Film Reviews by PV

This movie shows WHY most films take place DURING a war and not in the stunned uneventful aftermath - because NOTHING HAPPENS, basically - apart from the over-rated eye-candy-cast Keira Knightly swooning and blubbing. Her transatlantic posho public school accent is cringe-worthy - people did NOT talk like that in 1946. They pronounced the T's in BeTTer; they did not say 'BeDDer' like modern posh totty who went to Bedales and Rodean. Totally miscast. Knightly is only a successful actress coz of her looks NOT her acting talent. That shows here.

The rest of this movie is SO SLOW I looked at my watch generally during it. The characters are so two dimensional you just do not care if they live or die - which rather undermines dramatic tension, Keira Knightly is SO irritating I half expected the 2 men she's playing with to do her in. I might have cheered then and woken up!

SO much CGI here - all the ruins of Hamburg. Probably works better in the novel. No mention here that the main characters are supposed to be Welsh )albeit posh Welsh without accents) - in fact, Keir's tedious irritating character calls her husband SO ENGLISH at one point.

The most interesting characters are the teenage daughter and the 88 nazi kids yet that is SO under-developed, sadly.

The best thing about this movie is the magnificent house - a real Austro-Hungarian beauty in the Czech Republic. The plot and characters were so boring I spent a lot of time antique-spotting in the décor! That's how tedious this misfiring miscast film is.

To be honest, if you want to watch this movie just watch the trailer - that shows all the eventful bits and leaves out the 90 minutes of tedium love triangle gushing in between. This is probably a women's movie - but it isn't a patch on Catherine Cookson or other romantic stories.

This is Mills & Boon amongst the ruins, Only for hardcore costume drama fans. I see ROTTEN TOMATOES gives this film 23%. I tend to agree. BUT maybe if I were a woman wanting emo-porn and a gushing Mills & Boon story, I'd like it more.

2 hours of my life I'm never getting back.

This started off so-so BUT soon descended into an utter pc mess of a movie.

I hated the CGI toys with American accents - as in the early 70s Pooh movie which is a large influence here. The Sherman bros songs are great BUT this movie is not.

Totally miscast MacGregor - with a dodgy posh English accent; he lives in a house worth £3-5 million probably but apparently works in a lowly managerial job. The same nonsense was in the superior Paddington films which this one aims to ape, and fails badly - in the books Paddington lives in a normal suburban semi, not a Georgian mansion in South Kensington!

His wife totally miscast and the character unbelievable - this is set around 1946 and NO woman of any decency would behave as she does and disrespect her husband so much and basically dump him for being a good father (though not a helicopter dad 21st C style). And the box-ticking in having a daughter who is a 'strong independent woman in the making' is cringe-worthy.

The diversity box-ticking stinks too - this is 1946 SO hardly any black people in Britain and yet we are led to believe tjhat Christopher Robin;/s secretary is a black woman, and his luggage firm has 3 black employees in a management team of 15. GIVE ME A BREAK! Totally ruined ANY sense of realise - impossible to suspend disbelief with this pc casting, as it would be if a Zulu tribe in Africa had 3 white ginger members! GET REAL, PEOPLE!

Mark Gatiss plays a panto villain badly and is also miscast.

The whole thing misfires on all levels. Avoid, 1 star - for the songs.

To enjoy a piece of drama or a film, an audience has to engage in the WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF. That is possible also in a fantasy setting - HOWEVER the characters MUST still be believable, in what they say and do AND what they look liks.

The idea that there were happy clap mixed black and white crews on US airplanes in 1945 for the Normandy landings is PURE fantasy - this was a time when racial segregation still existed in the southern states of the US and NO WAY would whites take orders from a black sergeant. This is NOT Viet Nam or the Gulf War. Watch SAVING PRIVATE RYAN to see how it really looked, or DUNKIRK.

The young pretty main character is not only black though - to tick those Hollywood diversity boxes - he is also totally unrealistic as he is PERFECT in every day. Like a black GI Mary Poppins circa 1945. He is so totally moral and perfect and always right he should have a halo. That makes that character absurd and means the suspension of disbelief is jarred.

This is overlong too with endless fight scenes and make-up/CGI for the kids; BUT it's nothing more than a B-movie with a daft plot and lots of gore. No better than WEREWOLVES OF THE THIRD REICH or other low budget stuff.

One star. It'd be 2 or even 2.5 if the pc diversity casting hadn't ruined it.

This is a WONDERFUL movie - Icelandic with loads of barren landscapes, it is at its core a simple haunted house film, with spooky missing children - another horror/ghost movie trope. All atmosphere - not gore, so teens need not bother.

The ONLY thing I didn't like was the confusion of the characters - it used to be that film directors often cast 2 or 3 blonde women who looked almost identical; now they cast 2 or 3 youngish men with hipster beards who look almost identical.

