Film Reviews by PV

I was a little too young to watch this 1976-made drama at the time of broadcast BUT I am so glad to have watched it now - it is FAR more entertaining and effective than most drama on TV today, and happily lacks clunky diversity-box-ticking. This sort of drama wouldn't be made today - FAR TOO MANY nasty white men in it.

These days, the leads would be female and/or black (even when hardly any ethnic minorities live in the English countryside - just watch the new series of Midsomer Murders to see the unrealistic absurdity of that). The BBC has a target for 50% of main roles to be played by females by 2020, so expect endless pc femi-drama from now on. SO we have to look back to the past for great drama like this.

Children of the Stones is classic drama with a classic soundtrack which, if you listen carefully, includes whispers of 'HAPPY DAY' throughout. It's genuinely spooky with great use of the Aylesbury stones location. SO WHAT if some bits look clunky - OB to studio sets. I didn't mind that at all, because the drama was captivating. Reminiscent of the old 1950s version of the Midwitch Cuckoos. Don't bother with the newer Hollywood remake!

This was made in the days when MERIT was all, and quality resulted - which never happens when the whole point of TV drama is ticking the pc boxes.

It's a shame in a way they never made a sequel BUT I hope to goodness they don't make a new version - because they'd do a 'Dr Who' and make all leads female and/or black, with token white men. No thanks.

Special mention for actor Peter Demin who plays the boy Matt who, incredibly, was 17 at the time of filming but looks 13 (films/TV always cast actors who look younger than their years and short - look at Michael J Fox). He made a couple of other dramas but nothing since 1983 (Robin Hood).

This is thoroughly enjoyable drama for kids or adults. 5 stars.

Well, if it's cannibalism you want, I would certainly recommend watching Tony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal, or maybe even Wrong Turn, rather than this tired drama which hasn't got an original bone in its body. Other cannibal movies are available.

No doubt made to appeal to and shock teenagers, I didn't find this shocking just silly - and unbelievable. Moreover, the 2 sisters main characters were so annoying I honestly wouldn't have cared if someone had stuffed em in a roasting tin and popped em in the over at gas mark 7.

The vet school featured is so fake an unbelievable - such hazing died out years ago.

I saw the final twist coming a mile off too.

The gay North African character shines in this dross like a diamond in a gung heap.

1.5 stars rounded up.

Now, we all know the USA is obsessed about race and has gone through something of a crisis lately as it self-hates some more about not giving black actors enough Oscars.

However, we are not all so obsessed, maybe because Britain never ever had race laws or large black populations either.

This sort of movie is aimed at redressing a supposed racist balance, so goes too far the other way and becomes nothing more than an anti-white racist polemic whose aim is what - to inspire guilt in all white people? Who knows.

So mostly we have angelic fluffy black people who wouldn't hurt a fly (no murders or shooting or looting with violence or anything like that - and the riots are the fault of white folks because they moved to the suburbs!); and against the holy black folks we have pantomime baddie whites, thereby making the absurd claim really that ALL whites were and are racist.

This is unpleasant, odious, racist tripe. It's not history and it's not good drama either. It really is pitched at a Noddy level of political understanding - and the intro cartoon which basically blames white people for making inner city blacks in US cities criminal by moving out to the suburbs is absurd. WHY did the whites move? Ah yes, to get away from violent inner city blacks.

Sadly, we are not getting this state of affairs in the UK, so I suppose we should expect riots too, and according to the twisted thinking on display here, when blacks in the inner city riot, it;'s not their fault, oh no - it's the fault of white people.

Offensive, racist, deeply stupid tosh the lot of it.

Maybe one day someone will make a decent movie about these riots. This isn;'t it.

No stars.

This film is boring - which is quite an achievement if you're making a movie about people getting attacked by great white sharks! If you want a modern low budget movie with a woman and sharks, watch THE SHALLOWS which is a decent shark movie. This isn't.

Why? Well the focus on 2 sisters - maybe a nod to femi-film-making - just does not work, because instead of caring for these characters, you (or I) thought how dizzy they were to agree to go in a rusty cage into shark-infested waters.

I enjoyed EVERY entry in the Sharknado series more AND took them more seriously AND cared for the characters more.

Very boring./ 1 star

The best part of this movie is when Peter Turner who wrote the memoir plays his own character's father in the film!

Apart from that, I found this dull. Firstly, this actress though she won an Oscar for supporting actress (footage at the end), is basically a ditzy blonde model - like a Poundland Marilyn Monroe, and utterly forgettable - which is maybe why she was forgotten.

Things that annoyed me included the main character WHOOPING at a theatre in 1980 - sorry, but people in Britain did not do that then (happy days).Some other modern language used too which grates. THINK how people spoke in 1980!

I wonder if a man 30 years older than a vulnerable girl then seducing her would be seen as acceptable and OK now. Makes me laugh too when a man forces a kiss on a woman and a relationship starts - the #metoo mobsters would surely accuse him of sexual assault in these femi-bonkers days LOL!

