Film Reviews by PV

As others have said, this is very like some SAW movies and maybe HOSTEL and FINAL DESTINATION. It also harks back to various Portmanteau films of the past, often from HAMMER, such as Dr Terror's House of Horror, Ghost Train and Torture Garden and more, where several stories are in one movie. here that is via separate characters' back stories. Totally unbelievable of course, but enjoyable enough - it is what it is. Reminds me a bit of TV series WEST WORLD too.

Some imaginative and fun set-ups here. Heat, cold, various dangers and deaths. Tension mounts and I suppose it ends in an OK way, and no doubt sequels will come as this sort of simple B-movie violent stuff appeals to teenagers. Probably a good movie to see at a noisy cinema on a Friday night.

Gets a bit sillier as it goes on - and the obligatory ethnic quotas and the 'strong independent' woman new stereotype here yet again. How many movies now have a small female somehow overpowering several large men eh? Sheer femi-fantasy and silly. Risks challenging the willing suspension of belief we all need to enjoy stories.

But OK - no more, though. 3 stars.

Any movie full of classic Beatles songs will be good, even if the film itself is awful. Hard to get those rights (owned now by Sony) but if you can, you;re away. Richard Curtis is a big name, so could.

One point: some critics call the idea for this film 'brilliant and original' but it isn't. I saw two outlines of screenplays in 1995/6 which imagined a world without Beatles music - differently done, but essentially the same idea. A fantasy WHAT IF alternative reality genre - a bit like FATHERLAND, IT HAPPENED HERE, or WENT THE DAY WELL all about imagining what would have happened if the Nazis had won WWII.

Anyway, it's a decent idea and well-executed, especially in the first half of the film. Later on, as is typical with Richard Curtis films, it gets suffocated in slushy sludge and sentimental emo-porn romance. Every single Richard Curtis is the same - a man wants a woman; she is not sure and/or rejects him but eventually comes round and they end up together walking off into the metaphorical sunset. Every SINGLE Richard Curtis movie has that plot.

Some great jokes especially at the start - and I liked the main characters resistance to 'going back into teaching'; his potential girlfriend and manager says he shouldn;t because h'll end up putting all his energy and imagination and talent into the kids he teaches instead of his songs. YES!

A point re the casting: Ed Sheeran does just fine in a cameo (though I feel his very derivative song writing is over-rated). The main character played by Himish Patel can sing well but lacks any charisma at all so I struggle to believe he can be a worldwide star.

I think Richard Curtis was very much criticised in the past for not having many ethnic characters in stuff like NOTTING HILL so he has perhaps gone too far the other way here. He just about gets away with it re the main character. However he and his parents do seem rather like white characters who have been 'coloured in' to tick the pc diversity boxes. His parents played by real-life spouses the ever-annoying Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar are absurd. For a start, Lowestoft and Suffolk are all East Anglia are VERY white areas of England, so very few Asians AND I promise you, no Asian dad called JED with a strong Suffolk farmers' accent like the dad character. Find me an Asian man called JED who speaks like a farmer and I'll buy you curries for a year! I think if we have that main character realism would dictate he's white or maybe Asian and adopted by a white family. The deliberate diversity box-ticking annoys.

I liked the character ROCK - the drunken layabout roadie. He's a lot of fun.

I loved the early scenes at the warehouse and local TV - having done local radio and TV myself, I laughed inwardly at all that!

The subplot with 2 others is a bit odd, but then the fantasy plot here is so full of holes it could be a Swiss cheese - best just to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride and the classic Beatles music.

I found the ending annoyingly unbelievable, but it's neat and circular, and most will go AHHHH in all the right places. I find I tend to go UGHHHH at all the gushingly sentimental parts though...but that';s just me.

A flimsy but enjoyable film BUT not original. There is a short film featuring John Lennon working in a Job Centre because the Beatles didn;t happen too - cannot remember the name. In real life, John Lennon's dad and grandfather were in the merchant navy and he would have probably joined too if the Beatles hadn;t happened (and Paul would have tried his luck as PAUL RAMON and become a teacher if that failed). John Lennon was a cat man though (the Lennons had a cat called TIM when he was a boy) not a dog man. A nice scene with him though in this, though I don;t believe he would NOT have a guitar around somewhere.

