Film Reviews by PV

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

This is a heartbreaking movie but one that shows a story which must be repeated for so many thousands of people in the poorer parts of the world.

All about the Philippines and its corruption, violence, poverty. As is usual, the massive exploitation of the very poor by those who are also not that rich is what happens - as it does in the UK with immigrants exploited by other immigrants to work the land.

Not a pleasant watch sometimes and quite violent - and in a way which may make some question their faith (the Philippines is a very devoutly Christian place).

After watching this, it's easy to understand why so many Philippine people want to work abroad - for example in the British NHS.

A superb film with decent subtitles.

5 stars

This is no doubt a good film - but not a great one. It cost £9 million to make, apparently, a great deal more than the 1975 film Operation Daybreak which is, frankly, better and which offers more emotional connection.

I lived for a year in Prague so know the places featured in this movie well - I have visited the church where the story ends, and saw the bullet holes and memorial.

Maybe that's why certain things annoyed me in this movie: 1) the use of Americanisms such as 'lay low' (which should be 'lie low'); 2) the lack of acknowledgement that this happened in 1942 a matter of weeks and months after the USA came into the war (in 1938/39/40/most of 1941 many US politicians and people supported Hitler) Britain stood alone from September 1939 untl December 1941 when the USA joined in WWII and 1941 when the Soviet Union's pact with Nazi Germany ended when Hitler invaded the USSR; 3) criticism of Britain entering the Munich agreement in 1938 when Britain was practically unarmed and standing alone so could not have done anything else.4) Germany did NOT invade all of Czechoslovakia in 1938 - just the north part the Sudetenland where most people were German speakers (many of whom were consequently killed by Czechs at the war's end) - it was not until 1939 that the Germans moved into the whole country and created the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. 5) no mention is made in this movie that Heydrich DID die a week after the attack from blood poisoning shock or, some say, because of chemicals in the grenade (botulism).

Now, of course, most people won't care about these facts all that much, but it's a shame the film gets them wrong or misleads.

Having said that, the story is well-acted and there is such attention to detail in the sets, the CGI shots of Prague in 1942 and the uniforms. However, it's all a bit cold - which can be an issue with CGI-created history.

So, 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

One wonders what the movie version of the novel HHhH out later this year will be like as it portrays the exact same event.

The first thing to note about this is that Nina Simone's daughter and estate was involved in making it - so there is no mention of her arrest a couple of years before her death (for shooting a pistol at local kids who were scrumping apples from a tea in her garden in the south of France).

No mention either of her view, shaped by racist black power activicts, that there should be a black-only state in the USA where whites were banned.

It's fair to say really that the glory days of Nina Simone (born Eunice Waymon) were in the 50s and early 60s. By the late 60s she was taken advantage of by black power activists who filled her head with racist and violent nonsense, and bucketfuls of Mao-ist Marxist dogma. So instead of playing great music, she ranted at audiences with parroted slogans.

Like many a great musician, she then fell on hard times - and the redemption of her later comeback years are eye-opening, if sad.

So, not perfect. But Nina Simone is the piano player's piano player - the favourite musician of so many other musicians.

Her story is one of racial segregation in the USA from both racist blacks and racist whites - so, in that, the division seems just as much, if not more, today.

A must-see for musicians.

This movie stands out as one of the very best modern Westerns - set in the rust bowl of West Texas (a huge state the size of France) we see at first hand the sort of struggling people who voted for Trump, who often live in poverty without prospects and who are often well and truly shafted by the banks who repossess their homes and farms as part of a deliberate police, it seems.

These people feel betrayed by everyone - all politicians incl Democrats (Hilary take note!), banks, schools, their whole nation, actually. All they have left is their bruised pride backed up with guns.

As one old Indian character makes clear at one point: the white man stole the land from the Indians, and no the banks are stealing it from the white man! The little man is a nothing when the banks think only of their own profits.

This story and the characters are all utterly believable too as the inevitable, almost-Greek tragedy plays out for a bitter-sweet ending in the 'flyover' state of (west) Texas.

I don't think I have watched a film where I sided with the criminals and bank robbers more since Bonnie and Clyde - and you'll be rooting for them too: the film is so clever in achieving that. It's a rare things to achieve.

A truly intelligent film that makes you think and raises some huge issues about what it means to be American today - or to be anything, under the thumb of heartless banks.

It should win Oscars maybe but as it has no black characters probably won't in this diversity-worshipping 'affirmative action' age - but note how many white people are poor in this rustbelt America, and realise how oppressed they are. This movie should be compulsory viewing for anyone who thinks there is any such thing as 'white privilege' (and 'male privilege; too).

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

This is a superb film - a courtroom thriller - starring some real legends: the great British actor Charles Laughton who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Henry VIII in the 1930s, and even Marlene Dietrich too!

The lead Tyrone Power is a bit odd - with an American accent yet he served in the RAF in WWII which is never explained, but the demands of box office audiences meant producers then (and now) pandered to what they (and esp the female audience) wanted and Tyrone Power was a heart-throb of his day.

The plot is pure Agatha Christie - based on a short story original called 'Traitor Hands' - it has typical twists, mistaken identity, and the last minute reveal JUST like a magician's trick. This is Christie's hallmark. It makes for unrealistic drama (NO British court would allow last-minute reveals like this) but riveting drama.

Apparently, Ben Affleck is in talks to a direct a new movie version with Matt Damon - one wonders how much these over-rated Hollywood types with mess it up (and the great big lie that was 'Argo').

But anyway, a fine drama. The BBC made a drama with Toby Jones broadcast on 26 and 27th December 2016 which totally changed the ending and added unnecessary female characters (which writers are ordered to do now to placate the diversity departments and attract the easy meat female viewers). No need for all that though as this is the better version, and the one to watch.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

This is a hugely entertaining film - maybe a tad long at 2 hours 15 minutes but great fun, nonetheless. It's got great music and Bette Midler performances and James Caan is great too - it's a real showbiz movie, for anyone who's at all theatrical.

The changing face of the USA shown from the early 40s to Viet Nam is also done well, and there's a beautiful version of John Lennon's IN MY LIFE too.

I somehow didn't want this till now even though it's a 1991 film. A bit like THE ROSE in being a fictional biopic - the female singer character is a sort of amalgam of various singers of the period. Loved the quick fire Jewish banter too.

Just HUGE fun and massively entertaining - a good old-fashioned movie and none the worse for that.

4.5 stars rounded up.