Film Reviews by PV

Gosh this film is depressing. Though, probably unintentionally, the sheer doom-laden scale of the chain of events involving stolen meat, a dead body, an alcoholic hack, shootings at flower shops etc becomes rather funny. Black comedy at its blackest! Dead bodies going AWOL are always funny in films.

This tragic drama Shakespearean or perhaps even Ancient Greek in the way the behaviour of one mentally unstable young man starts a series of events which leaves a trail of bodies and misery throughout this sink and sinking town. A domino effect that no-one has the energy to stop.

It's set in the 1970s (apparently 1978) though I only realised this after a while when old-style phones were ringing and people were wearing funny clothes like flared trousers! The area of God's Pocket is in Philadelphia apparently, though it was all filmed in Yonkers, New York. And it touches on themes of the day: racism, the mob, the American underclass etc.

It's also the last movie the late Philip Seymour Hoffman acted in, and his character anchors the story as the world collapses around him; however, his penultimate movie, A Most Wanted Man, was by far the better film. This is a small, modest film which, typical of so many US indie movies, tends to wallow in the underclass poor America which Hollywood never really shows or cares about.

However, the film for me is stolen from the lead actors by the excellent British actor Eddie Marsan (Sixty-six; Tyrannosaur etc) whose cynical cash-strapped undertaker steals the show for me from the flashier more well known leads. In a better world, that might get a best supporting actor Oscar nomination.

One BIG gripe: there are NO HOH subtitles with this film, which, considering so many characters mumble and slur their lines in the now-compulsory naturalistic way, is a real problem. All viewers, I am sure, would appreciate hearing all dialogue clearly using subtitles (you don't have to be deaf to use them!)

Probably 3.5 stars but 3 because no subtitles!

This is a brilliant movie.

First off, there is a towering Oscar-worthy performance by Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom, the amoral, psychopathic, sociopathic, manipulative, soundbite-spouting, ruthlessly driven and charmingly optimistic small time thief who stumbles on a career as a 'nightcrawler' - someone who photographs and videos crime scenes, sometimes before the police get there, in late night LA, the sells the footage to the early morning TV news. Other characters are also interesting and well-played.

Second, the satire is sharp and true to life, with not only the TV industry exposed for what it can be at its worst, but also human ambition itself - and the American Dream too, which the Louis Bloom character is focused on chasing as he reaches for the top (and this character can only really be American in his ruthless optimism learned from internet get-rich-quick and succeed business courses). It's easily the best movie satire on TV new since Network in the 1970s.

The presence of 4 or 5 real-life US newsreaders must make this even more real for US audiences. But all viewers will at some stage realise, perhaps with horror, that what the sick amoral psychopath says is actually true - people (i.e. us) - do want more and more extreme footage on TV, and ratings go up when such 'corss-the-line' amoral videos are shown (on TV or online, where beheadings and other horrors are watched by millions).

Third, this is a really effective nail-biting thriller, where all violence is necessary to the plot and not gratuitous. I was hooked to the screen here.

One enormous plot hole, however, arrives when the police interview Bloom but do not seize his laptop, video camera, or check internet records. In the UK the police do this for trivial non-crimes (such as squabbles on Facebook, Twitter and email) - but then our police are becoming a bit like the Stasi as they crush free speech in order to boost their arrest stats. But I am sure in the USA the police are more draconian. There is no way therefore that Lou Bloom could hide his tracks.

Interesting name too, Lou Bloom - because this character is blooming in his life as he achieves the American dream by owning a TV company.

This is probably the best movie Jake Gyllenhaal has ever made. It's intelligent, slick, thrilling and a wickedly brilliant satire on the whole TV industry, especially the one in the USA - but it's also much more than that: it is a satire on our media-infused always-on news-junkie society itself, and especially the amorality of the American Dream and cut-throat ambition which over-rides any sense of morality to get what it wants. I have known people, some in the TV/media industries, who are like this and would sell their own grandmothers and watch their friends die to get ahead - so this is all frighteningly true.

A brilliant movie and a must-see. (It should win Oscars but probably won't due to its release date). 5 stars.

This film is well worth a watch - it portrays Dr Mengele who lived under an assumed name after fleeing Germany for South America after the war (on a Vatican passport!)