4 stars.

This film is good in parts, but as a whole it is a real mess. It's as if the writer/director wanted to squeeze in everything, and the end result falls between two stools - it's half story half documentary.

And the inexplicable decision of the director to just randomly chuck in scenes from a 20th century courtroom in the South re mixed marriage and race laws is just plain wrong - the worst editing of a movie I think I have ever seen.

So get rid of these scenes and the more documentary bits, but out half an hour and you may have a cohesive movie - but this is not it.

It's a fascinating story I had never heard of before. So I would rather have seen a documentary on it really, rather than a film like this which occasionally veers into drama-documentary territory.

This is way too long. A shame really as the story deserved better.

2 stars. Just.

Well my review title sums it up. I have seen loads of trite arty tosh like this before, on stage too, and so this is nothing new to me. It ticks all the drama/arts studio pretentious boxes. It thinks it's shocking and profound. It isn't. It's boring, shallow and stupid. AND been done before many MANY times (read Swift's A Modest Propoal).

It's all a bit like the Emperor's Clothes - all the arty crowd think they have to gush about this director and his tedious overfunded arty movies because if they don't they may be left out of the loop. It reminds me of the trash called conceptual art.

If you want to watch a movie of real quality with similar themes then watch ROSEMARY'S BABY or any version of the sublime French masterpiece LES DIABOLIQUES. Not this tripe. Mad women films are ten a penny anyway.

I heard myself yelling OH JUST GET ON WITH IT whenever Jennifer Lawrence gave that mumsy confused look.

Really, this is like what happens when a bad A level Art student gets a budget of a few million dollars to inflict their talentless turgid tosh on a world already full of it.

This may well work in a poncey New York drama studio. It does not work on film. The acting here is stagey and theatrical too, with all the emoting etc.

The sort of movie that stupid people think is intelligent - and deep and profound and the rest. BUT IT ISN'T. It's up itself and then some.

1 star and a half, for the production values. And great old feem toon at the end. DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. No, but I felt relieved when I got to the end of this pretentious borefest of a movie.

This movie is too long, and the first half drags. However, it then started to get really interesting - for me, anyway.

If you're expecting endless fast action, you'll be disappointed. This is a movie based on a long slow book, and it is a bit long and slow.

John C Reilly is a superb actor (his turn as Oliver Hardy should perhaps have won him best actor Oscar) and the events fascinate.

Not everyone's cup of tea, and that first half hour needs patience. But I enjoyed it.

Maybe watch with old classic McKenna's Gold.

3 stars

I am not a fan of superhero movies but this looks interesting and has got great reviews, so I gave it a go.

Initially I enjoyed it, but things get sillier as the movie proceeds until it's all more cartoon than drama with real-life characters.

The best film I have ever seen on the same theme is The Omen II - best views after watching the brilliant original. I found that far more interesting dramatically and thematically.

But then I am sure the superhero fan kids will love this.

For me it was OK - but no more than 3 stars.

This film is so full of horror movie tropes and cliches it sometimes feels like a cut-and-paste job. But then Stephen King was never original - he always just takes horror tropes and updates them. We all know what to expect and what's a-coming.

SO we get the usual jumps and scary, a native Indian sacred place (think Poltergeist), scary kids, weird old local with secrets, a graveyard, dead coming back to life like zombies or Frankenstein's monster, whispering voices, a dark scary forest and, of course, that cat - my favourite character in the movie by far, though I couldn't help noticing its resemblance to the cat in the Specsavers vet/cat/hat ad.

Why are cats in Hollywood movies always evil and dogs always good? Someone should write a PhD on that.

A well-made horror though and I enjoyed it for the hokum it all was, so 3 stars.

I was intrigued by so much music by the band Violent Femmes in this movie as I actually saw them live many years ago. A very odd juxtaposition to have those songs set against the desolate landscape of Patagonia, at the far south of Argentina. That was intriguing. The rest of the movie was, well, dull,

The usual teenage angst and self-obsession, in a rather coy way.

But oh that main character just SO annoying - I don't think he's meant to be. But I just kept hoping he'd disappear somehow - maybe on a ranch somewhere in Patagonia. And boy his poems and the music of his band are really so bad.

