Film Reviews by PV

This is a fascinating movie - about songwriting, the toll artistic creation can take, and somewhat surprisingly, the huge power shrinks can have over their patients.

Not sure how much is true - and how much invented through dramatic licence.

However, what is true is that the Beach Boys made some great records + all their great songs were written by Brian Wilson, who then suffered a mental collapse thru drug abuse, stayed in bed for 3 years then disappeared. Only to recently complete the SMiLE album started in 1968 (?) and start touring again (watch till the VERY end to watch Brian singing the track LOVE AND MERCY).

I had no idea about the rest of the story so enjoyed seeing that (and I have always been deeply suspicious of shrinks and their motives, so this was preaching to the converted really).

As a songwriter and writer, I also identified with the sometimes tortuous process of songwriting.

Though a bit 'poor me' pity party, misery memoir at times (to fit in with modern American mores and the habit of blaming 'abuse' by parents for everything that goes wrong in one's life, rather than, say, DRUG ABUSE), this is a really watchable film. One wonders if daddy was quite so bad though - he was just a typical post-war dad, non?

This film flits back and forth between the 60s and the 80s. With Brian Wilson played by 2 different actors - something that works surprisingly well.

I simply adored all the songs here - such great harmonics and key/chord changes. For that alone I loved this film. Though the changes can be confusing to the unwary.

4 stars +

I really enjoyed this film - not a classic but funny nonetheless.

Firstly, it's always fun to see Nazis coming to a grisly end, especially in a Paris brothel.

Secondly, Peter Sellers is such a genius mimic, I could watch him in anything. Here he plays an old French general to perfection, and also does his upper class British officer impression (which he uses in several movies including Dr Strangelove).

Thirdly, I like the way it whizzes through the war in 90 minutes!

And finally there are some laugh out loud gags and great characters.

I know they'll never show this on TV, mainly because one character Peter Sellers plays in a Japanese General/Prince - and TV esp the BBC have effectively banned any white person ever doing impressions of ethnic characters. That's a shame esp as the opposite is allowed. The same fate has befallen classic comedy It Ain't Half Hot Mum (thankfully available on DVD via CinemaParadiso!). The Millionairess is a better movie and has Peter Sellers playing an Indian (and singing Goodness Gracious Me). These films should all be seen in context BUT they should be seen and broadcast. I feels rather like living in a totalitarian state when the 'politically correct' Politbureau decide that the people must never see such things again.

Also, this was made by and with people who had lived through the war and been in it on both sides YET they can laugh about it. These days it'd be considered 'offensive' by the pc guardians of taste and decency no doubt. One more reason to watch and laugh then!

A middling entry to the Peter Sellers CV (and also featuring a performance by Timothy West and great German actors too).

This is a funny film - packed full of 2 things: 1) visual jokes which are as old as Laurel and Hardy and silent movies (in fact, older, but none the worse for that!), and what can be called Jewish humour - lots of that too.

The visual jokes and ironies are the funniest; the crude/lewd jokes don't work as well but like most movies this is aimed at a young audience in that. More mature viewers can appreciate the more sophisticated ironies + visual humour more, I think.

Quite a starry cast perform well. Some spot-on jokes for anyone who runs a small business too (like me!)

A good movie to watch on Friday night with some friends, some beers and a takeaway!

This is an excellent film - funny, well-written, and the sort of comedy the UK seems incapable of making (as its film industry was incapable ot making funny family comedies like Touchstone in the 80s and after).

Yes, it's crude and lewd (too much so for my taste). But it is also laugh-out-loud funny. The slapstick is like a crude version of Laurel and Hardy. The cameos (Eminem et al) are top notch too. I watched this movie with an elderly lady who, despite the crude gags and violence, really enjoyed it and laughed out loud too. I think you just have to GET satire to enjoy it, and so many these days - raised on dumb, unfunny, pc BBC2 'comedy' - just don't.

The movie has a serious message too - this is a really decent satire NOT ONLY on the awfulness of North Korea (and by extension all dictatorships, like the Islamofascist ones the woefully misguided lefties in the UK want to hug and appease as fellow Israel-haters) but also on American culture, especially inane celebrity culture.

This is a bit too long. Plus the actor who plays Kim Jung-un speaks American English too well and has American teeth too. HOWEVER, these are minor gripes.

This film is 1) funny; 2) true; 3) a classic.

5 stars.

The first half of this film is great. Really tight writing, a super cast including the best British character actor alive today Jim Broadbent (plus some other good actors and lines), arch dialogue, fun times.

Then, about half way through, it all goes a bit pear-shaped - like so many movies today. It tries too hard and is over-long.

Maybe it should have been a 1 hour TV drama instead of a film?

Anyway, good fun for Christmas, so 4 stars.

OK, so this film (from 1959) is very dated. Its attitudes to male/female relations will no doubt make many an angry feminut spit feathers.

