Film Reviews by PV

I cannot understand why people are giving this movie 5 stars. Really. It's awful.

This is basically an attempt by French (and Belgian) state-funded cinema to make a film that may sell well overseas esp the USA> Cue the killer whales; cue the disability theme; cue the cute kid and social issues.

It is so dull and overlong. And I usually like foreign films and subtitles too.

The most impressive thing was probably the special effects - no spoilers but you'll see what I mean re the disability.

Fro a REALLY classy French film about disability watch THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY scripted by Brit stalwart screenwriter Ronald Harwood (who wrote THE PIANO and won the Oscar for it). Far better than the Spanish THE SEA INSIDE.

This is basically a very dull, overlong, gimmicky French film - though the man is actually Belgian, I just want to add and the movie is part funded by Belgian organisations too (ultimately the EU!).

One star.

This movie feels long - very long. Its plodding and tiresome from the start and is in general just boring - which is quite an achievement when one considers it depicts sado-masochist sex!

This is one a spate of new feminist-issues movies to come out of Hollywood now, directed by women often, showing women as strong and men as weak - though of course Wonderwoman was created by a man, and the recent movie was written and directed by a man too!

My first issue was that I simply did not believe these characters were living in the 1920s and 30s - it was if they were #metoo activists transported through time and dressed up in 1920s costumes like puppets.

My 2nd issue is that Wonderwoman really is like a Poundland Superman. I was aware of the TV series in the late 70s but as a boy it held no interest for me - whereas I adored Dr Who, The 6 Million Dollar Man, and didn't mind The Hulk.

My 3rd issue is the way all these historical films set in the past portray people with morals and opinions of the 21st century as GOOD and all those with other opinions as BAD. It is silly and infantile, and not how life or history works! So women who believe in being housewives in stable 2 parent married households are mocked. WHY?

It's just so long and dull - and is basically an attempt to cash in on the Wonderwoman movie.

The BEST bit is at the end when over the credits we see real photos of the real-life characters portrayed - and neither of those real-life women were at all pretty, and the man was older too.

One to avoid except for Wonderwomen fanatics.

This is a watchable film - with Arnie aged 70-ish phoning it in as a supposed Ukrainian (I think).

A shame I though that this could not be set in Germany. The real life story was about a Russian man who hunted down the German (or Austrian or Swiss) air traffic controller and killed him. I remember the news story.

So not bad and obviously predictable, but slight and I suspect massively padded up to make a decent story - I bet the last scenes are not based on truth.

The ending is sudden and odd.

So meh, 3 stars.

Well, all I can say is best not to watch this movie if you're a bit depressed! It's a bit of a throwback to the early 80s really when there were several movies and TV dramas like this: THREADS and also the wonderful cartoon by Raymond Briggs WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

Low budget movies after get mocked, but this is good enough and uses limited locations and minimal special effects to tell an end of the world story which is mercifully short.

And anyway, what would former child stars like Edward Furlong (Terminator) do without gigs like this!

Maybe watch together with the equally depressing THE ROAD, but then watch the best move of this type 28 DAYS LATER (or the scary late 1970s thriller about a disease wiping out the population) or DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.

Then cheer yourself up with SHAUN OF THE DEAD!

This film has a couple of down sides - it is overlong and is very wordy.

However, the good things in this Norwegian film outweigh that. It's a fascinating account of Norway entering the war in 1940 - and I learnt a lot about it, and how Norway came to have a king in the first place in 1905.

The historical fact is known - Norway's king and government were in London during the way, and the traitor Quisling (now a word meaning a traitor!) was hanged at the end of it for his betrayal of Norway, and collaborating with the Nazis from Germany.

I found the dramatic tension of the desperate efforts of the German envoy to prevent war fascinating and I learnt a lot.

As an end point, the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square every year is donated to the UK from Norway as a thank you for our help during the war. If Britain had not stood alone against Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1941 (when the US entered WWII after Japan attacked it! And the USSR decided to stop being Hitler's ally and turned against him), then the world would look very different indeed. Britain should be rightly proud of that for evermore, and no countries or the EU should forget it.

And I cannot help realising why the proud and independent Norwegians refused to allow Nazi Germany to rule them willingly - it is the same instinct which made Norway leave the EU a few years ago. Britain now follows and more will follow us, for sure.

4 stars

This is the sort of film that should be made - though I do have to say I am no fan of his fantasy mannerist art.

