Film Reviews by PV

The first half of this film OK - and Jude Law excels as the main character, who seems based on the main character in Jez Butterworth's hit play Jerusalem really.

But half-way through, the BBC's diversity gestapo (and this is financed via BBC Films) obviously demanded more ethnic representation, so the action jumps to London where the main character's daughter's partner is a Sengalese African in London (SO unlikely because Senegal is a French-speaking country and very few live in the UK). I stopped believing in the film or characters at this point, if I ever did.

But hey, that's what happens in state-funded projects.

The half-way point is also where this film changes from being a comedy cartoon caper to becoming a sort of soapy family drama - which I hated. The first half is by far the best ALTHOUGH I was massively irritated by the supposedly Russian gangster whose accent is more Spanish (and sure enough, a glimpse at the credits showed the actor is not Russian). The way characters just vanish from the plot without explanation is also annoying.

There are plot holes, situations and characters I just didn't believe. This film just doesn't know what it wants to be - a cartoon caper comedy or a soapy family drama. It tries to be both, and ends up succeeding at neither.

I enjoyed some of the dialogue and for that this gets 2 stars and not 1. It's not very funny at all really, so don't expect much.

Right at the end of this film there is VERY SMALL PRINT on screen stating something like "although this film is based on true events many things have been fictionalised." You're telling me!

The director (ironically a female Hindu Indian who had FAR more opportunities being born in 'nasty white Britain' than she ever would have had in her beloved India - riven at it is by caste and class hatreds, religious hatred and massive sexism against women) seems keen, with her fellow screenwriters, of blaming the nasty evil white British for all that is wrong in Indian history and for the utterly disgusting atrocities than the population of British India committed against each other in the name of their religions - Hindu, Islam or Sikh.

Well, that is fake news and a half! The British, let us not forget, CREATED the democratic country called India - they overthrew the Muslim dictators called the Moghuls, brought democracy, law, trade, civilisation to India and stamped out the primitive traditions in the Indian subcontinent - such as slavery, child marriage/abuse, forced marriage and sutu (the tradition whereby a widow has to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband and get burned alive until she is ashes!) The British also tried to stamp out the disgusting caste system, though that still survives - also 100 million Muslims still live in India, and Pakistan is no secular state, but a country where half the people are Islamists and against the West. India's industry could not have happened without British rule - they Brits gave India railways and organisation. Also, we gave them tea and planted plantations - the Indians did NOT drink tea as a daily drink until the British arrived. We also gave them AND the Chinese chillies which are native to central America. Imagine Indian food without chillies! You can thank the nasty evil white British for that...

No mention here of the many Indians who fought against the British and allies with the Japanese and Nazis in World War II and an ABSURD claim is made the Britain and the allies would have lost the war without Indian soldiers (who joined up because many were loyal to the British and are now despite the noisy Brit-haters' rewriting of history).

Worst of all is that gullible people who watch this dodgy film will believe it represents truth - including the LIE of a conspiracy theory it is founded on, namely that the British and Churchill deliberately caused conflict and partition in India in order to thwart Soviet ambitions. That is a lie. LIE. And utter UTTER lie promoted by crackpots in books - and this movie is based on 2 books, one of them being that lie-drenched conspiracy theory.

This movie is racist against the white British, frankly. And NO MENTION in the end titles that Mountbatten was assassinated by being blown up on a boat by the IRA whilst fishing in Northern Ireland.

A disgusting lie-spewing movie. Fake News. NO STARS.

This film suffers for the same problem ALL films about the music business suffer from, when they feature fictional bands and their supposed 'hit singles and songs' - put simply, the songs ate just not good enough, so one cannot willingly suspend disbelief and believe these mediocre songs would have become hits, especially these days (when the songs sound like their made for the late 70s or early 80s).

It's all apparently based on Welsh musician Mike Peters (The Alarm) and his hoax on the music business and radio in 2014 after they refused to play his new songs because he was 'too old' (in his 40s). So he wrote songs and hired some pretty young things to mime to them - I remember seeing a video. Then the singles by that fake band got airplay by precisely the same radio stations who had refused to play Mike Peters' and The Alarm's new songs. BUT I don't think any of those songs were hits!

I did actually see The Alarm live when I was about 15 and also went to see Mike Peters live in Wales in 2015, I think. Not bad BUT The Alarm's BEST songs like '69 Guns' and 'Stand' date from 1983. They were never a top band like U2, for example, though they supported U2 in recent tours.

Hats off to the producers for getting this made - and it's NOT paid for by the state (BBC) AKA our taxes, or the National Lottery, or the EU film fund (AKA our taxes). So many totally rubbish boring pointless British films are subsidised like that.