However, this comedy also hosts a wonderful array of British character actors incl the wonderful Terry-Thomas, plus Ian Carmichael, Dennis Price, Peter Jones, Irene Handel and John Le Mesurier as a snooty waiter. Not forgetting the best actor ever to play Scrooge Alistair Sim.

It is, for me, way funnier than all the achingly pc and right-on 'comedies' we have to endure on BBC2 these days. Old-fashioned does not mean bad.

Ian Carmichael plays self-confessed loser who sign's up with the College of Lifemanship to help him get on in life.

A silly plot can be forgiven really, esp some nonsense involving a car - and there are two very funny stereotyped used car salesmen.

Many a modern Hollywood comedy has ploughed a similar furrow - although in common with most British comic novels and films, the main character is a 'loser' and anti-hero and a man.

The ending is silly. But again, with this quality cast, who cares?

4.5 stars. A must for anyone who loves Ealing comedies etc.

The first thing to say about this film is that it is NOT - repeat NOT - an original idea (as some critics think). If you read the Beano from the 1970s you'll see a cartoon strip in there called the Numbskulls about little men in a boy's head controlling and managing his actions and emotions.

What this movie does is update that old idea in the context of very American psychobabble therapy culture, where children are worshipped and overprotected, and where group-hug-itis is seen as the cure for everything. Emotions and feelings are now seen as the pinnacle of human existence, rather than achievements or 'doing'. I find that irritating (and also think such over-protection damages and infantilises children and causes depression when kids grow up).

Anyhoo...this movie is clearly a collaboration - and nothing wrong with that. Pixar is famous to believing just coming up with ideas and getting them out there is important. They then get developed over years by many excellent writers. I works. Early scripts are often horrifically bad but they're honed into shape by hundreds.

This film's premise is clearly very imaginative - and the characterisation is classy. Some laugh out lines too (esp from Sadness). Also funny when we see inside the heads of other people (and even a dog and a cat over the ending credits so make sure you watch them).

Some fun stuff here about memory and how it works too. And I liked the acceptance (unusual in a touchy-feely American film) that actually bad things are part of life and thus necessary, as are all emotions.

One of the best Disney/Pixar efforts of recent years, despite the overbearing therapy-culture feelings-worship. I preferred this to 'Up' and 'Wall-E' many other Pixar films.

It'd be interested to see the film remade with a boy main character actually - as it does get a bit girly at times here, though not oppressively so.

But then The Numbskulls was always one of my favourite Beano cartoons too!

Hilarious kitsch British horror flick from 1978.

Worth watching to see how, in those days, blood was pinker and runnier, and they don't seem to have invented safety glass yet!

Also great to see Roger Daltry 'hamming' it up big time!

A Friday Night take-away film, complete with 1970s moustaches and camp horror.

Mad!

This is the sort of film the BBC and Film Council love funding, and which critics adore. It ticks all the boxes: Northern (well, Leicester) setting with local accents, TICK. Working class poverty porn and misery moping (and work men's clubs!) TICK.. Disabled issues TICK.

All very stagey too and old-fashioned - but based on a stage play so no wonder.

One problem is that the main character is repulsive so hard to warm to. And why is it, that men who live with their mums (care for them maybe) are ALWAYS mocked in dramas when women who do the same are not? Sexist misandry and hypocrisy!

Another problem is I couldn't suspend my disbelief - I just didn't believe the characters would behave in the way they did.

But on the plus side, some great dialogue and genuinely funny lines.

This is the sort of film that should be a BBC2 drama. I can't see how this made its money back at the cinema. But hey, no worries - as it's all funded by the tax payer!

2 stars.

This film is fun and made me laugh several times. I suspect it was a made-for-BBC2 TV film from 2002, but am not sure.

The plot is interesting and well-structured, with a couple of nice twists (though how much of it is really a true story as portrayed is moot).

The acting great with loads of British character actors.

It's funny, typically British - with the little 'loser' man taking on the world - and very original.

I could watch this again now. Far better than most Hollywood war films.

Only one thing ruins this film for me - the ending. Sadly, it conforms to Hollywood type there. So only 4 stars (it would have been 5 without that).

Earlier in the film some great music too: Elgar's Nimrod. Fabulous!

Here's an oddity. A film based on a novel, screenplay by Roman Polanksi, with Peter Sellers giving a very un=pc performance as 'A. Queen' in a seaside shop.

The plot is simple: arty drunk takes little girl to seaside and gets drunk alone and with others. Nothing else happens.

Make me laugh because these days this man would be arrested by the plods for: drunk and disorderly; drunk in charge of a child; child neglect/abuse; using bad language' being offensive; walking in the rain without an umbrella and much else besides!

Mind you, Peter Sellers would also be arrested for inciting hatred against homosexuals with his queeny performance.

It's all set in a foreign place - looks like the Baltic or Denmark really, judging by the language. Could be anywhere Scandinavian or northern Europe.

A very odd little film that would never be made today - mostly forgettable. Want to see a study of alcoholism, then watch Leaving Las Vegas or the weird Icelandic film Of Horses and Men (or Of Men and Horses).

