Film Reviews by PV

When Hitler was ever asked about his persecution of the Jews and sending many millions to death camps, he responded "Who now remembers the Armenians?" And he's right. This vile genocide by Muslim Turks of Armenian Christians, in the name of nationalism and religion, is an ugly stain on the reputation of Turkey, especially as it does not even acknowledge it took place.

I found the film really interesting, if a bit plodding - and of course there's the love interest etc which takes up too much time.

I look forward to more movies being made which tell the stories of those who perished in the anti-Christian massacres by Muslim Turks in 1915 - though seeing as the USA is cosying up to Turkey as a bridge between east and west, don't expect any criticism by presidents or politicians.

This is FAR too important to ignore - unlike all the silly #metoo moaning movies, this film shows REAL abuse that people are right to call out and remember.

Well always a pleasure to see great old actors still working - especially male ones in this #metoo manhating age. Though sadly, that has infected even this movie, with 2 or the 3 old men having daughters with one grand daughter (one should have been a son at least!).

Some laugh-out-loud lines in this though, occasionally.

Kirk Douglas and Burt Reynolds (I think) did a similar old men fight back film in the 80s/90s. There have been a few.

Some massive plot holes. The FBI here seem not to know how to access mobile phone records, and DNA testing (first done in England in 1986) doesn't seem to have reached Brooklyn yet! The idea 3 old men could rob a bank like that is absurd anyway - there is SUCH security now that shutters would fall at the first sign of a robbery, plus ink spray on notes which all have individual serial numbers as new notes (so couldn't be even given away).

All very silly and unrealistic - a total wish fulfillment fantasy, getting back at the banks for the financial crisis.

SO maybe watch this together with the great drama about the 2008 crash MARGIN CALL, or other similar movies showing the more serious side of repossession and mortgages given by banks up till 2008.

This is all good fun, a contrived comedy with no serious injury of bad things - a fluffy cuddly Friday night popcorn movie.

So 3 stars.

I enjoyed this DESPITE some things such as the AWFUL music - dreadful new R&B versions of carols (YUCK!) and slushy Christian songs.

All a bit preachy too, and as is usual in modern animations, there just has to be the African American characters, ALWAYS witty, sassy etc which is now a stereotype in itself.

BUT the animation is good as is the story structure. SO I did enjoy it despite its faults. But those faults made me cringe and wince.

3 stars - but only JUST!

This film is useful for statistics - which I made a note of to use in future writing.

However, it really is just a smug self-indulgent rant by Remain voters who, like a spoilt little madam toddler stamping her foot and flapping her party dress when mummy says NO, just cannot accept democracy and the will of the people.

The usual fake arguments, spurious analogies, project fear predictions from the usual suspects almost all of whom are rich, privileged, metropolitan elite types who have made millions, thank you, from uncontrolled mass immigration via soaring house prices, which have hurt SO many natives of Britain, but hey, they get cheap foreign servants to clean their homes and care for their children while they prance around in their smug pretentious up-themselves lives lecturing others about what is good for them.

AND they cannot even spell: its "reverend" NOT "reverend" - how UTTERLY amateurish!

Basically this is just a vanity project preaching to the choir in an echo chamber. Really quite funny actually.

LOADS of lies here but the worst is the false claim that the EU (which we joined when it was ONLY the Common Market and NOT an EU empire wanting to rule us) is responsible for ensuring peace in Europe since 1945. WHAT ROT!

Prosperity and a BRITISH victory in 1940 is why Hitler isn't on the back of EU empire coins - and NO-ONE is loyal to the EU flag but nation states which the EU stupidly tried to destroy thus creating extremism and nationalism. Just watch the football to see what makes people's hearts flutter and beat - or if you must, Eurovision!

Also, there is NO SUCH THING as EU money - it is ALL ours., For every pound we put in we get 50p back in EU funding - not a great deal, eh?

Moreover, of 650 UK constituencies over 400 voted LEAVE and many regions of Scotland too - the large cities of SNP loyalists meant that overall that heavily subsidised nation (which lives off English taxes) voted remain overall.

It's very sad that so many reject democracy BUT when the EU and Euro crash and implode, they'll be glad we left.

