Film Reviews by PV

This is a truly great and ground-breaking film, and should by rights have won the best Foreign Film Oscar.

It's a fascinating story of the Xhosa initiation ceremony for young men in South Africa. But it is SO much more than that.

Yes, it's about homosexuality, but it's really about friendship, loyalty, betrayal, conformity and nonconformism, and what fear makes us do. It is about what it is to be a man.

A brilliant film which I was thinking about long after watching it - and you cannot say that for many movies!

5 stars. The best foreign film I have watched this year.

This film starts with a neat idea - people have to stay quiet or they'll get killed by monsters.

Now therein lies 2 problems: 1) I could not suspend my disbelief re these monsters, rather as with Cloverfield - the reason why they are here on earth is never addressed and they're just CGI monsters not real ones like dinosaurs. 2) I simply could not believe people and esp children could stay completely silent for years.

Also, animals would all be wiped out in an instant surely and birds because they cannot stay silent - which is another massive plot hole.

Predictably, this turns into a feminist movie at the end - a yawnsome cliché these days.

It is so derivative too - reminded me of The Road, Cloverfield, even Jurassic Park and the old horror film Tremors (with Kevin Bacon!). Plus the usual trope of running through a cornfield (maize actually). See many movies for where that came from.

So an average film which cannot sustain its main premise really, despite trying and it is very trying as the jeopardy is predictably raised with the predictable pregnancy/baby trope and the flood (all done better in Apocalypto).

A mediocre forgettable affair so 2.5 stars rounded up.

This film is so-so - typically pretentious French in its use of black and white and colour film, and its slow pace. It looks very pretty with pretty people sitting around smoking a lot.

It is based loosely on a US film from decades ago as it says on the credits at the end (The Bewitched?)

Anyway, so-so and intriguing in parts.

But ultimately pretty forgettable really.

2.5 stars.

So this is watchable - the part real photography part animation is impressive. But it is ultimately very odd to have brontosauruses living as a family unit and farming; and T-rexes ranching bison. And baddie pteradactyls too.

But if you can suspend your disbelief at that nonsense, it is so-so - all the usual plot devices are here, with a young kid trying to find is way home and save his family.

A weird dog-like baby human is just - well, weird.

And some violence that wouldn't be allowed in a middle grade children's book (father dying, cut create eaten, head ripped of a beetle).

So watchable but nowhere near as good as classic Pixar. Maybe watch with the Land Before Time and old Disney animation also with talking dinosaurs.

2.5 stars rounded up.

This film is as AWFUL as the ever-irritation attention-seeking talent-free-zone called John Otway.

It actually makes me really angry, because genuinely talented musicians and singers get no success or publicity because unfunny prats like this has-been or never-was clog up the airwaves.

If you find the class clown at the office who comes to the Christmas part in fancy dress funny, or find some annoying unlike with a light up spinning bow tie funny, or fine other talentless show-offs funny (like Frank Zappa, Freddie Starr et al), then no doubt you will find this hilarious.

I just found it crass and annoying. I'd rather pay not to have watched it.

NO STARS

I enjoyed this film. OK it has many faults, chief of which is the atrocious werewolf 'make-up' (basically a couple of masks!) and NO transformation as in AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON as that'd cost too much.

And the locations are sometimes hilarious - Cardiff stands in for Berlin, for example, and the Welsh countryside is Argentina at the end! And concentration camps have only 4 prisoners who all look rather plump LOL!

And of course, Mengele escaped Germany and died of a stroke whilst swimming off Mexico in 1979, as his exhumed body proved a few years ago.

This is a very bitty movie done in chapters - but I liked that.

MASSIVE plot hole at the start when a barman who cannot understand English then apparently can understand a long speech. But hey, it's TRASH and knows it's trash. It's honest in that and I enjoyed it way more than dreadful movies such as LALA-LAND or BIRDMAN or BLACK SWAN - all Oscar winners!

This is obviously influenced by another awful movie: INGLORIOUS BASTURDS or however the over-rated Tarantino is spelling it these days!

The accents wobble hilariously (Americans say 'uman NOT Human!), but the special effects blood splatter will no doubt appeal to teens.

The soundtrack works anyway.

So anyway, better than some other Andrew Jones trash like ROBERT and ROBERT 2 which were so slow, and holds the tension better than the 2nd half of CABIN 28.

So 2.5 stars rounded up.

I enjoyed this film and realised I was familiar with the true story - I saw a documentary on it a few years ago on TV, though the true life ending in that was not the same as this (both men were found on a river bank in that). An awful tragic story and a cautionary tale for all travellers!

Anyway, this film is a bit long but effective - you genuinely feel for Yossi in the AWFUL Amazonian jungle (I have always hated jungles and never want to visit one). This film oozes sweat!

The images of the wildlife are superb and it was filmed in Colombia and Bolivia, though made by an Australian company.

Daniel Radcliffe and the other male actors impress. The bit that didn't work for me was when a rainforest tribal young woman appeared - and I would have cut that to make the movie shorter as it drags a bit there.

The best South American rainforest movie is probably APOCALYTO by the otherwise odious Mel Gibson. This is well worth a watch though as is Heat and Dust by Evelyn Waugh, and The Lost City of Z which is good too.

