Film Reviews by PV

The best thing to say about this film is that it looks good - like a pop music video, in fact. More vignettes than a proper story.

It's all rather confusing and vague, maybe meant to be ambiguous.

No idea if this is based on a novel, but if so, I'd love to know which one so I can look up what it's meant to be about!

Some strange volcanic island populated by mutant women who make boys pregnant - or something. Why is never explained. Your guess is as good as mine.

Baffling gallic fantasy.

It's great to see a film like this made, though no idea if it was actually filmed in Afghanistan (and at the end the film is in tribute to a girl who took part in an Afghan 'Pop Idol'-style TV show, who I suspect was murdered for it).

The idea seems too odd to be true, but it is - though like all 'true' stories it has embellishment (Titanic, anyone?)

The desperation of a has-been (or never was) manager in the amoral cut-throat music business is shown in all its gory details (this could actually be watched together with the UK film 'Kill Your Friends').

Then the desperation of life in a wartorn Afghanistan with all the spivs is realistic - this is what happens in chaotic wartorn places.

OK so the ending and some parts may well be unrealistic, but it's a film and a comedy to boot, NOT a documentary. I do wish people would learn the difference.

For being original and funny too I give this five stars. It was going to be four BUT the music is ace and gets an extra star, and a lot by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam after converting to Islam in 1977 - after all this great songs were written, of course!) The first song by him is 'Pop Star' - one I have never heard before.

Far better than the last few tedious Hollywood romantic comedies I've watched.

This is one of those films that would never be made if it didn't get state funding (from Irish govt this time).

It's a deeply twee and sentimental romantic story - like one of those wish fulfilment photo stories from Jackie magazine in the 80s!

The plot (let's put a band together) is pure 'Commitments' - a sort of junior 1980s version. The minor characters derivative (the oddball musical guy with rabbits is a copy of the guy in the 1970s Liver Birds). Of course there is the token black too - but lovely to see him playing a Roland Juno 6 (like the one I bought in 1985 + sold 5 years ago for more than I bought it for as they're still a classic and popular).

Knowing 80s music SO well, I also found myself constantly annoyed by this movie. The Top of the Pops clips (eg Duran Duran) are 1980/3. At the time, they were a girls' band and no boys liked them, by the way (so why the elder brother music expert here does is a mystery).

Then the main character sings A-Ha's Take on Me (from 1985/6), and we have music from the late 70s too (M) and reference to Adam and the Ants (1981), plus Hall and Oates (1985). As a teenager at the time I notice these errors as I did in TV series Ashes to Ashes. Though I understand it - to limit oneself to 1983 and before means missing out A-Ha and others!

Which brings us to the music - as in, the original music the ever-changing fashion-influenced band of kids (which is way too good but I suppose has to be). It's so derivative and mediocre too - always an issue with films that feature pretend pop stars and pretend bands (the music is never good enough).

The Christian Brothers subplot is clumsy in this; the school bully one works much better. Various social issues plots are two-dimensional and simplistic JUST as they would be in one of those photo-stories from Jackie magazine which is what this really is (and the ending is absurd too).

This is pure romantic fantasy. Mills and Boon for teenage Irish girls, I suppose. Can't see many teen boys liking this soppy tale much.

So all in all, maybe one strictly for teen girls only? 2 stars. No more.

The best thing about this film is the cinematography - and the snowy American mountain landscapes are wonderful and gloriously framed. This does for snow what Laurence of Arabia did for sand!

The worst thing is the length - this really does go on and on. Two and a half hours of it. Less waffle + self-indulgence would have cut 30 minutes AT LEAST off that.

The acting is fine, and I think Leonardo diCaprio won an Oscar for it (the Oscars ALWAYS go to actors playing the roles of disabled, injured or ill people!) - but his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street is the one that should have won all the awards. Not this.

Fur is the great motivator here - and the greed for that and money is behind all bad things that happen. The interplay between the French, the Americans + the warring Indians is well-explored. With the usual 'politically correct' scenes and dialogue one expects from such films these days.

But there is nothing new here. Plenty of similar 'man surviving in wilderness' films from the 1970s especially. The plot could be from a 19th century Wild West Cowboys and Indians comic really.

The music is great with Ruichi Sakamoto involved.

I'd give this 3 stars but another star for the wonderful landscapes and soundtrack.

This film makes me realise why my father used to groan and turn over the TV channel whenever the announcer said 'and now, a drama set in Northern Ireland'.

The religious conflict there (Catholics versus Protestants) is backwards even by modern European standards. They make former Yugoslavians look civilised. The place really is a dump - I could never ever live in such a place, because the same hatreds exist now, bubbling under the surface. The UK has poured money into Northern Ireland but it'll never erase that sectarian hatred.

Having said all that, this is an interesting film about a solider stuck behind enemy lines. Most credit should go to the writer Gregory Burke rather than the Director (brought up in London; born in France to French parents). The writing is spot-on - and the writer uses silence so well. The director directs this with hand-held cameras as though he's directing a Zombie film or one about black youth on an inner city council estate (his previous TV series). It doesn't always work.