My favourite bit of this film is the start - the scene with the Santa Clauses is great, all bendy lenses etc.

All goes downhill after that - and one also wonders if, in France, in 1995, it was acceptable for film makers to terrify tiny children for the purposes of cinema.

2 stars for the style and imagery - otherwise, no stars.

I have only just watched this film and am a bit baffled at how I managed not to see it over the last 15 years since it was made!

Anyway, I did really enjoy it - especially the first half. The second half gets predictably silly and schmaltzy and slushy like almost all Hollywood movies and comedies. However, the first half has some classic moments and lines, so 4 stars because of that.

It's basically a classic FISH OUT OF WATER comedy - like SPLASH or BIG or the rest - an old trope, but an effective one. Basically, the Elf character is stuck at toddler age in an adult's body with the added elf issues he has!

I love some of the lines such as: "You sit on a throne of lies!" - lots of visual comedy too, like a snowball fight and other scenes.

Love the way they sing BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE which the snowflake metoo mob want to ban for supposedly promoting date rape. What a bunch of McCarthyist witch hunters those extremist feminuts are!

I also liked this as I know the mad world of publishing and some of the real cases you get working in it, and that includes agents - they ALL know nothing: this is what I have learnt.

Would have been 5 stars if the 2nd half hadn't gone OTT (and I think the boy is miscast really) - but the 1sy half gets 5 stars, the 2nd half 4 stars, so 4 stars overall.

AND I liked the animated parts - esp when I saw in the credits that the legendary animator (SINBAD, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) Ray Harryhausen did the voice for the seal pup! Wow! Just WOW!

Ultimately, this is a vehicle for Harry Dean Stanton - an actor who's passed me by really, probably like so many character actors whose names one never knows.

It's not awful, by any means, though it is terribly slow and talky, with lots of bar scenes etc.

As studies of old age go, it's a sight character study. I'd recommend the Scandinavian film OVE for a better study of that, or the animated ETHEL AND ERNEST which is so poignant.

No idea why David Lynch is in it though thankfully he is no relation to the director, apparently, who was incidentally the big hulking Norm character in Fargo!

Only watch with low expectations - a nice gentle affair in general, but ultimately forgettable!

I enjoyed this gore-fest but not as much as SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT from the mid-80s.

I think this 2006 Black Christmas is a remake of a 1970s original which I haven't seen so can't compare. Not sure if the 1970s film was so female-dominated or if that is a pc modern angle.

It's all the usual psycho stuff - with lots of 'grand guignol' gore to satisfy the kids - and a couple of real jumps too. I find this sort of thing funny actually - these movies must be fun to make.

Predictable plot and a rather damp squib fizzled out ending (no spoilers).

Worth a watch, certainly, if you're into horror at Christmas.

BUT what is wrong is how they get the song credits wrong at the end - traditional Christmas carols were NOT written by anyone we know usually. DECK THE HALL is based on a traditional Welsh carol. Modern musicians may arrange traditional songs BUT they do not write them.

Well The Inbetweeners was funny - the series more than the movie, though that had a chemistry and was funny.

This is not even a Poundland Inbetweeners. It's way worse than that.

I think I laughed once. And I though Joe Thomas (who.s actually over 30) was great in The Inbetweeners. Watch that, NOT this.

Gross-out 'jokes' re poo and bodily fluids are unfunny. Usually childish cartoony capers and laughs about drugs. Even cartoon cops in here.

You sort of know when a drama or movie is desperate when they deliberately try to tick the diversity boxes to pander to pc critics. But the fact is, and I have been to Glasters and Reading, it's a mostly white person thing. Very few black faces, so the sidekick is miscast utterly. Just like in Bohemian Rhapsody when they CGI-ed in 20% black faces in the crowd when in reality at Live Aid 1985 there were practically none.

Avoid unless you are very VERY desperate. BUT far better to watch sets from festivals on YouTube (the Stones and Shirley Bassey at Glasters, for example).

I learnt about this film only recently in a Channel 4 Mark Kermode programme about Christmas movies of the past. So I rented it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, it's a horror but it's also a film so not real, which is why I always find such movies funny.