It's all so-so BUT the story is as flimsy as the actress and that is the issue - the constant need to try and make a dull and rather sordid little affair with a has been interesting.

Way too much wallowing in feelings and pity here to care much. A curiosity, but no more, so 3 stars.

I loved this movie. OK it's half in French and that may put some people off - but so what? Just read the subtitles (though the spelling in some is atrocious - 'storeys' for 'stories' for example).

I found this way more moving and interesting that Stephen Fry's very self-indulgent 'Wilde' film too.

Despite the mediocre reviews of some critics, I am giving this 5 stars. I found it interesting, beautiful and moving.

OK so we all know the way Hollywood has gone diversity-nuts, so you WILL be seeing many more movies where white men are only in token roles and women and/or ethnic minorities have all the others (apparently that's representative of society - but 10% white males is NOT representative of the US or the UK!). How is racism and sexism against white men and boys better than the same against women and girls eh? IT ISN'T, not even if you name it 'diversity' and give it group hugs.

If you want to watch a movie with a central girl character in a quest then watch the class The Wizard of Oz and ignore this mediocre trash.

No stars

This film is bookended with the performance at Live Aid on July 13th 1985 where Queen stole the show - and the record sales doubled afterwards. The only thing that jars is the CGI rewriting of history making the audience 10-20% black. It wasn't. It was almost exclusively white, as were Queen fans in general. I am not sure Freddie (a pale-skinned Persian ancestry) was ever called the P word on stage either. Those untruths grate as history does NOT need changing according to pc diversity box-ticking criteria, thank you.

One review I read complained about the film ending there and not examining Freddie's battle against AIDS - but that would be another movie.

This is expertly directed by Brian Singer, and real events are merged or concertina-ed to fit character arcs and plot points - so we have the obligatory down phase before the final triumph.

I thought the acting was brilliant, esp the actor playing Freddie and also Brian May whose motherly fussiness the actor gets off down to a tee.

Freddie's shy innocence and fickle character is well-portrayed too, as is the relationship with Mary Austin who he left the bulk of his estate too at 1 Logan Place London.

This is, in short, great entertainment about a unique band whose members wrote superb songs (at least in the 1970s).

5 stars.

This film is like a cartoon made flesh - we have cartoon baddies and some really off-colour jokes and trite dialogue (though I liked the Cockney crook character actors), plus a totally unbelievable story which seems to reference Shallow Grave in the main character 'finding' a bag stuffed with cash.

Some stereotypical East European pimp plot of more cartoon nonsense, and there are too many convenient coincidences in this movie to make it credible, so straight to video stuff really. Probably a typical fantasy of a 12/13 year old boy.

I also seriously wonder if a man getting, in effect, raped up the rear end with a dildo would be acceptable and funny if a man did that to a woman - so that was annoying gender hypocrisy (though I see the same in most movies now so this is by no means the only offender).

Not sure I believed the hitman plotline or character either.

This is a curiosity - made in the 1970s and it looks it. I haven't seen speeded up footage like this since the DOUBLE DECKERS were on TV! No OBs here - all filmed on obvious studio sets with surreal decoration, plus song and dance sequences,

Very odd and bonkers, and not frightening at all, more interesting.

I watched a more recent movie from Japan which also used animation as here - cannot remember the title, the Life of the Kamagochis or similar. Probably influenced by this.

But a good idea this mad collage of a movie which doesn't really make all that much sense didn't have more influence on film makers. Best keep these post-hippy curiosities back in the 1970s where they belong!

But different anyway, and more interesting that most yawnsome Hollywood haunted house movies. AND I LIKED THE CAT!

I endured this movie - I didn';t enjoy it. The whole thing is basically like a computer game. Way too long and, frankly, BORING.

I couldn't identity with any characters or care if they got killed or whatever.

The plot is utter hokum. No dramatic tension. Dreadful overblown score too.

NO MAGIC in this whatsoever as there was in many old Spielberg movies though to be fair he didn't write it (this monstrosity is based on a novel I shall try very hard to avoid for the rest of my life).

So achingly pc too - one white male out of a team of 5. Two females, one black, female and sassy (itself a stereotype); the other a sort of girl-power metoo man-girl co-lead. Then a Japanese male and a Chinese child - and lots of karate martial arts moves and set pieces ALL cynically designed to appeal to the massive Chinese market.

Not worth watching unless you're 12 with the attention span of a puppy and like computer games.

The first thing to say about this movie is that it has a MASSIVE plot hole. No spoilers, just 2 words to ponder: "DNA TESTING".

But if you can look beyond that, this is a slow but clever movie, not a horror really more a psychological case study which is what made it interesting.