This movies follows this man's life from WWII and fighting against the Soviets to later days in the USA.

All very interesting and unknown to me before this. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but a useful biopic.

When watching this rehash of a much-filmed Agatha Christie novel I asked myself "why"? The reason is simple - it's produced by Ridley Scott was clearly wanted an international hit because he knows Agatha Christie is known world-wide, so he signed up an all-star cast to make it, with all the boxes ticked. A cynical exercise and one that results in a mediocre forgettable film.

Things I hated about this film include: 1) Kenneth Branagh who for me ALWAYS plays Kenneth Branagh no matter what role he is playing;

2) There was just too much CGI that looked fake;

3) I riled at the awful clunky political correctness including the complete unrealistic casting of black characters and the tedious lectures about how 'racism is bad'. Really, it sullies the film and has no part in it. Moreover, judging people of the past by modern values is silly, esp when all good characters of the past are portrayed as anti-racist campaigners - which is so unrealistic. Believe it or not people reflect the values and opinions of their time, and many good people of the past were racist - and not just white people. TV dramas are like this too and it's BORING and unrealistic. A lower class black doctor in the 1930s going out with an upper class white girl and accepted by the upper class passengers on a train. WHAT PIFFLE!

I was looking at my watch during this film, getting bored. Basically, it should never have been made - watch a past version for a good film, or watch David Suchet on TV's Poirot, because he is perfect for the role.

I am generous in giving it 2 stars.

This is an excellent film about something I knew nothing about - the vast number of German mines laid on beaches in Denmark, as the Nazis expected an Allied invasion there.

It reminds me somewhat of an excellent TV series I watched as a kid in 1980 called DANGER UXB. As with that, it's people trying to defuse live bombs so some will inevitably be blown to pieces (no spoiler there, methinks).The statistics given at the end of the film are shocking: 2000 German prisoners used to defuse mines in Denmark and half of them were killed or seriously injured. Still, that was better than being captured by the Russians - 90% of their German prisoners died. Perhaps the best bet for a German soldier would be to be captured by the British - you won't be shot or blown up or starved to death, just put to work on the land or on building projects to repair war damage.

Which is why the shocking and unnecessary scene of some British soldiers abusing the Germans is inaccurate and unnecessary. The prisoners claim the British would shoot them too, though this would be a natural fear - but really, it is disgusting how films do this, make up history - US films are ALWAYS doing it, and often insulting the British too, as with U571 or The Patriot showing British soldiers doing atrocities they never did or many more examples. That REALLY annoyed me.

So 4 stars. Just. But the title LAND OF MINE is stupid and an insult to the quality of this film and the men it commemorates. Couldn't the translator have used some decorum and come up with a respectful title?

First to say that the animation in this movie is simply superb - imaginative, as it has to be really, to prop up a very flimsy and thin story and plot. The film is interspersed with a series of vignettes, some of which are lifted directly from silent films and Laurel and Hardy - some really old gags here! Plus other derivative bits too - the nod to Oliver when the bear confronts the chef; the nod to The Producers and how that classic movie musical ends in the prison bit at the end (stay watching through the end credits).

Now the stuff I didn't like: 1) the music is truly awful - I dislike the silly calypso band with its mediocre songs - it would have been far better to update classic songs such as 'When I'm Cleaning Windows'; 2) the London of this movie is sheer fantasy - a cartoon land where everyone lives in Georgian houses which are worth between £3 and £5 MILLION pounds - the books are better on this, with the Brown family living in an average semi which could be a council house! and that leads to 3) the problem with this as with the first film is that it is aimed squarely at an international audience, so in this London everyone is rich and lives in lovely big houses and it snows all the time (when it hardly ever does in London) which is as fake as the first movie claiming it rains all the time in London (in fact Rome has more annual rainfall!)

The caper is enjoyable though and heart-warming - it follows the text-book screenplay pattern: plot point one in minute 24; a sad lull of failure just before plot point 2 leads to act 3 and a happy ending which is assumed in movies like this (they're hardly all gonna die horribly).

Hugh Grant steals the show from a bear if that's possible! Which just goes to show if your career dips, just hang around a decade or more and it'll flower again!

So 4 stars. Not perfect, but an enjoyable cartoony caper. Some great character actors in here too, esp Jim Broadbent with the wonderful Jewish character not in the original books (though I get tired of the endless Scottish characters).