The characters are all too believable - the treachery, the shifting sands of loyalty, the abuses on both sides, the horror of Northern Ireland's Troubles which, frankly, achieved nothing for the hotheaded youth of the IRA. Not sure I actually believe some of the plot - no spoilers here though but I have never heard of British undercover soldiers trying to do what they try to do to the soldier here.

Worth a watch. But lacking any comic relief whatsoever so very grim. 4 stars.

I enjoyed this film. So yes, I know how film makers will exaggerate things to fit the story - in this case that make out Eddie the Eagle to be utterly useless (when in fact he was in the UK ski team before he became a ski jumper - as he said himself on a recent radio show plugging his book).

But film makers will always do this to make the eventual success all the more wonderfully improbable (think ONE CHANCE about Paul Potts which also played fast and loose with the facts). Films lie. That's why they work. They're fantasy.

One does wonder if the barriers from the UK Olympic committee were put up as shown here - but the blueprint if to keep adding obstacles that the hero overcomes and so he does. I remember 1988 and how Eddie the Eagle was front page news.

Some good jokes and acting - Hugh Jackman impresses as a hard-drinking old lag ski jumper, and there's a brief role for Christopher Walken too. UK actors include Keith Allen as the Eagle's dad and Jim Broadbent as the BBC commentator. Directed by Dexter Fletcher (the boy in The Elephant Man + much else besides).

Fun to see the 1970s on screen in the scenes of Eddie's childhood.

An enjoyable and snowy fantasy - 4 stars.

I found this film deeply irritating. Why? Well maybe it's the way it is clearly aimed at the American market so lays on thick the English and French stereotypes (it panders to the USA so much it even used the US version of 'For here's a jolly good fellow' whish in the UK has 'and so say all of us' and NOT 'which nobody can deny as used here).

Like most US films, English people are portrayed as all upper class and rich - this panders to what Americans want to see (as mercilessly milked by High Grant and directors/writers like Richard Curtis. Personally, I find it all vomit-inducing in its twee dishonesty.

It's based on the best-selling (and unashamedly elitist) books of Peter Mayle (author of A Year in Provence). So all tickety-boo middle class fantasy, basically.

France is as appallingly stereotyped as the English characters too AND OF COURSE there needs to be an American character to appeal to that market.

The central character is entirely unsympathetic - and this is laid on thick so as to make his 'redemption' more right-on and perfect in character development terms BUT it is 100% unbelievable too. I have heard of bankers changing careers like this after battles with booze or after losing money/jobs/careers/ homes BUT successful greedy pig bankers do not change their spots so easily!

Acting is fine, and one or two jokes made me laugh. Some pretty French scenery too. Best I can say of this emo-porn fantasy.

But really, only one for the hardcore fans of Ridley Scott or Russell Crowe. 1/5 stars rounded up.

This really is a depressing movie. From Hungary. But there is so little dialogue in the whole film, it is almost mimed and coulod be in any language.

It's filmed in hand-held camera style - like Blair Witch Project or other movies which aim to create Cinama Verite and that LIVE feel which puts the audience in the midst of the action - or, as here, the horror.

What really makes this movies, though, is the way it shows the workaday reality of life at a concentration camp - it's all scrubbing, cleaning, sorting, obeying orders, as at an abattoir. That is quite unlike glossy Holocaust Hollywood movies. This is all the more horrible for its minimalism.

There is also interesting ambiguity: is the body the man's son, or merely a symbol of innocence?

It's all relentlessly gloomy and sad, but a must-see movie and possibly the best Hungarian film I have ever seen.

4 stars.

The first thing to say is that this film is laugh-out-loud funny at times - some clever gags and lines, and some strong characters, all help the well-designed plot move along at a good pave to a satisfying conclusion.

What works far less well is the constant worthy moralising - it's all about being a better person (or animal) and building self-esteem in the face of thinly-veiled analogies of racism and sexism. This movie clearly thinks it's being very clever indeed. But it isn't. That's where the movie become wince-inducing at times.

Of course this being diversity-worshipping 2016, the main character has to be female - just like another princess in Frozen winning against the odds. Happily, the character is strong and the fox sidekick a very strong and more interesting character to balance things.

But the mystery plot is interesting and strong, and most characters too - I loved the sloths!

The ubiquitous Idris Elba is madly miscast as a water buffalo police chief though - doing some weird US-mash-up of a cockney accent.

The world of the story makes sense if one suspends disbelief, and it has its own odd logic, as these fantasies always must. The 'night crawler' plot point is great fun.

So, a fun animation if you can get past the heavy-handed 'racism is BAD' worthy lecturing.

4 stars.

Film makers love making films about film makers. Maybe they think their lives are fascinating? Or just want to share in-jokes? Or get revenge against Hollywood enemies? Or just don't have the imagination to think outside of the Hollywood bubble (like writers always writing about writers)? Whichever is true (maybe they all are!), the results of this navel-gazing can be patchy, as they are here.