I appreciate inter-racial relationships are still deeply controversial in the USA, way more than the UK; and also the US has 12 or 13% blacks who have lived there for centuries; the UK has 4% blacks mostly here from 1950s on (16% total ethnic but half that is south Asian, 1% Chinese, the rest Mixed Race etc). I get very annoyed when Brits and diversity campaigners demand more black faces on screen because, well, they're now over-represented! Remember, the UK is only 4% black as a whole.

Anyway, this is a neat little film, showing the awful ghetto culture of the largely black projects in the USA - this time New York; it was Baltimore in The Wire. More a TV film than a cinematic movie.

I particularly liked the retro 1970s-style synthy soundtrack.

The ending is unnecessary - the film could and should have ended sooner.

But that DNA TESTING plot hole really niggles. So 3 stars.

I LOVED this movie. One reason is that after watching the new film GHOST STORIES which is a homage to those old Portmanteau films by Hammer or others, usually from the 1960s and 70s, although THE film that began it all was DEAD OF NIGHT from 1945 which was remade in the 1970s with Tony Hopkins in the ventriloquist dummy story (Michael Redgrave was in the original version and the black and white camera-work and direction is Oscar-worthy).

These films feature usually 4 short stories united by a common thread - maybe all the tales feature visitors to an antiques shop run by a creepy owner, or they're all on a train, or whatever - and often they see the future in their dream sequences and then realise some horrific truth at the end (like they're all dead anyway).

I have been trying for years to find this movie - I always remembered the staring into the shears bit but had no idea re the Greek myth reference back then! I last watched this filmaged 11 on a black and white telly, a treat to stay up and watch the horror movie on a weekend night! I remembered the last 2 stories for all that time - esp the piano one 0 SO clearly. Now THAT is memorable, effective cinema! Most modern movies I forget in a couple of hours.

The 2nd story is duff and unbelievable; the first typical Hammer-esque. But the last 2 stories are sublime. I have just watched it again and LOVED IT. So 5 stars from me!

Yes, it's dated and was at the time probably, but that is part of its charm.

This film dates from 1945 so of course it will have dated - but criticism of that is rather unfair. I am sure the tedious Hollywood tripe of superhero movies like Black Panther will date much worse, and they have zero value.

This and the sublime SOME LIKE IT HOT are director Billy Wilder's masterpieces, and bot movies did badly in preview screenings. These days such negative previews would mean an editor would cut them to shreds; thankfully, back in 1945 directors who stick to their guns! And thank goodness, because THE LOST WEEKEND and SOME LIKE IT HOT and two of the best movies ever made.

THE LOST WEEKEND is based on the classic book which I have read - and so the entire plot makes sense in the light of that. I found myself rooting for the main character to recover and get writing!

Now, I know the #Metoo moaner mob lobby and the pc diversity-worship virtue signallers will get all po-faced and self-righteous about the very male-based story, the passive female characters, the one black character as a toilet assistant in a bar. But this was 73 years ago! And I much prefer a portrayal like this compared to the box-ticking 'politically correct' dramas of now . Maybe this could actually be remade with an all-female drunk cast, like some dipsomaniac Ghostbusters. Now there's a thought LOL.

A serious issue well-handled and imaginatively directed - and the views of New York's Jewish and Irish quarters are fascinating. I wish it looked like that now - I would definitely visit.

Of course, tales of drunken writers are nothing knew and many famous writers have been drunks from Poe to Fitzgerald to Dylan Thomas. And it's hard to portray that without getting boring but Wilder succeeds - my reaction was certainly not to condemn the addict but to pity him. Perhaps these days the drunk would need to be a weepy professional victim woman to gain our sympathy, and that says a lot more about us and our hypocritical society than anything else. It's very easy to condemn. But plenty of stones flying around glass houses, methinks.

Of course, without his rich brother's help he'd be on the street, which is the same from a lot of addicts from wealthier backgrounds.

A good partner film to LEAVING LAS VEGAS a modern version really, or THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, or TV series BREAKING BAD or THE WIRE to show addiction through drugs, but alcohol was and is the biggest addiction issue in our society.

5 stars.

I really wanted to like this film because it's a local British/Welsh production and I always support independent films and those who dare to have a go. However there are real issues with this:

1) the plot features way too many characters and is confusing. This leads to a sort of two-dimensional character thriller which has various violent events but they have little impact because we never really care about any characters, except maybe the teenage boy.

2) the acting is sometimes very wooden indeed.

3) the ending which is supposed to be a 'Usual Suspects' type reveal made no sense to me - it's meant to be profound but is just confusing.

4) there is no humour. None. Other than 'laughing at' some dreadful acting.

So, how to solve these issues? Rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the script, get rid of superfluous characters and streamline everything. FAR more attention at the pre-production stage was needed. This really needs a script doctor!

I believe this is a state-funded production with British Council money, no doubt because it's very ethnically diverse. However, it just does not work as a movie. Which is a shame, because this does look fairly glossy and professional, and there is a kicking soundtrack at the start too.

1.5 stars rounded up.