The setting makes this original, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - and jumped and got spooked! WAY better than multi-million budget Hollywood horror fare - for me, anyway. 4.5 stars rounded up.

This looks like a vanity project small indie movie - only 6 characters and the main character is also the films' producer (so he put up the money to start in the movie, no doubt). He plays a rather irritatingly wet, wimpish, Californian hippydippy liberal man whose life gets ruined by a pretty young wife moving in next door.

So far, so predictable - BUT I just do not believe the harsh thing his wife does - it is out of character for her as we have known her, so that jars; also it all ends way too conveniently.

But it does show a truth: put a pretty woman amongst a group of men and conflict is ALWAYS created, and often violence - an argument for men-only teams, clubs and schools, if there ever was one.

This is basically like a POUNDLAND American Beauty or The Graduate. 2 stars.

Some points about this movie which has got great reviews from the usual pc virtue-signally critics who feel they have to give a film by a black director with black actors and women starring a brilliant rating and reviews.

Unfortunately, this is a rubbish film. The massively over-rated director is only matched by the over-rated Viola David who is UTTERLY unbelievable in the role she plays. Liam Neeson's wife? Yeah right. This mixed marriage race thing may be a novelty in the mainly segregated USA but it's old hat in the UK.

Making women the bank robbers is also old hat - it was done in the far better original 1983 TV series which I watched at the time, back when it WAS a novelty (even though NO real life bank robbers are female - the wives and girlfriends just get the cash as hubbies go to prison lol!)

This is basically polemic about gender and race, box-ticking like crazy, with a few unbelievable twists and some US corrupt Chicago politics chucked in to try to give depth.

Just awful. Also boring and overlong.

If you want to watch a GREAT heist movie then rent out SEXY BEAST; if you want a better so-so heist film then get THE HATTON GARDEN JOB. This movie of WIDOWS is rash masquerading as social statement about race and gender. If this is the future of film-making, I shall not be visiting the cinema much again (and ticket sales 26% down since Hollywood became obsessed with churning our race/gender-obsessed movies galore).

1 star. Dreadful trash.

This is probably the best Swedish film I have ever seen. It's an expose of the can of worms under the Utopian façade of the perfect liberal collective Swedish society which hated the individual and puts total faith in politicians.

Remember that Scandinavian countries legalised all porn incl vile child and animal porn until the late 70s; they also abstained and were neutral in WWII; they also sterilised the young children of socalled 'undesirables' (alcoholics, drug addicts, right wing political people, former Nazis, the mentally ill) up until the late 70s. This submission to the collective will is very dangerous - no-one in Scandinavia spoke up and against the insane government policies at the time in Sweden, Norway, Denmark. Shocking.

I do not know if the scandal here is true re big Swedish politicians in 1976 using young underage girls from care homes as prostitutes - but it could be. And in the UK, the police and authorities turned a blind eye to Asian Muslim gangs grooming and raping underage white girls for 16 years in norther English towns - so these things do happen. I'd love to see a movie about the latter but no-one would dare in these pc days.

Perhaps a bit overlong but really authentic and spot-on re fashions etc in 1976.

Great stuff - an important film.

This is a dreadful film - the major fault is no character is really sympathetic; the main character is a spoilt greedy selfish woman - and I just do not believe such a person would start a computer game company (it's a very male field) or shrug off the fact her father did something so awful.

I was looking at my watch from 10 minutes in - I should have turned off then.

I watched half an hour of this hokum then switched off; I'll never get that half hour back though!

I suppose some who are unware of Santorini may learn something - but I have known of that theory for decades.

Only for hardcore costume drama-docs based on flimsy evidence really.

Mike Leigh often focuses on left wing causes and improvised dialogue etc - and this film is worth watching if only for the interesting dialect (still present in places like Sheffield where they say YourSEN not yourself). But it is a bit of a long slog.

Now I know some won't hear a word said against Mike Leigh and his stablemate Ken Loach, but the sad fact is these two have enjoyed way too much praise and subsidy for what has been mediocre work, despite their 1970s triumphs.

Good to see this event in a film despite all the bias and the wicked King George IV such a cartoon character baddie he could have had a waxed moustache. The Great Reform Act 1832 is something that deserves a film too.

So interesting but not a triumph.

This is based on the book by William Goldman (known for his quote about the film industry that NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING).

An all start cast including Peter Cook and Mel Smith and Brit Cary Elwes (seen in Another Country with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett in 1983 but now in the torture porn SAW movies), and a baddie played by Christopher Guest.

This is an 1987 so is mercifully free of political correctness, parachuted in black characters, and kick-boxing female ones - back in those days they allowed a damsel in distress to be rescued by male characters AS TRADITIONAL STORIES DICTATE. Since Hollywood started worshipping #metoo casting, cinema seat sales are down 26%.