Set in 1960, at the time when Mossad kidnapped Eichman and took him to Israel for his trial, a viewer who knows the story (and that Mengele died in 1979 in Brazil from a stroke) is not so much what happens, but how it happens.

I did wonder if all the stuff about a doll factory was based on what actually happened, and if Dr Mengele actually stayed with this family, using them in his secret medical experiments, delighted to have a pregnant woman expecting twins to use in his experiments.

However, one expects the truth to be embellished for dramatic purposes.

The story and acting here are really believable, with the actor playing Mengele capturing at once his evil charm.

Worth watching this together with the 1976 film The Boys from Brazil (based on the Ira Levin novel) and maybe an episode of The Nazis - A Warning from History.

This film is a charming take on the story of Paddington, a bear from darkest Peru, who gets found at Paddington station by the Brown family. They take him in, and much chaos ensues in a gentle, jolly way.

Well, that's the books. But the picture books had no real plot, just gentle adventures and vignettes; so, necessarily, a full-length movie has to create a three act structure - and introduce obstacles for the main character to overcome, largely in the form of Nicole Kidman's ice queen taxidermist baddie. Hey ho...

The script here is sharp, with several laugh out loud lines and sequences, the characters very well drawn and there's some class acting on display - and the wonderful stage and Shakespeare actor Ben Wishaw (who played the definitive Richard II in the Hollow Crown TV series) voices Paddington himself. Plus some of it's set at the Natural History Museum, just about my favourite place in London! It's probably the last time Dippy will be on screen too as that fake/plaster skeleton will soon be replaced by a real one of a blue whale.

Re the time this film is set - well, it does what very many adaptations of old kids' books do and goes for a non-specific fantasy time, where kids have ipods yet no-one has a mobile phone or computer. It works here - in a way it really didn't in the recent awful TV version of Professor Branestawm.

There is clear influence from silent comedy in this film - and I bet the film-makers went back to Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and others, and copied frame for frame the expressions and pauses. But nothing wrong with that!

Now the negatives. In the books, the Browns are a modest family living in (I think) a semi-detached house with a little garden. Here, they live in a stucco mansion which would cost well over £3 million in today's market, maybe £5 million. Julie Walters plays Mrs Bird who in the books is a cockney, I think - here she is Scottish (why? To appeal to the US market no doubt). Occasionally the movie edges over into smugland - especially as the cosy upper class Browns are portrayed as 'normal' whereas Peter Capaldi's single man who lived with his mother unto, she dies is portrayed as a baddie and/or fool (that is offensive - why is it OK to be abusive to single men like this in a way it would not be acceptable to any other group?) And then there are the occasional subtle pro-mass-immigration lines smuggled in - much waffle about 'everyone can fit in here in London' - and that all grates.

BUT it could have been a LOT worse, as many attempts at movies from old kids' books show. So a well-deserved 4 stars.

I really enjoyed this film. It's clearly from a stage play and would thus be a bit wordy for some, but I just loved wallowing in a well-written piece of drama with great acting from experienced actors who know what they're doing. A real breath of fresh air after watching Hollywoodised trash.

Kevin Kline gets his best role for ages (especially when he starts drinking again...); Maggie Smith maintains her usual high standards with a cracker of a wicked old lady role; and Kristin Scott-Thomas also has a plum role for an older woman.

The plot hangs on a weird point of French property law where someone can buy an apartment with a sitting tenant. Not sure how true all that is, but it's a great staring point for all sorts of fun.

OK, so maybe the 3rd act strains the suspension of disbelief (and there is a horribly misjudged opera scene by the Seine) - and maybe the therapy-speak pity party US-style poor little rich kid 'mummy and daddy didn't love wickle me' shtick gets tiresome. BUT it's a film which I enjoyed thoroughly and which made me laugh out loud on several occasions.

A good 4 stars. One gripe: NO English subtitle option! Though the movie is mostly in English not subtitled French, so general viewers won't mind that. BUT very ironic that a film which would appeal to elderly viewers who may be deaf has not HOH subtitle option...

The first thing I have to say re this movie is that it is not a patch on the BBC TV movie 'Breaking the Code', starring Derek Jacobi as Alan Turing from 1996/7.

The second thing is that I have never liked Benedict Butterscotch, or whatever his mad name is, and cannot really believe him in the role.

