Film Reviews by PV

The first thing to say about this film is all the guff in the blurb about how this is some sort of master analysis of what makes a fascist dictator is just that.

Apart from the final section - which feels VERY much tagged on - this is just a story of a privileged spoilt son of a US diplomat in France as he works on the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (when World War I officially ended).

Overlong and self-indulgent, this film can bore because it's slow and goes on and on.

Still, an interesting film about a weird little boy and his messed up childhood BUT that and only that. Just ignore the nonsense in the movie summary about this somehow being a deep analysis of what makes a child become a dictator - that is simply PR that's been used to sell what is, frankly, a pretty ordinary little film (which feels more French than American - hence the long pauses and the fact it's over long).

3 stars. JUST!

At times, this resembles one of those amateurish Children's Film Foundation films from the 1970s. This comes complete with dastardly carton character baddies (the police, child welfare officers, huntsmen).

It's basically a chase movie. So far, so cartoony.

However, the charm of the script + great acting + action lifts this above that. It's an enjoyable movie and great for anyone who wants to see the lush New Zealand landscape.

I do not believe for a minute that ANY social services in NZ or any developed country would behave like this or dump a child with a family consisting of two ex-drifters in the middle of nowhere. But the plot demands it.

Some comic scenes - very visual comedy. Some work, some don't. Some funny wordplay too.

So 4 stars despite the negatives.

I didn't see this movie till my mid-20s. Apparently it was bigger in the USA and they watch it there every Christmas (for us it was The Wizard of Oz).

For me, Charlie and the Chocolate factory will always mean the book, not any film - esp as I met Roald Dahl and he signed my copy back in the mid-70s.

The original book (1964 USA only) makes it clear the Oompaloompas are pygmies from Africa. The 2nd edition toned that down after accusations of racism (Dahl had worked in African for an oil company in the late 1930s so his attitudes were of his time). But the Oompaloompas certainly were never orange. Sadly, the London musical copied from this movie including making Augustus Gloop German which he most certainly is not in the book!

Tellingly the best song in that musical was the 'Imagination' song from here, which is a good song.

Gene Wilder doesn't really convince as Willy Wonka for me. He's too fey and wide-eyed innocent.

I find it hilarious how David Walliams basically rips off Roald Dahl at every turn, including the obsession with cabbage and cabbage smells. he lacks the darkness under the comedy to come anywhere near to matching Roald Dahl and is a pale imitation (ie rip off) of his books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a work of genius and Dahl's best book by a mile. read it if you haven't already. Then reread it. Then read it again. SO much better than this movie.

And of course this movie is too American. There were no Americans in Roald Dahl's book even though he lived in the US at the time of writing it (and originally there were 10 kids but Dahl cut that to 5).

This is watchable, yes. But not that great, to be honest. I'd make any child read the book FIRST before this pollutes their wonderful imagination!

3 stars.

The first thing to say is Ken Loach (who some on the left worship) directed this BUT he did not write it. The screenplay is by someone called Paul Laverty. He deserves credit. Ken Loach did not write this!!!

The second thing is the weird paradox here. Ken Loach is criticising the way the state treats people. BUT as a hardcore socialist, his solution to all problems is more state interference and control. Square that circle if you can! Most people are appalled by the exponential rise in things like housing benefit payments - many to immigrants - and want that cut. I don't know anyone of any political colour who'd want to force someone who's just had a heart attack back to work.

So, in a way this is poverty porn. It's also polemic at times, not drama. The final scene reminds of the final scene in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator with its propaganda. One wonders if those who praise this film to the skies would be equally impressed if a film were made promoting the alternative view with a speech at the end saying how many truly poor people were suffering because of uncontrolled mass immigration and the vast sums of housing benefit paid to them! But then, this movie is preaching to the converted...

Having said all that, I enjoyed watching this film - though it was at times massively predictable (I could see the ending coming after the first 10 minutes). An unlikely subplot re trainers adds some ethnic flavour - but there's not much of that in Newcastle.

I enjoyed listening to the Geordie dialect and accent - if 'Scots' is supposedly a language (I do not accept it is anything but a dialect of English) then so is Geordie, and Cockney, and many more regional accents.

The way the state deals with people in all countries is awful - Loach may worship socialism, but having lived in a socialist state and waited 3 hours to be seen re a residence permit, I'd advise Loach to travel more! In many EU countries they make it as hard as possible for anyone to claim benefit (France, Greece etc). And of course in many EU countries there is NO benefit - no housing benefit at all in Spain and Italy, for example.

So, all in all, worth watching - but deeply and political rather smug and convinced its belief in a socialist solution is right. So irritating on that level. But not as irritating as other Ken Loach movies (which rewrite history according to his own leftwing bias).

The acting here is superb - with improvisation really working. But I wish they'd cut the loud angry Scotsman in the graffiti scene. We see more than enough Scots on our screens anyway, thanks to the BBC's Scottish Raj. Time to go home to STV and BBC's new Scotland channel which is costing us all more than BBC4.

