboard.

I have no idea whether the gay comedy duo of fans existed in real life, or maybe they were invented for the stage play on which this is based? Did this all really happen? One is never sure with biopics and the answer is usually 'NO!'. But if the invention works, fine, Here it does not - in the third act.

For fans of Judy, especially amongst her gay following, this film is probably 5 stars. I'd give it 3 stars - as a movie it is distinctly average, though the best actress Oscar was well-deserved. There are some great set pieces earlier on, which will please the am dram musical theatre fans.

I couldn't help thinking of Shirley Bassey and the way she performs when watching this - maybe one copied the other, or maybe this was how mid-20th singers did it.

It is QUITE APPALLLING that bandleader Burt Rhodes is portrayed as being black/mixed race though. He was not black - but a pure white proud Yorkshireman. DREADFUL dishonest diversity casting. Just awful. I mean, would you like to be portrayed as a different race or gender if you appeared in a movie one day? Just wrong. Ethnoshambles madness!

I had no idea what to expect with this. Though when it won Best Picture Oscar and the #OscarsSoWhite were still wailing., one does wonder whether they even opened their eyes....

I liked the handbrake turn plot twists in this - no spoilers but usually exactly halfway through act 2 at the precise middle of the movie there is a major change. And the interesting characters too. It is a bit like GET OUT but focused on division versus belong according to wealth, not race. Because mostly it is social class/wealth that divides people, not skin colour at all (the 2 may coincide of course).

It reminds me too of THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES and some other continental films, also AND SOON THE DARKNESS (1970). Sinister and twisty. Dark humour for some. It was 2 hours but I was never bored and it's not overlong like most Hollywood efforts.

I disliked some of the theatricality but you often get this in foreign films - watch the Italian MONTALBANO on TV. Also, a slight lack of realism maybe - mobile phones do feature a lot in this movie, but not at points when one would have changed the plot. Convenient, that. And a tutor (and I have been one) would never be allowed to behave like that either!

I also liked the ending. Very un-Hollywood in so many ways.

So 4 stars.

I really wanted to like this BUT it was so incoherent, messy, sloppy, boring that i could not;

I stopped watching after 40 minutes. Maybe it got exciting after that. Shame.

2 stars

J P deserved the Oscar for this BUT the movie is a one note tune.

I am SICK of the portrayal of men caring for mothers as mentalists; women caring for mothers get no mockery. SEXISM. MISANDRY. I call you out, sisters, #MeToo hypocrite moppets.

2 stars

Very bad portrayal of mental illness too

OK so I preferred the first series to the 2nd, and the reason is that it's all become very tricksy, lots of mind games happening, which I know is trendy in Hollywood movies but which can grate. I think more just needs to happen. There is a lot of padding here.

Having said that, I still enjoyed it and so give in 4 stars (just squeaked that instead of 3 stars, partly for great acting, partly for brilliant music selections, many of them British and from the 80s or even late 70s - lots of synth bands and new wave stuff).

4 stars

The first series of Mr Robot was great, 5 stars esp the first half; the 2nd seemed forced and too tricksy postmodern, but I gave it 4 stars - just; in this 3rd series, however, the endless non-plot about multiple personalities and mind games gets, in a word, boring. More than once I found myself reading my book and watching this at the same time. Time to put this series out of its long, slow misery.

The acting is great and the music choices superb. I got very tired of the blonde Angela though, who is so wet and annoying I just cannot believe she could do anything competently, esp for any security service or dark army or the Teletubbies too.

The focus on Chinese empire-builders is spot on and I hope to see more exposing of the amoral greedy Chinese empire in future movies and TV series, but here it becomes silly, cartoonish and so unbelievable.

Credibility is strained at every turn of this series now. I am glad Remi Malek has moved on to better, less post modern dross things.

3 stars

This film has got great reviews here and elsewhere. It does not deserve them. I can only assume the reason why so may critics praise it is the yawnsome cliche of a 'strong independent woman' #MeToo hero - that and the fact JJ Abrams produced it. That does not stop this being a boring B-Movie. One of the worst movies I have seen in the last few years.

They should have called this movie Milking It or Cashing In - because that is why it exists.

The third act is absurd. In fact, this movie has NOTHING to do with the original Cloverfield - which was a silly monster movie, but entertaining, at least. This is not. It is not even particularly tense for a thriller - it is predictable in every plot point and development.

