Film Reviews by PV

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.

OK so this film is ludicrous, full of plot holes - but just don't think too hard about that.

Instead, enjoy the atmosphere, the gore, the great sound effects of the cannibal Indians (or native Americans, or whatever). No doubt some will object that these people are shown as cannibals BUT they should get over themselves. THIS IS FICTION not a documentary!

Silly and unrealistic, yes. And of course there has to be a pretty blonde-haired woman in distress to rescue - who remains amazingly unmolested by brutal cannibal Indians who otherwise seem to keen to imprison women and get them pregnant.

But as I said, don't think too hard or ask too many questions! It'll give you a headache.

Just enjoy it for the period gore fest that it is. And the costumes, acting and sound effects are fab - loved the Indian screaming calls, though couldn't quite see how they'd manage to conduct the surgical operations needed to insert their whistles. See, now I'm thinking too hard again! Try not to or you'll see more plot holes than in a Swiss cheese!

Like WRONG TURN with Red Indians. 3.5 stars

OK, just to say this whole series is one of the best things I have ever seen on TV. However, it is also fair to say the law of diminishing returns came into play.

The early series are sublime - the 1st and 2nd especially. And the first episode is probably the best TV pilot I have ever seen. It's just PERFECT.

The later series, however, tended to get a bit soapy - with family issues and wives taking to the fore.

That is true of this last series which involves a baby prominently and the denoument.

Having said that, I was transfixed watching this so give it 4.5 stars rounded up.

I also think BADFINGER'S Baby Blue is played in here somewhere!

Just a great series - I feel like watching it all over again from series one now.

There were a couple of teasers in here with Walt at some unspecified later date returning to his old run down house with skateboarders in the empty derelict swimming pool. So I wonder if there'll be a series 6 ever?