Film Reviews by PV

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.

I find Pedro Almodovar perhaps the most over-rated director in the world today (except perhaps for the awful Wed Anderson).

This movie is cheap and looks it - like a B-movie (and it probably started as a 4th rate play in Spanish theatre or via some awful drama student workshop). It chooses to flaunt gay stereotypes in an utterly unrealistic plot (so many things happen here that would never ever happen on ANY aircraft - in the Western world anyway. Maybe in Russia or Africa).

What Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz are doing in this trash is a mystery. Maybe they were drugged (like the passengers on this fantasy jumbo jet).

Wanna watch a great movie set on a flight? Rent out AIRPLANE! It knocks socks of this Spanish omelette mess of a movie.

This is just irritating and boring - and unfunny - and crude. One star is for its being less than 90 minutes.

Firstly, let me say the main reason I disliked this movie was that it was based on a musical by Stephen Sondheim who is world famous for managing to write very many musicals without including a memorable hit song in any of them (well, except 'Send in the Clowns').

In this, the whole movie is played with that singing-speaking voice - as in the similarly annoying Les Miserables (though that at least has a memorable song in it). I CANNOT STAND modern musicals like this - listen to GREAT musicals by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins + many others) or Rogers and Hart and see just how much musical theatre has declined in recent decades. There MUST by hummable songs in a musical. Otherwise, why bother?

As someone else has said, there is also an extraneous and unnecessary 30 minutes on the end of this film - this has become common in Hollywood movies - in fact it's practically a cliché now. LONG 2 hour plus movies with a 'false' happy ending half an hour from the end, then some post-modern tricksy guff dragging the whole thing out. This film should have ended 30 minutes before it did.

Having said all that, the intertwining of fairy tales is impressive and well-plotted (esp the original version of Cinderella where the sisters get their feet chopped off to fit the slipper, and where birds peck their eyes out) is used here. Some old British character actors like Frances De La Tour appear, as does the ever-watchable Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep. All this stuff is good. The film does not shy away from death or characters dying either - refreshing in a children's/family movie.

The best song is probably the 'it's your fault' song which raised a laugh (SO TRUE TO LIFE!) and there were a couple of other laugh out loud moments too.

But the music is JUST not good enough or strong enough. I can see children being very bored by a lot of this too.

The music gets NO stars.

The acting, story and SFX get 2.

Worth watching on a wet afternoon, but prepare to be annoyed and only occasionally entertained!

This film starts well. The characters are believable and well-drawn, and you can almost smell the sticky heat of the desolate and dangerous Outback.

However, once we get into the final act, the thing veers into silliness.

It's based on a book so maybe it's just following that. But I have also noticed how so many Hollywood films just cannot seem to leave things be in the third act - there always has to be some unbelievable appendix shoved in at the end to make things more exciting (allegedly). Here, it just spoils the film.

A far better Outback movie is the one starting Ray Winstone: 'The Proposition'.

This is just Hollywood guff, ultimately, and unbelievable - I just do not believe the Michael Douglas character would behave in this way. And boy does Michael Douglas look old in this movie - every day of his 72 years. No wonder Catherine Z-J is depressed!

An interesting Spanish thriller which has clearly been influenced by Nordic TV drama. Lots of landscape and moods - and very unSpanish in its feel in many ways.

Basically, it's the old plot: the hunt for a serial killer. This is complicated by various issues - not least of which is the uneasy relationshio between one Spanish police officer and his new partner who may or may not have been a member of Franco's gestapo.

Visually interesting, with a side to an unknown corner of Spain explored on screen, this is a good thriller but perhaps more interesting in its depiction of Spain and its analysis of Spain's troubled civil war history.

4 stars.

This is a really fascinating movie. It's a mystery really and/or a study of mental illness.

It's written by two American writers who also produced and directed, and the second half is set in the US.

It really is an enigma and compulsive viewing.

Beautifully filmed and well-acted, not to mention well-written.

It also has a brilliant soundtrack by The Octopus Project.

A slowish start makes me give it 4 stars, but it's really 4.5. One of the most interesting films of the last decade - which is fitting really, as its focus on the movie Fargo reminds me that that is one of the most interesting films of the last 2 decades!

Watch this and be amazed.

There is always an issues with films about pop stars - and that's whether one can believe that a character would have become a big star with the music used in the film.

Most movies fail in the regard unless they use cover versions (as in That's Be The Day from the early 70s, still the best of the best).

In this case, I simply didn't believe that the Al Pacino character would have become such a big star on the strength of a song (Baby Doll) that sounds like a weak B side.

The other problem with this movie is the way it trowels on the sentimentality - this is SO saccharine in the worst Hollywood manner. So we have family breakdown, the stereotype of a negligent father and bitter son, then we have a child (and OMG how unbelievably irritating this child with the fake 'illness' of ADHD is!) and a silly subplot about a wondrous school that can cure her, and then yet more illness - yep, the big C, cancer - worming its exploitative way into the script. I hated these parts of the film.

But it's good in parts, with a tight script (once it gets onto Al Pacino's relationship with his manager, for example) and some funny lines and scenes.