The third thing is that this is a movie which is sheer fantasy, not accurate biography, and tells blatant lies about Britain during World War II - not that the intended US and international audience will care. But I do.

No-one 'starved' during WWII in the UK when bread was never even rationed - so goodness knows where the film makers got the footage of a woman eating out of a dustbin! In fact, rationing ensured everyone was well-fed - and the poorest better fed than in the 1930s; indeed, people had a more nutritious diet than many do today.

Another massive lie is that the US gave help and food to the UK. NO! The USE only LENT Britain money which it could then use to buy stuff from the US to boost the American economy. The UK did not pay off this debt until 2006! Unlike with Germany and Japan, Great Britain was never GIVEN a penny or a cent by the USA.

Another big issue with this film is the use of modern words when this is supposed to be 1940. Listen - NO-ONE used the word 'smart' to mean bright or clever in the 1940s; this usage did not become common till the 1990s! Moreover, a 'professor' in the UK is NOT just a lecturer as in the US.

The facts here are no such thing - and as I know a lot about Turing I can say with confidence that Bletchley Park's experts were ALL male, so NO, there was no pretty genius Keira Knightly character in real life. The politically 'correct' pro-feminist pro-gay polemic and plots here are irritating. The fabricated protagonists and obstacles that face Turing in this movie annoying to anyone who knows the truth.

This screenplay won the Oscar in 2015. That says a great deal about the Academy Awards, frankly. It did not deserve the honour at all.

Having said this, if you can look past the Hollywoodisation and lies than infest this movie, then it is an average watch - and will no doubt appeal very much to all the millions of ignorant people worldwide who know nothing about Turing. And yet, that these people think that Britain was starving during the war and saved by the US of A is a disgrace. Hollywood is always doing this - it did it with U571 which showed Americans finding an Enigma machine on a U boat (which the British actually found) and it did it with Argo, which falsely showed the Brits refusing to allow people access to their embassy (when in reality they did!).

I enjoyed this film - but found the second half a bit 'jumping the shark'.

The first half however is hilarious, as an old man encounters various random happenings which lead him to be pursued by a gang of heavies and the police: in this it's a bit Ealing Comedy really! Some larger than life characters too make this a treat.

The action is intercut with this man's memories of his oddball life. These episodes - though utterly surreal and farfetched - manage to hang together well and there are some laugh out loud moments. Of course, this will bring to mind Forest Gump (which I hated) or Zelig or Orlando, as the man is shown in his youth in the companies of dictators and presidents etc. But it rattles along fine, and I loved all the explosions too!

Until we move into the second half, where twee silliness and absurd coincidences strained my suspension of disbelief in the characters and story. An East End cockney crime lord living in Bali and his end make this one coincidence too far.

Having said that, it's an unusual and different film, though there is rather a glut of novels at the moment of old people going a-wandering (that Harold Fry book and many others). It seems a subgenre all its own now maybe?

Still, I enjoyed watching it and it was better than I expected - so 4 stars just for that first half.

This film is a passable attempt to paint a portrait of drunken doomed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in his sad final years. It is perhaps a study of alcoholism more than anything else though, as well as the sheer stark pomposity of the academic world when confronted by the creative one,

There was a BBC drama last year (2014 - the centenary of Dylan's birth) that portrayed the poet's final trip to New York (where he died aged 39 in 1953 after drinking too much whisky and then getting injected with painkillers by doctors...) - and to be fair, that was the better drama. 'Dylan in New York'?

This film has more pretensions and aims for the arty audience. It is clearly low-budget, with bars and hotels in Swansea standing in for New York - but attempts to be surrealism and impressionistic at times rather than aiming for documentary realism.

The poetry gets a good airing - and the early work of Thomas always sounds great - but at the end of this perhaps flimsy and undeveloped film, I felt that despite sound great scenes (for example a great ghost story session), it lacked the depth of the BBC 2014 drama.

It may also be called a tad self-indulgent, maybe a result of the state funding for its budget (via Film Wales) or the fact that the actor who plays Thomas and the director also so-wrote the screenplay. I suspect a good editor and an outside voice to suggest screenplay changes would have been a big help.

Anyway, a modest addition to the portrayals of Dylan Thomas, a man whose early life was genius and who's later years a study in the drink taking the man.