I've never really liked improvised kitchen sink drama - as in several Ken Loach and Mike Leigh films - so watched this expecting to dislike it too.

BUT what a revelation! This pitch dark comedy - set, I think, in Essex - becomes a gangland film with twists and turns for the many dislikeable characters. The banality of murder is here in all its glory.

Great acting, writing + improve, with some really funny lines and jokes - and scenes - make this s winner for me.

OK, so there are plot holes. No CCTV or DNA in evidence here. So I wouldn't call this 'realism' as such.

But just enjoy the ride. And don't, like those with goldfish attention spans, turn off after the first 10 minutes. This film REALLY warms up quickly and I bet you'll enjoy it if you have the patience to enter the film and watch its all-too-believable characters' sad, twisted and funny lives.

Wonderful stuff. 5 stars. And better than Ken Loach or Mike Leigh IMHO too.

This is one of the worst films I think I have ever seen.

I don't know what is worse - Emily Blunt's massive over-acting (chuck the girl a ham hock!). The woefully confusing flask-backy plot - not helped by the way the 3 women featured look almost identical. The self-righteous misandry where all men are cartoon character villains or morons. The feminist preaching in which all female characters are lovely and cuddly and innocent (despite doing what they do).

The plot holes riddle this as in a Swiss cheese - the worst of them is the fact a simple DNA test would have made this movie 30 minutes long! Yet no cop seems to know DNA exists.

It's apparently based on a novel by a woman, screenplay by a woman, directed by a woman. No surprise there then. The whole thing is a manhating wish fulfilment movie - if men made a film that showed women like that, they'd be called misogynists. Ergo, this movie is misandrist. It could have been made by mediocrities are some women's studies department. Maybe it was.

It's also deeply boring and the plot is unbelievable. It's like some trashy 1950s moralistic melodrama - reminds me of Ira Levin's first novel actually. Deeply old-fashioned and dull, I am glad to say the woman who watched the film with me agreed with every word I said too.

No stars at all. The worst movie I have seen for ages - it's so smug and self-satisfied you want to give it a good slap and tell it to grow up!

This is the first Georgian film I have ever seen - and I was very much impressed with it.

It basically shows the sudden fall of a dictator, like so many in Eastern Europe (and soon North Korea, I think, and Zimbabwe). The sense of bafflement and bewilderment is stark and accurate.

True, the second half of the film drags a bit and is overlong (longer than the stated time on the disc sleeve too, I believe). But that is a minor quibble.

This is a great movie.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

I found this film fascinating - it's mostly in Danish and all about the issue of a plane carrying nuclear bombs which crashed in Greenland (then part of the Danish Empire, now Greenland - population 20,000 but with oil reserves maybe - is independent and the only country to leave the EU before Britain voted to leave in 2016).

This is based on a true story and set in the early 90s mostly.

The story begins with the issue of workers at a nearby plant then getting ill in the years following the crash. And did all 4 bombs disintegrate as they were designed to do on impact in that plane crash or is one on the seabed?

Oddly, this question is entirely dropped by the end of the movie as the focus moves to whether the Danish PM lied to the people in the late 50s when he said there were no US nuclear bombs in the US military camp in Thule (Greenland - Danish territory then). I wanted to know about whether a bomb was on the seabed in reality but that question was just dropped about two thirds of the way through the film. Very odd.

The lead is great and believable - his sense of urgency against the odds is typical of this sort of Man versus the State movies, but unlike similar Hollywood films, there is no shooting etc. It's all very Danish, I suppose.

Some scenes in Washington and Texas are believable. The fact is, ALL states have secrets and maybe necessarily so.

Sadly, the man on whom the main character (investigative journalist) is based died aged 49 whilst our jogging in 2002 (a caption at the end says) - which proves to me just how dangerous overdoing exercise can be (many macho men die by pushing themselves too hard - and jogging can be fatal if you've just had flu or a bad cold etc). RIP.

4 stars.

The first thing to say is that a book like this would never have been turned into a TV drama were not the Potter queen JK Rowling the author.

The second thing, is that this is really unoriginal stuff - like Midsomer murders crossed with the Vicar of Dibley crossed with all those thrillers/horror movies where a seemingly 'normal' community has hidden secrets and nasties underneath the Potemkin village exterior. But hey, it allows a writer to explore lots of characters and weave the threads of their stories together.

One thing I hated about this drama was its political correctness. Not sure if the book has these characters, but the parachuted in tocken black family got on my nerves as it was so unlikely - pretty black girls do not, in general, go out with pizza-faced ginger boys.

There was also clearly a feminist agenda: according to this all the women are poor wickle innocent victims of the nasty men who live in the village. That in itself is sexist - and infantilising women. Women are grown-ups and make their own decisions and THEY should be blamed if they mess up, not their husbands or boyfriends. That annoyed me but its become orthodox dramatic trope on all BBC dramas I notice (men in dramas are either buffoons or disgusting evil villains). Cartoon character stuff - which any amateur writer would make up. One expects more from JK Rowling. I can tell it's been adapted and written by women, though. Bashing men seems their objective here sometimes.