But it could have been a much MUCH better movie.

Watch right to the credits to see the story of the actual Lennon letter that was sent to a British folk singer - and which inspired the film (but this film is NOT a true story!)

3 stars. JUST!

This is an utterly unbelievable tale which very much fits the modern template (stereotype/cliché) of a 'strong' woman taking on everyone and winning in a man's world. Yawn. How many more times?

Fairly tedious and slow. With the obligatory love/relationship triangles and scenes.

Judging by the previews of other movies before this one, the distributors obviously think it's a women's film - and it probably is.

Far too slow - esp for a US audience - though. So I doubt many people went to see it.

Competently directed - though I always think it best if actors stick to acting, rather than direct themselves, because at times this film was clock-witchingly slow.

Good if you like garden design though, I suppose, or are planning a trip to Versailles.

2 stars.

This is the funniest thing to come out of the BBC since the series '2012'. Set in the fictional (but true to life) corrupt central Asian state of Tazkbekistan, it follows the adventures, trials and travails of a the new Ambassador and his more experienced deputy.

It is short - 3 parts - but each part s a real classic, whether part one about The Mighty Ibex and the Helicopter Contract, or part 2 with Prince Mark's visit to get the Oil Contract (based on Prince Andrew, I hear, or part 3, about the Insurgency and the 'Paisley Visit'.

The British ambassador has to put up with a lot in this most junior of junior postings in the diplomatic service - a mad dictator, corrupt officials, Royal visits, constant nagging from London, a mad Northern Irish vetting official (brilliantly played) called 'Mr 21' after his obsession that officials should drink now more than 21 units of alcohol - a week (what, not a day???) - and worse, the French. Watching how the political, moral and personal aspects twist and turn and occasionally collide is hilarious - I bet the writers had a ball writing this!

Series 2 will shortly be broadcast in BBC 2, I hear - though why the idiotic BBC puts it on so late on that channel is anyone's guess.

Forget drivel like 'Miranda' or dreadful ethnic sketch shows. THIS is where the real comic writing talent at the BBC resides.

Rent this + laugh your head off at an intelligent, well-made, superbly-written drama. 5 stars with a bottle of Tazbekistan vodka thrown in!

I shall ask my old school friend - now British ambassador is a corrupt, chaotic, small eastern European state (which begins with M + is under Ukraine) - how true to life this is when I see him next too!

I didn't have great expectations of this film, knowing it was based on an absurdity and events that did not happen. True, the future Queen and her sister Margaret DID go out into the crowd in front of Buck House on VE day - but that's it. Nothing else portrayed in the movie is true.

But it is a very well made and entertaining picture, with some great acting (and top actors like Roger Allam are in it!) and a sharp script.

Not over-long so it does not flag or sag either.

So long as you don't take it too seriously and enjoy the fictional fun, you'll enjoy it. Forget history - this is fiction, which, as writers know, contains more emotional truth than history books even could.

4 stars.

This is a superb film - the best film I have seen about an army facing the travails of the desert in Afghanistan (or Iraq). Better than the Hurt Locker, Green Zone or all the US movies on wars in those desert countries.

Super-realistic with utterly believable dialogue - it shows what can happen to soldiers when things go wrong. Esp with mines...

Based on a true story - watch over the end credits to hear the actual radio dialogue and see what has happened to the men involved in this episode, for which many medals were awarded.

Interestingly, this film was privately funded - no funding from the EU, the lottery or the achingly pc diversity-obsessed BBC (maybe because there are NO women in the film and just one black soldier and a non-pc joke about him said by other soldiers).

This film should have got BBC funding and lottery funding too - instead of the tedious pc drivel they usually fund and inflict on a public who want good films, not pc propaganda shoved down their throats.

A must see for everyone. Watch it and realise how war can never be glorious.

However, Afghanistan was a success as British and other forces stopped that country descending into a Taliban hell and its influence moving south - not to mention stopping Osama's planning terrorist atrocities in the West. Sadly, our support of Islamic fighters against secular dictators in north Africa and Syria has led to the rise of ISIS, who are even worse then the Taliban. Watch this film to realise why our sending ground troops to deal with these barbarians is not an option.

This is a superb film - utterly stylish and stylised, as is usual from former pop promo director Jonathan Glazer (who recently directly the deeply disturbing Under the Skin).

The cast is superb - with Winstone capturing exactly the attitude of the white working class who have escaped the multiculturalist mess of grey grime+crime-ridden East London and a government and pc culture which despises them for their race, their class, their culture, to instead live in the sunny climes of southern Spain. OK< so this character is a criminal and not just a white working class refugee from 'vibrant and diverse' London, but his half a million plus Brit neighbours are the same as him in their culture and attitudes.

Congratulations to the film-makers for putting the white working class on screen - because it seems these days you can see any and every culture on TV and film, any ethnicity and diverse culture celebrated - except for the nasty white working class culture of the Cockney Eat End (always condemned as 'racist' by ignorant bigot 'liberals' seemingly unaware of the irony puddle they're sanctimoniously splashing in!)