Not as good or groundbreaking as it thinks it is.

Just average, and thankfully not too long. 3 stars

This really is an awful film - schmaltzy fantasy slush, aimed at a US female market, I think (and produced by Queen of Schmaltz Oprah Winfrey and also Spielberg).

It is offensive in many ways too. Firstly, it persists with the - frankly - racist myths about bad British food. It is utterly untrue that, as the main character here argues, British vegetables 'have no taste and no soul'. Maybe he should remember that it was actually the British who introduced tea-drinking to India and also, with other Europeans, gave India potatoes, tomatoes, and even chillies (native to south America NOT Asia!). Also, the fact is no Indian restaurant (even one serving British Indian food - which is a British creation) would survive in rural France, where people don't like spicy hot food and are deeply conservative, eating what they know (and where a lot of the French would be deeply racist against any incomer Indians). But never let the facts get in the way of a good racist anti-British rant eh?

Also, the movie promotes the lie that it always rains in England (in fact London gets less annual rainfall than Paris or Rome!) and that the UK is 'cold'. No it isn't! The British climate is maritime and changeable BUT it is never extreme. You want cold - go to new York or Berlin!

The film is written by Stephen Knight - and if this is the same guy who wrote Dirty Pretty Things then he has fallen far indeed. It's a painting by numbers script, with VERY unlikely romantic relationships mirroring others, and utterly unbelievable character arcs meaning goodies become baddies and vice versa, up until a predictable Hollywood huggy third act. I had hoped that the 'baddie' chef may come back to wreak revenge, and pierce the big bubble of balderdash and saccharine fairy tale this film descends into, but no such luck.

No doubt many middle aged sentimentalist women will love this film, and identify with Helen Mirren.

Me, I feel I wasted 2 hours of my life watching an overlong, lazy, schmaltz-fest which, incredibly, ends up being racist and offensive. Want a food movie? Watch Babette's feast or Eat Man Drink Woman - not this trash.

I don't usually like Mike Leigh films - that preachy, 1970s-style-improvised shtick makes me want to turn off - as does his usual condemnation of any working class character who wants to aspire to better (and this despite Leigh himself being the rich very middle class son of a doctor).

However, I have always loved Turner and it's great to see a film about him (though shocking it was largely funded by French companies, it seems!)

The plot is wafer thin, yet there are 2 limp plot points; but really, this is episodic in structure, and perhaps all the better for it, as it allows the award-winning cinematographer to create shots that mirror Turner's paintings.

I also loved hearing real Kentish dialect from Margate; these days, everything's been swallowed by Estuary English and London-speak, but there was always a distinct Kentish dialect, for those who know.

And one thing is also love about this film is it shows how someone in England from a poor background could rise to the top (and in his day Turner was really VERY rich - something this socialist director deliberately hides from view, I think). Just like Nelson, or the poet John Clare, he rose from a basic education to the forefront of his field (something leftie nationalist academics who claim that only happened in Scotland will have to acknowledge - the English have as many salt of the earth success stories as Scotland; in fact, way more).

Because it lacks the preaching and polemic, maybe this is Mike Leigh's best film (certainly since the early-mid 70s). It's a bit over-long and occasionally confusing (a who's who game is fun!). Plus, a slighter stronger plot frame to hang the painterly episodes on would have been a plus.

But lovely to see Margate and Kent in a movie!

Watch and wallow in the genius of Turner. 4 stars.

This sequel is well worth a watch, though not as good as the first Inbetweeners movie (which made anyone involved in it rich through having 'points').

Slickly written, with plenty of pace and some accurately portrayed irritating gap year characters (esp Ben the SO true to life white-dreadlocked public school tool - I have known many like him!), this is at times very funny indeed.

Yes, it's crude, lewd, laddish, adolescent and often childish - BUT that is FUNNY and I do so which the po-faced twerps who run TV and diversity-worshipping petals at the BBC especially would get off their sanctimonious high horses and realise that (instead of commissioning endless shows by unfunny and 'politically correct' female comedians).

Will is a true hero for the modern moronic age - a throwback to a more rational, intelligent world, who thus stands out like a non-texting thumb amongst a crowd of digital dunces.

Having praised this, now some criticism - there are some gaping plot holes (characters and plot lines, eg the streaking one, just vanish for no reason).