I've never really liked Sherlock Holmes - because I don't believe the character or his superhuman powers of deduction (which seem to me on a par with that bloke on 3-2-1 wh0 translated absurd nonsense rhymes into meaningful clues as to what to choose to win the car and not win Dusty Bin! Anyone under 35 look away now because you won't have a clue what I am taking about!)

Holmes seems smug and grating in both the stories and the films, and I utterly despise the yoof-friendly mobile-phone-caption-spewing BBC TV version.

This is more like a TV drama - about an old 93 year old Holmes attempting to recall a case and his life. A tacked-on subplot about a Japanese herbal medicine gives the drama it's ethnic quota. Thankfully, unlike in most BBC dramas, a 1948 village has no black characters (thus reflecting the REAL WORLD). I liked the other subplot about bees and wasps more, frankly.

To be honest, Ian McKellen gives a better old man with dodgy memory and bad health performance in the classic, 5 star 'Gods and Monsters'. But this is passable and the Kent and East Sussex coast brings back memories for me.

So-so and NOT too slow-moving at all - it's a contemplative drama about an old man trying to remember his past and having flashbacks. What d'you expect? Car chases and dinosaur hunts? DOH!

3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a mercifully short film of just over an hour, and that's even padded out a lot be dancing girls doing very un-pc routines and a couple of songs.

The plot is like something out of a 30s B-movie and the acting wooden.

Harry Secombe does a lot of pratfalls.

Michael Bentine plays a Charlie-Chaplin-bow-legged mad professor. But he does a wonderfully imaginative routine with a piece of wood prop on stage in a play showing us just what he would have done in ENSA.

Spike Milligan plays his thicko character with a nasal voice.

Peter Sellars plays an officer toff - JUST the same character he plays to perfection in Kubrick's Dr Strangelove (based on a 'straight' novel by a Welsh writer incidentally). he also does American GI voices wonderfully in a stage routine - again, just what he would have done during the war in ENSA. The man was such a marvellous mimic and he was only 26 or so here - yet looks over 40.

A curiosity really, but a must-see for all fans of comedy and its history, especially British comedy - you can see its roots in musical hall clearly here.

Well, the acting's wooden, the CGI sfx spectacular and OTT, the conclusion silly, jingoistic, sentimental as expected in Hollywood disaster flicks. The lead character, a former wrestler I believe, is impossibly pumped up with biceps the size of most people's thighs! Hilarious!

Some bits are really funny. For example, the two British brothers, incl the younger teenage one, don't even slightly giggle at the name NOB hill - and the 13/14 year old reads in his San Francisco guidebook that 'nob' refers to the 'snobs' who lived there. Errr well it means something else in British English too (Americans have such a paucity of good rude words - way fewer than we Brits!)

Anyway, remember all those disaster flicks like Twister, the Day After Tomorrow et al - well, this follows the template of those almost exactly. Some silly relationship nonsense pads out the plot before the action - and predictably we have to have a young woman character who is like superwoman (who'd have thunk a 20 year old girl student would be an expert in electronics and civil engineering eh? LOL!)

A Welsh actor plays the baddie - and the thing was made in Australia with tax credits from Canada!

But what you see is what you get - and we KNOW what to expect from movies like this. It's a B-movie basically but a good fun watch to pass a Saturday evening with a takeaway! So 3 stars. At least it doesn't pretend to be someone it's not like so many pretentious US films.

This is written by the great British (and Jewish) writer Ronald Harwood (originally Horwertz) - and it's based on his stage play from 1980. Harwood won the Oscar for The Piano screenplay and also wrote the script for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. He is one of those British writers trained and grounded in the theatre, who have made the transition to film more than a bit successfully. He's just turned 81 too!

The acting in this film is superb too, and the characters are well-drawn.

It's all basically about whether art and politics should mix, and whether artists of any type have a responsibility NOT to do what evil dictators want (well, we could ask those presently pandering to Russian and Chinese leaders LOL!)

This is an insoluble problem, of course, and I can see both side - as indeed does the play and the characters within in.

I shall not give a spoiler of the ending here.

Just to say there is real footage of the actual Furtwangler greeting Goebbels at the end of the film. It all revolves around whether this great conductor was complicit in Nazi crimes and supported them. Snapping at his heels is a young conductor - Karajan - who was still conducting in the late 80s!

The extent of the involvement of ordinary Germans in the rise of Nazi-ism is also explored. And thankfully this drama does not wallow in pc pity parties of certain other dramas which portray the Germans all as innocents led astray by a pied piper called Hitler. This is a drama with guts. As for anti-Semitism - well, the Russians have hated Jews for centuries, which is why so many left Eastern Europe for the USA especially.

If you want car chases and explosions and CGI computer games in your movies don't rent this out; if you want an intelligent and thoughtful drama (and yes that means wordy with lots of dialogue and big words) then watch this - you'll be thinking about it for days afterwards.