Film Reviews by PV

It's no surprise this is based on a children's novel - The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart first published in 1971 though reminiscent of the 1950s really.

It's quintessentially English, set in an unspecified past (no mobile phones or TV in the house - and the children's names Mary and Peter are not names many kids have these days - they were common in the 1950s).

I thoroughly enjoyed this film - the animation is lovely with great attention to detail, and the story has great pace and dramatic tension.

OK so the children have the typically huge blue eyes and button noses of stylised characters in MANGA comics - and NO-ONE at all looks Japanese. Also, this is happily free of 'politically correct' racial diversity quotas - no token black faces parachuted into the English countryside, as in TV drama like the new Midsomer Murders. That is accurate - the Welsh and English countryside is practically 100% white and I have never ever seen a black police officer in Wales or the English countryside! If the BBC or any British or US studio had made this film, you can be sure some of the book's characters would be made black!

Being about a school for witches and warlocks, an immediate comparison will be made to Harry Potter - and the film cleverly gives a nod to this, featuring a Harry Potter lookalike in one scene - a broomstick-riding lesson - which was great fun. BUT JK Rowling did not invent the concept of a boarding school story - she stole it. There have been trainee wizards before in novels, poems and films (eg The Sorcerer's Apprentice). And this movie is FAR more entertaining than ANY Harry Potter film imho.

I chuckled at some things the animators got so wrong though - especially the food. The girl Mary eats ham and pea/bean sandwiches at one point (those beans look typically Japanese) and when the family sits down to dinner, they are eating very non-English Japanese food combinations with a separate rice bowl LOL!

But these anomalies are charming rather than annoying! And thankfully this film is not TOO long and never gets boring.

Some great British character actors do the voices - Jim Broadbent plays the mad scientist Dr Dee (so-named after John Dee the 16th Century alchemist surely?) and Rasmus Hardiker who, despite his youth, voices the old gardener Zebedee perfectly. I see Andy Serkis managed to get the boy role gig for his son too!

A hugely enjoyable animation. 5 stars.

So this is a weird one - based on a graphic novel from Honk Kong called TIBETAN ROCK DOG. Half the writing in the film, and credits, and style of animation and architecture and food is Chinese! They even eat chips/French fries with chopsticks!

Having said that. it's a so-so adventure. Though not original. Occasional laughs, silly ending, baddie wolves etc.

No doubt kids will find it OK but I suspect they'd find the beginning boring coz it's so slow and take ages to get round to rock music - which, weirdly, is played on Chinese-style string instruments. The theme song is also Chinese in the pentatonic scale.

So weird and so-so. But it really doesn't know what it is - Chinese or Western - and succeeds in being neither.

This is not a low budget horror movie - it would have cost millions. Yet it's just an old haunted house story, with VERY predictable jumps and scares - and twists I would see coming a mile off.

A supposedly moral plot sort of makes sense esp with the subplot - but it all feels as fake and fantasy fiction as Harry Potter.

Predictable slave appearances; and some hokum re 13 nails... and a predictable non-ending leading the way to a sequel which I am sure will never be made.

Passes the time.

Anyone who's had anything to do with the world of amateur dramatics will squirm watching this as they recognise the horrible reality of putting on an am-dram musical.

Co written by Lev (who plays the dentist) with Guest, this has great lines and acting. Utterly believable.

And the songs, co-written by Harry Shearer, are WAY better than what you'd hear in professional musicals like The Greatest Showman (R&B in the 1860s anyone?) or the awful Hamilton. PROPER songs in this.

A really funny film which doesn't outstay its welcome (only 80 minutes). 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

Without any Sex Pistols and Malcolm McClaren, Vivienne Westwood would be totally unkniwn. She basically just designs clothes and I have always hated that silly catwalk world where stern posing models where ridiculous clothes no-one will ever wear. No-one normal, that is.

Just boring. And annoying the doc gives no dates - birth, meeting McClaren, sons born etc. You need FACTS for something like this.

I watched half of this then turned off as it became all about this diva's latest collections and the Austrian poseur user she hooked up with.

And sometimes this woman is SO rude, demanding and ill-mannered it seems like she went to the Serena Williams finishing school. A horrible woman.

2 stars.

I only watched the first half hour of this movie - I couldn't stand any more.

Basically it's the story of a film critic supposedly famous in the USA esp in the 60s, 70s and 80s but unknown in the UK. Now he is ill and uses a voice speaker - though it doesn't specify his illness in the first half an hour.

Most interesting was his recollection of alcoholism and quitting one afternoon in 1979.

The rest bored me rigid.

I enjoyed this film though it's no more than a B-movie.

Hated the sentimental family plot stuff.

But the shark was lovely!

This is more of the same but gets very VERY silly indeed.

If you know Sharknado what to expect, but this really 'jumps the shark' in the end.

This is a so-so film - a B-movie though, so don't expect too much.

Hokum plot but OK to stick with it all for the ride.

This is a tough watch sometimes - very violent.

BUT very authentic characters incl black characters - the language is spot on.

Not sure if the ending would have happened.

But prisons are full of abuses, bullying, drugs as we all know.

A great film.

Well the budget is low and the shark is a ghost and able to go anywhere wet.

And then lots of people die until the end.

The end.

Sigh... 2 stars for at least some effort at plot and character.

Well if you watch this you know what to expect - loads of CGI sharks, comedy killings, spoof scenes, OTT hammy dialogue. Maybe a perfect movie to watch on a Friday night in a packed cinema where audience members usually cannot shut up talking - and it won't matter with dross like this, and maybe well enhance it!

Not horror but attempted comedy, which is so OTT and predictable - the joke is wearing very thin now. Though Act 3 and the ending was shockingly awfully dreadful but a neat idea! One star is for that!

But what is truly horrific is the fact 90% of large sharks have been killed in the last 20 years to provide shark fins for the Chinese and other Asians - THAT is the TRUE HORROR here.

Look at the Shark Trust website to discover more - the shark fin trade is wiping out these beautiful animals who hardly ever attack people.

Not sure whether this low budget Brit horror is meant to be a serious film or tongue-in-cheek - if the latter, it's not a patch on Shaun of the Dead. If the former, gawd help us all.

Very badly made with AWFUL sound - sometimes you cannot even hear the dialogue being spoken - and acting so wooden it could belong to the forest where the latter half of the movie is set (except Lee Bane who can act). The story jumps around, and the funny parts, if intended to be so (though this is labelled horror not comedy) are just not funny or OTT enough. cf Shaun of the Dead. If you want a piss-take then you MUST be really funny and make viewers laugh - I never did. Not once. Groaned in despair and shook my head at the sheer awfulness, yes. But laugh? Nope.

Bafflingly there is a Mexican music soundtrack, and weirdly the opening scene is shot in Swansea High Street with Oxfam's bookshop opposite.

An absurd car explosion scene which starts in a carpark and ends in the countryside! A very silly final scene too.

It could have been tidied up and rewritten to make it really funny - though I see it already way as a credit is to someone called Christopher who wrote the original screenplay that's been revised and added to by the director obviously.

The puppet T-Rex reminds me of old Dr Whos from the 1970s and no bad thing there - hilarious the way the camera always points up with that (the beast as no moving feet LOL!) and buildings to make em look bigger and keep cars and lamp posts out of shot!

1.5 stars rounded up to 2 stars for effort and that is really being VERY generous! Please god don't let there be a sequel.

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.