But this film is not rubbish - it is so-so and worth a watch, especially for anyone - like me - who has had any experience of being in a band and encountering characters in the music business and radio/media etc.

This film is not as good as KILL YOUR FRIENDS or KILLING BONO, two brilliant films about the music biz. FRANK is a sad and weird watch too.

The cats is cracking here - and there are some funny scenes. All hokum really but worth going along for the ride. 3 stars.

This film was recommended to me by someone who called it 'profound'. Me, I didn't find it profound at all- over-long to the point of clock-watching tedium, yes; tiresomely full of pitch battles using CGI, yes; a goodies versus baddies messiah-myth story that could come straight from the old testament, yes indeed. But not profound.

Occasionally entertaining - but behind all the clever CGI this is basically a goodies versus baddies shoot em up, with some added hokum about a mutated virus. The first and second in this series were way better - and the best has not CGI at all and starred Charlton Heston and Roddy MacDowell!

But it isn't ALL that bad, so 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I watched a TV movie about this maybe 20 years ago - I cannot remember what it was called but I remember it, so it must have been interesting.

The one BIG difference is the cast of that was 100% white whereas in this movie they go to great lengths to show black sailors - though I do wonder whether the crew was mixed black and white or if that is a pc add-on for our modern sensibilities! Certainly there would have been a lot of racial abuse in real life!

Also, this being a movie and not a simple TV effort, the producers/director/writer feel that they have to create a strong 3 act narrative - and it does that through a rather silly 'ring' subplot, and of course the trial and legal stuff at the end.

But still an OK effort. But I'd love to know the TRUTH of what happened and who the crew were (all male though for sure! So no women eaten by sharks today thank you!)

I don't usually like cinema documentaries - but I love dinosaurs, collect fossils and so had to watch this.

I shared in the job and excitement of the fossil discovery in the beginning.

But my how the whole thing turned into a living nightmare for all those involved - because of MONEY in a word. It all gets very legal and very surreal, the way these things can.

The US government looks very bad in this - the way they pursue dinosaur fossil hunters egged on by pompous ivory-towered academics is the stuff of nightmares.

Fascinating stuff - and be sure to watch till the end of the credits to know what happens to people in the end.

Superb documentary. 5 stars.

I found this film to be JUST AWFUL - though I would criticise the acting, esp the great Jim Broadbent.

The problem is the source material. It is from a Julian Barnes novel and he must be the smuggest smuggy writer of smug upper-middle class smug whinge-athons EVER. SO self-obsessed and lacking self-awareness; so lacking social awareness - as if everyone lives in £3 million houses and has university friends who live in mansions with wisteria round the door.

Despite the tragedies portrayed - no doubt a typical writerly attempt to press those empathy emotion buttons - I found I simply did not care about ANY of these characters or their relationships.

In fact, by the end I hated them all so much I wanted them all to take a long bath.

You'll learn more about life from watching Paddington, frankly - and see a more realistic London portrayed too, complete with bear!

One star.

This is an odd one. I though it would be a simple fairy story - and I suppose it was but it involved fantasy elements and was baffling, confusing and what was the point of the story exactly? It was like the Blue Lagoon with turtles and magic. Hmmm.

Maybe it was based on some folk tale known in Japan or something? I'd love to know!

But lovely animation for sure - and beautiful music.

Strange but it seems overlong at just over an hour.

Why this was made into a movie, I have no idea. It'd work far batter as a short film.

2 stars for the animation and music. 0 stars for the plot and storytelling!

I'd heard good things about this movie so rented it because it sounded intriguing.

I am no fan of comic books - but this is like something out of one of them - with a silly, nonsensical plot which is all just sheer fantasy wish fulfilment and never explained properly.

If you like fantasy sci-fi, then this is for you. If you're South Korean, you'll probably be in monster movie heaven, as some of this nonsensical story is set there - why? It 's never ever explained.

I didn't believe the character arcs either - seemed all very pc and 'girlpower' to me. I was very irritated by what is becoming everyday sexism against men from movies - because men are BAD and women are GOOD, you see. Yawn. It's really getting very tiresome - I don't agree with sexist portrayals of ANYONE, and call out the hypocrisy of those who think it's OK to be sexist against men and boys. Now THAT is a problem our society faces - not silly comic book monsters.

And as per usual in movies, people who are supposedly alcoholics do not LOOK like real alcoholics (bad skin, shaking, dirty, hunched etc).

Watching this, I couldn't help thinking all the time that Anne Hathaway has an enormous mouth - bigger than the monster's! Big like Julia Roberts big. WHY do so many actresses have huge mouths? Is it genetic? Or cosmetic surgery? Is that what casting agents are looking for - cavernous cakeholes? Weird. And why only for women? Men in movies seem to have smaller mouths...