I see this was funded by a European charity fund, and I suppose such an unusual movie (for the setting and soundtrack only) make it a worthy addition to the archive. But I'd rather pay folding money not to have to suffer the insufferable lead character again.

2 stars

Hmmm well, this is a documentary best-suited to TV rather than state-funded film by an insider. It's more about a marriage breaking down than a war, and this is not an impartial documentary about the Syrian conflict.

The problem is, the film maker is totally biased. The fact is that many who rose up against Assad were extremists and Islamists, not liberal freedom fighters at all, and we can now see it was wrong to back them. The West should have done a deal with Assad. Better the devil you know. Look at the chaos in Libya to see that.

Too partisan then, and one-sided, typically short-sighted in its support of Arab Spring revolutionaries. If the West had dealt with Assad then Syria would not have been destroyed and its people killed or made refugees. And there is an assumption here that all Syrians should be let as refugees into Europe - something many people very much disagree with. WHY don;t they move east to other Muslim countries eh?

No doubt this sort of thing goes down well at leftwing film festivals though, and this sort of stuff always gets the public funding - the director is an insider used to getting state funding though.

Should have been a TV programme, on Channel 4 probably. Maybe next time make a TV doc about Islamist extremists (who also torture and murder) who now rule in countries were dictators have been overthrown. Maybe make one about the Israel-hating and anti-Semitism is many Palestinian activists.

2 stars. Just.

This movie is unusual as it shows Brits as heroes and not villains, the usual trope. Maybe because it's not really a Hollywood movie and is full of German actors and the aged Max von Sydow as a Soviet era Navy boss.

As per usual, when what happened on the sub is unknown and as we all know what happened in the end, there has to be a lot of stuff invented and events to create narrative structure. These are sometimes successful but at other times seem forced.

I suppose an inevitable comparison is to be made with superior drama such as Chernobyl, and this film looks a bit B-movie by comparison.

But it's worth a look. 2.5 stars rounded up.

To call this a bit sentimental would be like calling Hitler a bit extreme. This is PURE schmaltz - slushy, baked to tooth-rotting sweetness with social issues and a wickle child to make it even more cutesy.

I was willing to give it a go and knew it'd be a bit like this, having watched the first film, a Dog's Purpose, but this is really full-on schmaltz, so much so it becomes unbearable.

Probably this appeals more to American audiences, women, and anyone who's so spiritual they seriously believe in reincarnation.

It is based on a best-selling book BUT I dislike the first person narrative, and simply do not believe it is the dog speaking or the dog's thoughts - some cutesy observations in it but would a dog really know the names of people or words like cup, house etc. I like books like A CAT CALLED DOG where cleverly animals make up their own words for things - like wheel-box for car, or smoke-stick for cigarette.

It all depends what you like, I suppose - but movies and books like this really do not deserve their massive success, imho.

I also disliked the predictable political correctness here - the #MeToo movement seems to have created a situation where every single movie has main female characters now, which is a real new stereotype and cliche, and one which is not progress at all.

This is a watchable movie, for sure. The thing is, after watching it, I found I had almost forgotten it - unlike the classic first Toy Story which is memorable.

Having said that, there are some great new characters especially a Canadian motorbike man and some scary dolls.

Forky the spork (what used to be called a runcible spoon in Britain in the 19th century, mentioned in the poem The Owl and the Pussycat), is an odd new character but starts off well and is interesting. I liked the first plot point, as usual around the 24th or 25th minute. The entire movie starts strongly, but the second half gets a bit gloopy and romantic really, for me anyway.

I suppose it was predictable in this post-MeToo age that so many female characters would be to the fore, and the child not Andy as in the first, but a cutesy young girl. There is the required ethnic diversity too ticking boxes. BUT the movie is WOODY'S to steal and he does - though I couldn't get Jessie the cow girl's resemblance to Greta Thurnberg out of my head, which was a little disturbing... The ever-dim BUZZ had a funny routine with his buttons too.

The characters have their arcs and develop, if a little predictably., and it's all schmaltzy romantic in the end - which I disliked, but many audiences will go AHHHH! at.