But why oh why so they have to show that awful shard building all the time as if it's something we Brits and Londoners are proud of - because we most certainly are not! It's an eyesore.

I still prefer the books though!

This is a very stagy, very theatrical film - nothing can disguise the fact this started out as a theatre play.

I suppose it was a success because it tapped into the trend of obsessing about child abuse.

It's watchable but nothing very daring or controversial even here - and the dots are joined in a bit of a clunky way, all engineered for us to have sympathy with the female character.

A curiosity really p and I was baffled from the start at why the man seemed to have an Australian accent!

2 stars

This film is awful - utterly fake, and boring beyond belief.

The ONLY good things are the pretty scenes of the north Italian countryside + the interesting ancient Greek art. Apart from that. forget it.

And what made me laugh was that the US private tutor who has an affair with a 17year old young man would be facing a 2 year prison sentence in the UK for that!

And how many parents would be happy with their teenage son engaging in such behaviour.

I am guessing this won the Oscar because the characters are Jewish and gay, so tick the 2 boxes. No idea what the competition was, but I doubt any foreign movie on it could have been more utterly pompous and pretentious than this.

Avoid.

This film is just wonderful. Not only for its astonishing artistry (all hand-painted) but also for its story - it revealed things about Van Gogh death that I didn't know.

It really was robbed of best animation Oscar - for the reason that from this year those voting in that category are not just from the animation world but from the whole film industry - and of course Coco won because it's Americans and about a Hispanic boy. C'est la vie, as Vincent probably didn't say...

It took a while to get used to the different accents in this film - no-one does a Dutch accent, they're all British English but from all parts of the British Aisles, so Van Gogh's postman speaks with an Irish accent! But after a while, when I'd got used to it, this worked fine.

Personally I would have preferred the Don McClain version of Vincent (Starry, starry night) as the soundtrack song at the end, not Maria Carey's version, but that criticism is tiny!

This is a brilliant and classic film. Just superb. So who cares it didn't get the Oscar eh?

I really enjoyed this film - except when the subtitles stuck at the 113th minute! I rewinded and fastforwarded and they worked again. Why? No idea! But so glad they did.

The reasons I am giving this 4 not 5 stars are: 1) it's a tad overlong; 2) some places are just too sentimental.

I don't mind sentimentality though or moving films, and this film is moving and funny and sad. And some lines are really clever and funny - the character development is excellent too.

Should have one best foreign film Oscar in its year.

The best compliment I can make about this film is that it makes me want to read the book!

So this has a starry cast - and famous names - but the modest black and white film of Dunkirk from the 1950s, I think - is just the better film and the better drama.

This film is bitty and rather messy - and never do you get the sense of 400,000 men waiting on the beaches for help. Sometimes it feels like there's 200 there - and maybe only 3 planes in the RAF. I think this is because the director wanted to 'keep it real' and have no CGI for the plans BUT just watch the wonderful BATTLE OF BRITAIN film from about 1973, I think, to see how glorious plane dogfight sequences can be.

Good in parts. Some scenes. But overall not a great watch. Which is a shame because Britain fighting WWII for over 2 years before the USA joined in (and Russia too) was when Britain really did save the world - and all Brits should rightly be proud of that, and the world should thank Britain for evermore.

2 stars

I disliked this film - probably because 1) I did not believe the characters of the dialogue; 2) it's tooth-rottingly sugary, sentimental and schmaltzy; 3) it is aimed square at the American market and that shows - throughout - and not in a good way.

One reason I think is this is co-written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce whose quasi-religion overly sentimental writing I detest - just watch the awful kids' movie 'MILLIONS'. Yeuck! He makes up stuff that really would never have happened, and dialogue that reflected attitudes that are simply not true - and that annoyed me. I have seen a better film based on the same subject, and also heard interviews with the real Christopher Robbin.

The main actor here D. Gleeson is also the lead in the new Peter Rabbit film which looks awful - and is actually far too young and pretty for such an old fatherly role in this movie and that one.

My favourite part was the end. At least then we get to see how Christopher Robbin looked in real life - as opposed to this cherub-faced treacly portrayal, and ditto AA Milne looks much older in the real photos.

Winnie the Pooh's wit and wisdom is nowhere to be seen in this sentimental mix either. So better to just read the books, to be honest. I have the complete AA Milne Winnie the Pooh writings - and what amazes me is on the back it recommends children aged over 3 can read the books by themselves. Boy, have we dumbed down in recent years!