A decent plot with backstory here; a nasty baddie; a deranged kid; nuns - what more do you want? Breasts? Well there's quite a few on display here, which will so annoy the feminist hardcore (good!) - but there are also naked male buttocks for balance.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Though (no spoilers) the end didn't satisfy as it could have done - but 'nun' happening.

4 stars. Cheaply made, imperfect, but enjoyable!

One wonders how true much of this movie is - or the memoir it's based on. I suspect it's faction - so embellished truth.

Anyway, Idi Amin was a towering figure - he has appeared on screen before in RADI ON ENTEBBE and the recent ENTEBBE. A huge character who in the African leader tradition was brutal, tribal and merciless, and his thoughts never far from magic and with doctors.

I get tired in this movie of all the Scots nationalism, and the main character is annoying. Amin was not anti-British - he served the British loyally. I get tired of anti British esp antii English racism in movies these days. Worth remembering that the Scots were the most brutal and merciless slave traders in the 18th century.

Lush landscapes here and a genuinely interest study on hoe dictatorships happen. Same in all countries who have suffered them - Russia, Romania, all Islamic states, most African countries, far east states too, south America.

4 stars

Well, if you love 'political correctness' you'll adore this. Personally, I hate #metoo diversity-box-ticking movies Hollywood is spewing out of late (most written by white men, ironically - but they know they have to have so-called 'strong' female leads to get scripts made).

But this all starts well enough in a TV movie sort of way - as a sort of Scrooge redemption story. But oh my, then it becomes a #metoo femi-melodrama ticking pretty much every diversity box there is: people of colour TICK, disadvantaged girl child of colour TICK (and THE MOST irritating child actor I have seen in a long time - are we supposed to think this black girl is special, cute and talented?); female bonding TICK; older women TICK; career women TICK; No main white male characters TICK; what white male characters there are shown as buffoons or monsters TICK.

If Hollywood thinks it'll compete against the likes of Netflicks and Amazon by ticking diversity boxes, it has seriously underestimated its audience. We don't need KINDS of people and movie making via pc committee; we need GOOD people and yes, very many are white men.

These films always reverse roles as if that's clever - so all women are career women disadvantaged by nasty wasty men (only white men though; ethnic men are all heroes); and here we have the only main white male character who is a house husband.Do you see what they did there? The man is playing a traditional female role and the women playing traditional male roles. Wow. Genius.

AND as is usual in such movies, a female lunges at and kisses the man she fancies which is seen as good and empowering; but hey sisters, aren't you saying that's sexual assault if a man does it to a woman? So you DON'T want equality then? Think it through eh?

So anyway, watchable in a TV movie melodrama sort of way, but forgettable - and with a disadvantage girl of colour character SO annoying, rude, irritating, my mum would say "that child needs a good smack" and I agree LOL!

2 stars. JUST.

4.5 stars for this - a brilliant opening sequence and top rate first half, let down later in the movie. Plus a lot of pc stuff I dislike.

The second half gets a bit gothic and 'Nosferatu' actually, which some reviewers put down to the Spanish director BUT he didn't write the script.

Toby Jones is great but the stars are the dinosaurs, as ever!

This is a wonderful film. Made before the Queen was on the throne, just after the war, in a real age of austerity, this festive morality tale would have been so relevant too, especially as the whole of Britain was still on rationed food - even bread, which was not even rationed during the war.

A Christmas Carol is BY FAR the best of Charles Dickens; 5 Christmas stories, and is worth reading aloud every Christmas Eve. It helped invent our modern Christmas - and Dickens even includes reference to a Turkey, and not the more usual Goose Christmas dinner of the time. This is a seasonal morality tale that will never age.

Alistair Sim IS Scrooge - the best or maybe the only believable performance I have seen, and there are some dreadful modern versions, all pc and diverse. Yeuck!

The supporting cast are great. The sense of transformation and redemption oozes through every pore of this film. No need for colour - this works SO well in black and white.

An utter classic. 5 stars.

I watched half an hour of this rubbish and could stand it no more.

It thinks it's being radical and shocking, showing gay sex and drug taking. Well it isn't. It's being pretentious and boring.

The sort of movie state funding pays for over and over again, sadly.

No stars