I would have given it 2 stars BUT there are a couple of superb characters - the brother of the Barry character who bullies his family and sons mercilessly. Plus the snide Julie Mackenzie character (though a shame about the ending). A good cast too and all fairly pleasant.

BUT more full of plot holes than a Swiss cheese. NOTE: if you email people abuse the police will knock on your door as they can easily find out who is sending emails and where from.

So 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

This film annoyed me massively. It claims to be a buddy story with a group of 4 guys, one dying with cancer, going on a final camping trip. That's unbelievable enough.

But what irks me is that the dialogue and interaction between the 4 30 year old men is totally fake - they are really speaking like women, not men. Maybe that's because this is stagey dialogue written for a state-funded film (BBC licence fee paid for it) by someone from the theatre and a female director.

The camerawork is dreadful - wobbly hand-held camerawork is awful. And no, it doesn't make things more real or present or 'in the now'. Save that for your media studies essay!

There is a truly unbelievable scene at some fair with people dressed in animal costumes - again, really jumping the shark in its lack of authenticity, and some silly supposedly symbolic angel with white feather wings.

This would have made a 3rd rate drama on Radio 4. That we the taxpayers of the UK have to pay for this drivel makes me so angry. Time to pull the plug on films like this. It is, in a word, rubbish.

Fans of Benidorn Bandersnatch might love it but I hate his face and smugness as an actor.

Avoid this dross. Plenty of great road trip films out there to watch rather than this unoriginal pretentious tosh.

This is labelled as for CHILDREN/FAMLIES on CinemaParadiso - well,, mummy's gonna have conniptions once this stars and the kiddiwinks ask what the C word means! It's very much an adult movie.

I love the way this movie flies in the face of political correctness in a way the pc BBC or much of the movie industry simply would not do. It's all the better for it.

This film mocks religion and the gullible who follow faiths. It's full of crude and sexual jokes, some so disgusting they almost make me blush (and I've seen everything in my time!)

I loved the racial and religious stereotypes of Arabs, Jews, Mexicans, Indians etc - do that in the UK and the plods would probably arrest you!

I'd advise maybe using subtitles so you hear the words of every line of the songs.

Funny to hear Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Spandau Ballet's Gold on here, as well as a cameo from Meatloaf!

A very funny and crude film, and a refreshing change from all the tedious 'politically correct' movies out there.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5

I turned this movie off after 30 minutes. It's a massively self-indulgent 'comedy' from someone who seems to think she is a wonderful stand up comedienne who stars and directs. A vanity project write large - and she even gets a role in it for her mum.

OK, maybe if I were 15, from New York and possessed a vagina, I'd maybe relate to it.

However, I tick none of those boxes. So for me this was torture and I only lasted 30 minutes.

Not really 'acted' anyway. More like 'an act' in some New York feminist comedy club.

No stars for me.

This film brands itself "Bernard Rose's Boxing Day". Am I supposed to know this Mr Rose? Is he famous? Never heard of him, I'm afraid.

The best thing about this movie is the trailer - which did its job because I rented the film on the strength of it. Sadly, the trailer has ALL the best lines so watching the main movie adds nothing.

A wait till the end of the credits shows that this is BFI funded by UK taxpayers' money and like many state-funded projects, it would NEVER have got by the gatekeepers in the commercial world.

It's basically a 2-hander, based on a story by Tolstoy (which means it WILL be all about social class), with a property speculator being driven around by an incompetent British chauffeur in the snowy icebound environs of Denver, Colorado looking at foreclosed properties he hopes to buy at a big discount.

A few good one liners here. And Tolstoy's long dead so not copyright issue there and no-one to pay! There is an attempt to make rounded characters with ex-wife subplots etc but that feels very tagged on.

But that's it. Probably my favourite things about this movie is the snowy and icy scenes which I could watch all day long.

The whole premise of this movie is flawed. I kept asking myself - why would a supposedly savvy property speculator allow himself to be driven around by a chauffeur so incompetent he cannot use a satnav or know which type of fuel to put in the car? Plenty of knowledgeable tax drivers in EVERY town and city in the world who are immediately available for private hire for a day or more - yet, the speculator character lets himself be driven into snowstorm by a clown.

All very silly and unsatisfying.

2 stars - and 1 of them is for the snow!!!

In spite of myself, I really enjoyed this movie.

I was expecting a Western - but got a weird screwball comedy with some really funny jokes and scenes - some crude, some old, some surreal.

Yes, all puerile - but why not?

It's a comedy which WILL make you laugh. But not for the easily offended.

4 stars

This is a must-see movie - especially for anyone who's involved in the media or journalism in any way. It shows how the powers that be in the USA (and the UK) want to stop criticism of them by the media. The UK govt is at this very money trying to introduce legislation threatening to jail any journalist who reveals their secrets or blows the whistle.

Great script, top acting, an intelligent movie.

All very US-centric but it would be being about the 2004 US election, George Bush and CBS 60 minutes.

5 stars