My favourite character here is Fezzik the giant who despite some awfully pronounced dialogue (couldn't someone tell him how to pronounce 'prince') certainly makes an impression. He was a wrestler known as Andre the Giant, born in France to Russian and Polish parents; he died in 1993.

I enjoyed this for the deeply derivative hokem fantasy nonsense it is - a shame this sort of film is seen as un-pc now; a modern version would have aggressive female characters doing down men and ethnic characters parachuted in everywhere AND I WOULD NOT WATCH IT.

This movie is too long at over 2 hours. WHY? Because the demand of political 'correctness' mean the producers and director felt that had to include silly subplots involving the female characters, so we get lots of tedious nonsense about Neil Armstrong's wife and female neighbours and how worried they are. There is also a completely unnecessary and frankly racist and offensive section where some African American racist sings a racist ditty called WHITEY'S ON THE MOON. Now, if you delete that and the female box-ticking, you'd have a great movie of 1 hour and 30/40- minutes, which would be much better.

But I enjoyed this movie - it has an emotional depth unlike most space movies like Apollo 13. Neil Armstrong is a fascinating quiet man character too and Buzz Aldrin a nice contrast. And some scenes do manage to convey the sheer jaw-dropping magnitude of what they did and the sights of the moon and the earth - and how risky this all was.

4 stars. Just a shame about the pc box-ticking.

I enjoyed this film. YES, it's silly, mindless, cartoony nonsense BUT it's funny and just right when you want to escape the world via dancing dogs and talking animals.

The plot is derivative and cartoony, and the characters 2 dimensional types. BUT so what? It's not Shakespeare! The innocent family, dastardy baddie John Sessions, weak dodgy ending to a paper-thin plot BUT so what?

You watch this for the dancing dogs and talking animals...which I enjoyed greatly, esp the horses!

I loved this and I'm a cat lover! A shame that yet again the baddie is shown as a cat lover and cats get a bad press BUT tis has been standard in Hollywood for years.

I also wondered how the family can SELL a London house and end up renting in the countryside - the dad is missing/dead/divorced. All unexplained,

But so what? There are dancing dogs and talking farmyard animals! I loved the mad dog woman with the pink poodles too. I don't even like David Walliams but not even he can mess things up and his voice-over of Pudsey works.

Silly but funny - if you're in the right mood, it hits the spot. 4 stars

My advice: watch the original performance of Pudsey on Britain's Got Talent on YouTube before watching this.

First thing to say is this film is NOT multicultural. White (and black) people are, in effect, BANNED from all scenes - even though MANY whites and blacks live and work in China. Can you imagine a UK/US film with parties with ONLY white people? Those who say this is progress are clearly very ignorant or misunderstand the whole point of FAIR representation. Ditto all-black movies.

This film starts with a disgustingly racist scene - racist against white British people that is. According to this race hate movie, a posh London hotel in 1995 would be entirely staffed by bigoted racist nasty-wasty white British men who'd be so racist as to try and turn away a rich Chinese family who had made a reservation. This is pure race hate - and a manufactured lie intended to stir up mockery and hatred of the British (who actually created the most successful part of China - Hong Kong!)

The facts: Hotels in London - yes, even in 1995 - are mostly staffed by foreigners. Posh hotel clients are mostly foreigners too and usually rich Arabs, Africans, Asians. EVEN a century ago, posh hotels welcomed ethnic foreigners from all over the world. The UK never EVER had race laws unlike the USA or indeed China, with it's racist Boxers. That is why Motown musicians have such fond memories of the UK from their early 60s tour - NO racial segregation here and NO blacks using back entrances.

After that disgusting race hate scene, I could not enjoy this movie - despite some funny set pieces. The fact it has a Chinese cast does NOT make racism OK. Ditto all black movies. Take not, Spike Lee.

The worship of ostentatious material wealth here is also stomach-churning. Made me realise why people in the Far East wanted to be communist actually.

And basically it's all a silly Mills and Boon drivel drama for teenage girls anyway.

I actually think the UK/US should now make a movie insulting China and showing Asians as racist bigots, just for the sake of balance.

No stars. In the trash.

This film is NOT awful and I liked the Cat Stevens reference.

But my word, it's schmaltzy, saccharine, sentimental, tear-jerking stuff. So if you like a good cry and slush, you'll love this.

Personally, I always hate overtly religious references in movies and this film is stuffed full of it, which made me cringe. But no doubt will go down well will American audiences.

But hey, it's not awful and I have seen and read worse animal stories.

And good music so 2 stars.

Watch to the end to see the real stray dog and family - because this is based on a real early 90s story, apparently.