Want a tense thriller? Watch Silence of the Lambs, Misery, The Secret in Their Eyes (original) or even Brit low budgent Cabin 28. Not this drivel.

John Goodman is good in his role and believable - unlike the cartoon character superhero main female character and the secondary male character- but he looks so ill. Maybe that was the effect of reading the script - but no doubt, he thought of the money and points he was getting and carried on...

1 star.

There is something in Italians - and the Spanish - which seems to make them rather blood-thirsty in their art. Look at the paintings of Goya. The French call it 'Grand Guignol' - and there's a lot of that here, lots of ketchup-coloured fake blood and, no doubt, what critics would now call exploitation of young pretty women who get 'done in'.

The first time I tried watching this, I turned off after around 10 minutes as it was too bloody and I wasn't in the right mood. Later I watched it all the way through - and it's a very 'of its time' 1970s Horror flick which the Italians churned out in that decade. Not half as clever as it thinks it is though. It is, at the end of the day, trashy horror with an absurd plot and often cartoony characters. Like Hammer Horror but pushing the boundaries of what the censor allowed in the 1970s but giving it 'Sam Pekinpah' levels of gory blood-soaked scenes. It is what it is.

One note on the music - a very radical, for the time, synthy soundtrack which o doubt sounded hyper-modern and cool at the time, but which now sounds very dated: nothing ages so fast as a vision of the future. I still enjoyed it though.

Perfect for the 1970s theme party/film night.

3 stars

I enjoyed this film. Yes, it's nuts, and a bit disjointed with lots of flashbacks.

But it does what it says on the tin and is very timely in these virus-fearing days.

I enjoyed this film. Provided you can suspend your disbelief, then the hokem story about people turned into flesh-eating zombies by a fungal virus is very timely and relevant.

Stronger at the start than later on but still good fun with a few laugh-out-loud lines.

4 stars

I enjoyed this film. It follows separate stories of characters which may later overlap, and shows how the internet - the bad side of it - affects them all, in often devastating ways. There's money, there's sex, there are broken relationships.

The dark underbelly of the internet and so-called social media needs to be called out, and I am glad movies like this do.

The first 2 acts are particularly strong and all, sadly, utterly believable.

The internet with all its fraud, bullying, trolling, perversion, abuse is the new normal - or abnormal - so it is good to see films like this being made. Why can;'t the UK make believable contemporary films like this?

It could be a TV drama, it's that good - and I mean a decent US TV drama (like Breaking Bad) not the usual soapy preachy BBC dross.

4 stars.

This film starts OK - then gets gradually more up itself as time goes on. I suspect lots of the over-rated reviews are from fans of the 2 famous lead actors, and the blurry of real/unreal lines here is just plain weird.

If you like spiritual stuff, this may be your bag - I hate that sort of thing, so it annoys and bores me. If the Brits had made this the same people praising this film to the skies would be slating the film. Lazy, pretentious film-making. And boy the plot is silly, incredible and the third act made me want to chuck stuff at the screen - common sense, for example, and enlightenment values.

And I just did not believe the plot, not even from a French writer/director - and oh how they love their ponderous non-plots in French films where sod all ever happens. Some reviews call that 'whimsical'; others would call it SLOW or maybe 'boring'.

Best of all in this film, I enjoyed the scenery - lots here set in the scary desert of Death Valley, USA - so I took that in when the cod-spiritual nonsense got too much.

2 stars max.

This movie reminds me of other huge, vast-ranging, pretentious movies which seemed to arrive in the 1990s and end around the time this was made. I am thinking of The Fifth Element, and the truly awful Tree of Life.

A great cast, yes, and some interesting scenes. But all too tricksy and self-consciously post-modern. Why not just TELL A STORY instead of all the endless faffing with alternative universes etc and all the pretentious cod-scientific guff.

I see it was written by the director who is French/Belgian - and also that this self-indulgent mess of a movie was partly paid for by our taxes via the EU, it seems. HOORAH! The whole thing must've cost tens of millions - all to pay for one director's derivative vision. Sigh...

An interesting watch, and enjoyable in parts - but boy, did it test my patience. And young people made up to look old just don't, somehow.

Probably one for the sci-fi fans and those who like tricksy Matrix-type games.

For me, 1.5 stars rounded up.