Probably best looked at a series of scenes and vignettes rather than a whole, there are certainly some funny moments and lines here - with unexpected turns and plot twists. And really some fantastic (and this expensive) sets which allows some wicked lampooning of 1950s movies, especially epics like Spartacus and those religious epics of the day. The film used and hammy acting is spot on.

An improbable plot about writers taking revenge against those who ripped them off will be funny and a wish fulfilment of many writers watching, I am sure.

Plenty of stars in this one, hamming it up - and some of the 1950s setting in a movie studio is spot-on too.

All in all, watchable but not nearly as funny as it thinks it is!

A footnote in the Coen Brothers collection really. 3 stars. Just.

OK, so I admit I knew nothing about 1864 and the disaster it was for Denmark (as its massive defeat by Prussia led to Denmark to abandon any ambition of empire and to turn inwards) until I recently watched a series on Scandinavian art. That made me rent this DVD out and I am glad I did.

Far better than most Hollywood war films, but gory and gruesome in a way even Sam Peckinpah would have loved on occasion, this film grips from the start.

Reminiscent of 1970s sages such as Italian film 1900, this drama tracks the course of the life of two brothers, from childhood to youth and then leaving as soldiers to go to war (it is indeed also reminiscent of GENERATION WAR, a classic German mini-series of recent years).

The class system in Denmark (yep, every country has one) is also shown and even Hans Christian Anderson (son of a washerwoman who played with the children of royalty when a boy) has a cameo!

I got a bit tired of the love triangle backdrop, to be honest. However, the way women respond to events is well done, and not the stereotypical 'all women are angels' shtick you get from British or American films. Got tired of the 'seer' subplot too, and the lark symbolism.

Some of the deaths were a little obvious - and I find myself shouting 'HE'S GONNA GET IT' at the screen more than once, but I think most audiences like a bit of drama in death!

In general, then, an original film about a little known catastrophe (it may be worth researching this a bit before watching - via Wiki or anything). There's gory blood-splatter aplenty for those who like that sort of thing, huge battle scenes, some love and sex, some sadness, some happiness etc. A veritable smorgasbord of human emotion and history then.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

The first thing to say to anyone who watches this: forget your prejudices against subtitled cinema (if you have any! I don't!) and rent out the original Argentinian film - from around 10 years ago. It is WAY superior to this Hollywood remake and is set against the backdrop of the dictatorship in Argentina which makes it way more fascinating than this bodged remake.

Also, in the original the classic twist at the end if better (NO SPOILERS HERE).

I resent the way this remake is riddled with 'political correctness' - it must have a black lead and 2 female characters in charge. The superior original does not faff around with such nonsense and is consequently MUCH more believable. It's about a husband-wife not as here a mother-daughter. This movie seems to be trying hard to tick the pc diversity boxes - and boy, is it trying...

And I for one just do not believe in the inter-racial romance storyline - not in the USA where both white and black people really don't go in for that much at all.

Some pointless and unbelievable subplots and back stories here as the plot flits back and forth between 2002 and 2015 like some social issues movie moth. This tries to be relevant by having a CT (counter terrorism) unit and a mosque and the rest of it - which never really gels at all. The movie plods and plods along with not much happening then thinks it has to make up for it so it has a big scene in a baseball stadium.

Predictably disappointing. 2 stars. The ORIGINAL film from Argentina is a 5 star classic though.

This is a great film. It's very tense and gripping, and so claustrophobic and sweaty you can almost feel the African heat oozing through the TV screen into your eyes.

OK, so the Tom Hanks movie Captain Philips was not bad - but as per usual for a Hollywood movie, it had to obey certain rules - use the tropes of an action movie.

This is much more refined and intelligent - all about the dreadful progress of strained negotiations (a Brit actor features here but do not know his name). It's really tense and one really does not know how it will end - well or badly.

This is highly recommended for all intelligent film fans. 5 stars.

I hated this - I mean I REALLY hated this. So much so I turned off half way through and it is so rare for me not to finish a film!

This is just salacious, manipulative and, frankly, dull - based on a massively over-rated novel which just wrote up a tragic true case.

Of course, the Oscars are always awarded to actors playing disabled or abused characters. And the Americans adore a pity party.

But this film is tripe.

No stars. Avoid.

Well, this is what happens when you get state funding (i.e. OUR tax money) given by committees of 'crachach' cronies from the Welsh Arts Council and Lottery Funding jobsworths.

This film is so amateurish it should have stayed in a film school class to be dissected and then rejected before it ever got to the stage of being made.

It is SO unfunny that calling it a comedy must be breaking the Trade Description Act.

It's about a teenager (and the actor who plays him also writes and directs - ALWAYS A bad sign!) who is miserable in Wales (what stereotypes!) and then the film has to do something so introduces an American character who moves in next door (this is never explained or justified anywhere in the script). This is a dire attempt to sell the film in the USA, I presume - but I really cannot imagine ANY US film distributor wanting to touch this 4th rate trash.

There is so much writing talent in Wales, yet our useless Arts Council constantly supports mediocre mess like this. This film is an embarrassment - confusing, confused, unfunny and amateurish.

One to watch to learn how NOT to make films. No stars.