1.5 stars rounded down.

Here's a nice gentle film about 2 more mature women who somehow end up on a romantic adventure in France.

It starts brilliantly - and I love the harsh Romanian 'care' worker hectoring the elderly people onto the coach.

As it goes on the plot becomes more and more unrealistic and silly. Totally unrealistic plot - esp around customs etc.

But it's all so charming I can forgive that.

I really enjoyed it - so 4 stars.

The only thing I liked about this movie was the soundtrack, mainly because it's not all the usual tedious R+B wailing, but lots of classic 1970s tracks (I have never ever heard Queen's Brighton Rock referenced in a movie before - their double live album Killer from 1979 is the best live album ever made!) - oh, and Kevin Spacey who can act the socks off all those pc actors who're now getting nominated for Oscars. But he phones it in - because his role, like all the rest is 2-dimensional, unbelievable and silly.

It's all a cartoon caper, with unbelievable plots and robberies, endless car chases, and by-the-book character arcs.

I have no idea how anyone else could suspend their disbelief when the main character is so unbelievable and how come he has a disabled black adoptive father - someone wanted to tick the boxes LOL! And the sob-story backstory is laughable. And it's never really explained why he has to do what he does - not really - it's just mentioned in one 'oh that's OK then' line.

The film is named after a mediocre Paul Simon song - so I think someone just decided to write a movie script with that title and then tried to tack on as many poop-video attention-span-challenged things to appeal to a teenage audience as they could. So all so utterly cynical - a PR and marketing exercise from the start.

No idea why this film has got so many good reviews.

Maybe because the director is cool?

But this is NOT a good movie at all - utterly forgettable glossy dross for teenagers who like car crashes.

I am not a jazz fan really and can take or leave trumpet playing especially.

However, this was an OK film, though hardcore fans will probably be annoyed with it. But I don't mind at all that the actors are not exact lookalikes of the real people - acting in movies cannot be judged entirely on that. It's not Madame Tussaud's!

To be honest, all I knew about Chet Baker was that he played jazz trumpet, was a heroin addict, and died after a fall from a hotel room in Amsterdam in 1988 (probably suicide) - this last chapter is not portrayed in this movie, sadly.

He also played the BRILLIANT trumpet solo of Elvis Costello's shipbuilding.

A watchable biopic for a general audience.

3 stars.

This movie is SO reliant on CGI effects - it's almost a computer game.

Like so many movies drenched in CGI, this is a strangely cold affair, and I felt no emotional connection at all with any of the characters. I didn't care what happened to them. I saw the blatant attempt to engineer that with a man writing letters to his wife and new born son all the time. But it didn't work.

It's all silly and preposterous, of course.

And even Kong is unsympathetic - and the underground creatures just computer game monsters.

Watch the 1933 Kong to see how it should be done - now THAT Kong was human, if you see what I mean. You cared about him and Fay Wray and the rest. You won't care about this lot.

Watch till the end of the credits to see possible sequels featuring Japanese Monster Movie creatures in future.

3 stars. JUST.

This is a TYPICAL UK state-funded film (money from the taxpayer, the BFI, Film4, the lottery). It focuses on a supposed ethnic minority, the gypsies or travellers or Romany if you prefer (interesting to hear the dialect and even the Romany language sometimes in this film).

Now, it's all well-acted with a class cast, esp Rory Kinnear as a copper, and the story has pace (though the ending disappointing).

However, the behaviour of the 'travellers' made me hate them.

And I suppose that is the crux here: if you're a Gorgie (non-gypsy) then your feeling about this film will depend on your experience with these people in your life.

Now, as a kid there were gypsies around sometimes, ripping homeowners in the suburbs off by tarmacking their drives badly, stealing lead from roofs as scrap, and their gypsy kids would chase local boys and push them off their bikes - steal the bikes and resell em, keep em or sell em for scrap. I was chased once. I always avoided gypsy camps and their rough criminal kids.

Now, if your image of gypsies is that they're a quaint ethnic minority (as if) selling lucky heather, then fine. But watch this film to realise the days of painted caravans are long gone.

Watchable anyway. 2.5 stars rounded up.

But be warned, dogs so get hurt in this film (not really - but in the story - and some may find that hard to watch).

I must admit I am not a fan of all these weepy, pschobabbly, US dramas - they're way too self-indulgent for my tastes, as is the entire psychobabble, self-esteem, therapy industry.

But for its genre, this film is an OK watch and not overlong, thank goodness.

Not sure it's believable though. I had a lot of niggles like that.

And some of the dream sequences are absurd and add nothing but padding. As was the war photography shtick.

But Jesse E and Gabriel B are always watchable.

3 stars. JUST.