Two questions: 1) why are cats in Hollywood movies, even decent CGI ones as in this, always portrayed as evil baddies (dogs are usually goodies); 2) How can such a big budget movie made by thousands over years have a MASSIVE continuity error in it (look around the 1 hour mark in the case of the antiques shop to see a character just vanish after moving towards Woody).

But a good watch and I enjoyed it. 3.5 stars rounded up BUT not as totally profound as some gushing critics claimed.

Stay watching over the end credits for some funny character scenes.

One thing which makes this TV drama enjoyable is the wonderful classic songs from Music Hall - some real classic which have lasted. The songs steal the show, basically.

However, this also feels padded out and you can almost hear it ticking the pc boxes - it makes Marie Lloyd almost a cartoon character victim of a series of selfish man, so removes from her agency which, paradoxically, makes it all rather sexist. People make choices, as did she - always presenting women as victims of men infantlises them. The actress playing her is great, though.

Some plotholes here - characters come and go, and we never find out what happened to them - some more biographical detail at the end would have been a help (eg how old was she at the end?)

A totally unnecessary token black music hall narrator adds nothing at all, merely pads it all out. It just doesn't work. Ticking pc boxes often doesn't. Reminded me of the great video for ATOMIC by BLONDIE - watch from the start to see how a ringmaster can introduce a song or drama well. Here,. the character is just a 2-D token to tick boxes and adds nothing. But this is a BBC drama...

So not too bad - could have been done in an hour not 90 minutes though. 3 stars.

This generally enjoyable series has strength and weaknesses.

It's well-filmed and acted, esp the Floki and monk characters, and has lots of battle action etc. Easy-to-follow plot, though NOT historically accurate at all, for sure. It;s all imagined. I do worry some younger viewers will watch such dramas and think it all fact.

However, we yet again see 'Wonder Woman' scenes - to placate the #MeToo demands. The fact is that Viking warriors were men, not women, and a woman defeating several armed male attackers is absurd. BUT this series does not indulge in such pc casting and scenes as much as some virtue-signalling TV dramas, which absurdly cast black actors as 16th century English dukes!

The strength for me in this drama is seen through the eyes of the Lindisfarne monk taken as a slave - the moral questioning of barbaric 8th century Viking traditions which he struggles with but which the Nordic communities accept as absolutely normal. That moral ambiguity is interesting, as if the Vikings are aliens to be understood for traditions which would disgust and horrify more 'civilised' people in England (France is mentioned as wealthy here so I expect the Vikings will rock up there in future series).

Just a note: this is set in late 8th century when Britain and England was indeed prosperous with resources and Christian BUT England was not united until Alfred the Great (who died in 900 AD) and his son.

However, I suspect the portrayal of English warriors as rubbish fighters compared to Vikings is silly as ALL warriors back then would have assumed heaven awaited them if they died in battle.

I expect future series to show the Vikings as peaceful farmers which most were - many years ago I went to a British Museum exhibition about the Vikings which made that clear.

People should remember that the Vikings influenced the development of Britain - it's in the place names, for a start, all over Britain, Wales, Scotland and England.

I watched this after the absurd series Britannia, and this is not quite as OTT or fantastic as that, though some of it is clearly designed to appeal to a Game of Thrones audience who like blood and violence and sex scenes. Sometimes the tropes are pure horror movie.

Overall 3 stars.

This is all what it says on the tin. A spin-off of a teen TV show I have never seen, or maybe a tweenager show, as fans seem mostly 10/11 year ols girls. Anyway, it's standard Haunted House teen caper stuff - so many movies like that. And then there was the Double Deckers of the early 70s.

The Vamps are a good band/ Bars and Melody were a flash in the X-factor pan and this is now 5 years old, so no doubt the little rapper doesn't look like an angel any more (prob the blond singer should go solo as he can sing!)

All predictable and watchable. Not awful. A wafer-thin plot which probably makes little sense if you analyse it, so don't, or you may well fall down a hole, a rabbit one or not...

Some obvious comedy and visual gags. A Pythoneque polieman sketch with David Mitchell (not the literary author...)

Filmed at Bay Studios Swansea and Margam Park (like Da Vinci's Demons).

Almost gave it 2 stars but it has some charm so 3 stars.