4 stars.

I didn't expect much from this - I find most Russian films tiresome and slow, and often distastefully nationalistic.

But this movie at least shows the awfulness of Soviet soldiers though no rape - which they did aplenty in revenge in Berlin etc. But it shows how extreme and brutal some were.

Anyway, it has some slow moments but is relatively exciting and original, though very old-fashioned - like Sam Pekinpah, complete with slow-motion bloody death throes shots. As per usual, dramatic emotional classical music over it too.

If you don't like blood and gore and everyone dying violently, avoid this.

It's like a Russian Dirty Dozen and very violent.

Watchable, so 4 stars.

This is a very dated British film from about 1956 - more a curiosity piece than anything else.

Adapted from a pre-Look-Back0In-Anger stage play by its writers, it starts well - a little like the Alec Guinness movie KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS which is much superior. So all very much upper class people being upper class...and talking LIKE THET...

It all descends into farce really then - with turns by the great Terry-Thomas and of course Alistair Sim and his protégé to whom he was mentor: George Cole.

Some good bits but don't expect too much.

The scene with the doctor who asks if someone is registered with the new National health Service is classic - the mention of payment changes his mind LOL.

I was disgusted by this movie. It actually sides with the Somali pirates who hijack ships and kill their crews, as portrayed in the excellent MR PHILIPS by Tom Hanks.

This is based on the memoir of a rich Canadian kid who is clearly so spoilt he cannot cope with getting rejected when he sends applications for journalism jobs, so decides to got o Somalia to make his name.

The worst thing is the way this film promotes an historical lie - that the British (though it says English) killed Somali people.

In fact, Somalia was part of the ITALIAN empire which is why they all eat pasta! And the Italian messed it all up.

The British meanwhile didn't and their empire gave the world much more than it took and despite being of its time, was the most benevolent empire in history and 90% of it did good INCLUDING banning slavery, stamping out vile practices of natives (like widows throwing themselves on funeral pyres of their dead husbands), stopped much child abuse, introduced non-corrupt rule and law and education and organised farming.

The British NEVER ruled Somalia - they were in charge of SOMALILAND which is the most northern quarter of the country now, located at the horn of Africa. There have been no problems there - it is peaceful and has only been dragged down by the land to the south.

If you like lies and fake news, you;ll love this. Personally, I think movies like this which promote lies should be banned as they fill impressionable kids' heads with fake history, as do many other movies eg The Patriot, U571, Argo.

This is a LONG film - so make time for it, ensure you won't be disturbed, turn of the lights and press play.

Completely immersive experience - and the plantation scene added towards the end gives some much-needed historical background. People forget it was the FRENCH who had Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos as colonies, and arguably all the problems in the region which led to the Viet Nam war were caused by their brutal rule and utter intransigence in refusing these countries independence in the 1950s. Britain willingly gave up its empire; France refused and caused the Viet Nam war.

This is supposedly based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, but only in its theme of a boat going up a river into the dark interior of a continent. And you can't copyright an idea!

Well worth watching.

This film shows just why MERIT IS ALL and shoehorning female characters into films for pc diversity reasons never works.

It all starts well enough - and having dinosaurs and cavemen together is NOT a problem, because it's a story, not science documentary. Yes we KNOW humans and dinosaurs didn't live side by side BUT neither did T-Rex and dinosaurs like Stegosaurus - they were over 100 million years apart!

This film fails because it loses its focus which should be the story and instead tries to score pc feminist diversity points - from about the half way mark especially. I groaned when a female football player was introduced. Not needed at all. Neither are the token black characters, esp as cavemen tribes would have all been interrelated so all the same skin colour (except for slaves or traders).

This then turns into a football film as boring as Escape to Victory. I almost fell asleep before the end.

And I have no idea what accent Tom Hiddleston et all from the Bronze Age tribe are trying to do - but it ain't French, and silly to make Bronze Age tribe French anyway!

More educated people might like to read THE GIFT OF STONES by Jim Crace, a superb short novel which describes the bronze age tribe replacing a stone age one.

This is Aardman's worst ever film by a long chalk. Let's home they jettison the pc diversity worship for the next one, and get back to an all male Wallace and Gromit!

This is a good fun watch - lots of tricksy postmodernism here too. Lots of jokes about the Hollywood film industry and art imitating life.

Great performances by Gene Hackman and John Travolta who plays a 'Shylock' - a mobster calling in loans. Of course, in real life he'd have been shot dead within a week. But this is essentially fantasy - a romantic vision of the mob and Hollywood.

Some lovely in-jokes here.

4 stars

I felt I had to watch this and it's not a bad film BUT I would have much preferred it as a straight drama with no songs.

Why?

Well, for one thing, the songs are modern R&B and the setting is 1860s/70s USA - and that jars badly. Compare to the genius of the Sherman brothers who wrote in the style of the Edwardian musical hall for Mary Poppins because that story was set in Edwardian times.

I honestly did not expect to like this movie much. The concept sounded absurd - and it is!

However, this soon drew me in. With a brilliantly told story, strong characters, great acting and a wonderful soundtrack.

There are surprising moments and the ending satisfies.

For once the Oscar committee chose the right winner!

Brilliant stuff.