But the characters are strong and well-drawn, and the 4 Inbetweeners (the mother, father, child and wildcard - screenwriters will know what I mean) ping well off each other.

Sure, it could all have been on TV, made as a series of 4 or 6. But these actors are now rich and want to do other things, so fair enough.

This film is more enjoyable that, for example, the tedious Grand Budapest Hotel which was so awful I switched off half way through, and far better than most BBC drama, which plumbs new depths of groaning tedium with every diversity-trained step it takes.

I was going to give this 3, but now I think it should be 3.5+ - so 4 stars.

Watch, laugh and cringe!

I really enjoyed this film. Sure, it's full of pseudo-philosophical Frenchie twaddle (you really can tell this film is part-French just from that!); sure, it's heavily influenced by The Matrix and other Hollywood nonsense; and sure, it's full of set-piece chases and martial arts and car chase stuff, to appeal to the Chinese market (that is what has ruined the James Bond movies, which used to be fun and funny).

But I enjoyed this way more than the last James Bond film.

The special effects are wonderful. The film is trim and efficient, coming it at less than 90 minutes, and moves along at a cracking right-rollicking rate.

The acting is great, esp Scarlet J, who played another sci-fi role in 'Under the Skin'. Her character arc here is so utterly massive, but you believe the transformation, due to the magic of sci-fi and a Bond-like drug-dealer plot line.

This really is a cracking thriller, spoilt by some silly wildlife shots at the start and by over-intellectualising Frenchie philosophical waffle at the end.

I suspected it might connect with Lucy, the skeleton of the oldest human found in Africa, and it does, esp in a weird, perhaps unintentionally comic, time travel sequence.

But otherwise, just great Frenchie fun! 4 stars.

This film hooks you in the first few seconds and doesn't let go. I sat transfixed watching it (and used subtitles to better understand all the dialogue). It's from a John le Carre novel, so except lots of twists and turns.

Philip Seymour Hofman in what I think is his last role gives a superbly understated performance.

The labyrinthine layers of the secret service - or rather, secret services - and their skulduggery, competition, betrayals etc are dissected as the plot moves forward and the characters develop.

A really superb thriller, which I could watch more than once. This is in a whole different league to the usual Hollywood shoot-em-up movies about the same subject.

A very timely film too. I watch this the day before Jihadi John was named, and have just been looking at some so-called 'charities' for Palestinians and Syrian relief which syphon off a proportion of funds to send to Islamofascist terrorists. This film does not exaggerate a thing - this stuff is happening right now.

A brilliant film. 5 stars

This movie, like the first 300 (which is set at the same time in Thermapolae) is utter tosh - with some unintentionally funny hammed up lines in it too, so enjoy it as comedy if nothing else. However, it is entertaining though half-computer game as it's all done on green screen.

Interestingly but absurdly, the producers decided they needed female characters so rewrite history to create superwoman characters to battle the Greeks and then the Queen of the Spartans to side with them.

It is all utter twaddle but efficient at 90 minutes, and really quite enjoyable to watch for a bit of trash movie escapism. What I like is that the film doesn't pretend to be what it's not - it knows it's OTT tosh and doesn't pretend to be anything else. And it's rather well written in places too, in an overblown way.

So I enjoyed it. 3 stars.

This movie is selling itself on a gimmick - the fact it was filmed over 12 years with the same cast - which, if nothing else, is a logistical nightmare! It should definitely win an Oscar for best gimmick of the year - but no other one.

The film itself is OK, but nothing more. It could have been made with different actors playing the child and adult character, of course. It would not have received so much attention then, however.

The first hour is great - when the boy is 8 years old and more.

When adolescence hits the whole thing goes downhill, betting bogged down in typical American psychobabble and waffling about feelings. Moreover, I did not believe for a minute the journey of some of the characters - esp the mum who goes from uneducated dimwit to professor genius in 5 years; and I really don't believe in what happens to her university professor teacher, a silverback smoothie. The plot points are calculated to elicit sympathy for the mother and boy and his sister. But instead of that, they had me groaning - plus they actually made the movie a bit misandrist.

Enjoy the first hour. But don't expect too much from the rest.

Great music though - so well done to whoever sorted the soundtrack.

3 stars for an average movie.