Film Reviews by PV

This film is good in parts - it's genuinely interesting, and when it allows the plot to break through the theatrical overacting and alleged 'comedy' (maybe you gotta be Russian to get it?) the film sparks to life. Set in the early 30s, it tells the story - true, and so true for so many others - of what happens when people live in a dictatorship: the betrayal (personal and political), the shifting sangs of allegiance, the hypocrisy, the paranoia, the misery and bleak existence that so many lived through. Way too long, and the subtitles are ropey - and a few dates on screen would have helped - but still well worth a watch for any who perhaps believe that communism was ever glorious or good for 'the people' against 'imperialism' (I saw parallels with Islamic paranoia today actually). The last scenes are almost of classic status.

Here's an oddity: a film made in Lapland (and in the Lap language, I think) about Santa Claus - or Father Christmas as he's called by many in Britain. It is the best Christmas drama I have seen over Christmas for sure - and it couldn't be more different to the sacchirine-stained, soapy, girly, pity party, badly-written, derivative, forgettable dramas the BBC spew up at this special time of year. This film is memorable and orginal....................

Without wanting to give a spoiler - suffice to say that the 'real santa claus is coming to town'. This movie is perhaps more gory and violent that some would expect - and the Scandinavian openness about nudity is in stark contrast to American puritanism (where babies do not have gentitals, apparently, as in the sickly Mars Needs Moms). There are also a couple of funny jokes. But really, sit back and watch this small, short movie (oh how nice not to have to suffer 2 and half hours of Hollywood backstory boredom) and enjoy the ride. You won't see anything else like it!

I loved this film. I watched it on TV in the 80s or 90s, but saw so much when watching it again. True, I do love the music of Tchaivovsky, which helps, but I think most people would love this movie. It's fun, exhuberant, theatrical, interesting and risky - all the things most if not all movies by Brit directors are not these days. The screenplay is from a book by a relative of the composer's sponsor, so it's all pretty true and a cracking good tragic story too. The only inaccuracy is that Peter Tchaivoksky's death came about because he made a pass at the Tsar's nephew - buy anyhow, the film rises and falls like a great symphony....................................... Just as tragic really to think that Ken Russell could not get funding from the BBC or Channel 4 (which is funded by our BBC cash) to make any films whatsoever in the last 25 years of his life - so self-funded and financed small digital video movies. And yet our money financed dross like Sex Lives of the Potato Men and loads of gritty, realistic, utterly tedious films by young Scottish female directors...

This movie is perfect. It has a perfect script, first and foremost, and it's perfectly acted - all actors act well, from Marilyn, Lemmon and Curtis to all playing small roles. The film never ever drags, is well-directed and has good pace.

And, most of all, it is genuinely funny - really laugh-out-loud funny: the men-dressed-as-women shtick is older than Shakespeare, but works well when well done - and this was very controversial on the film's release when test audiences didn't like it!

But this film is more than a drag act: it is highlight of the careers of all involved. I watch this film every year or two and I still think it's funny - and way funnier than any film I have seen in the last decade (Except Four Lions perhaps). This is the best comedy ever to come out of Hollywood in my opinion, and so massivley superior to the crude, lewd, unfunny gross 'comedies' Hollywood makes now. A perfect movie.

I thought this film was excellent: for 90 minutes I was never bored and could not take my eyes off the screen. Powerhouse performances by some great British actors and some clever writing make this a gem.

For those raised on crap like Avatar and CGI dross, however, this must be baffling: characters actually talking rather than shooting each other and blowing stuff up. So don't rent this if you're the kind of retard who only likes video-game movies. This film is for more mature and intelligent audience - not one that just wants CGI explosions and American 'godammit' dialogue.

My criticisms: a bit too stagey at times - clearly Pinter-esque - and the ending sort of fizzled out (though this is not necessarily a criticism - in Hollywood, they would have demanded explosions at the end and the FBI storming in shooting people).

The language is full of the C word and essentially mannerist - but it expresses perfectly the characters and makes a change from all the American twaddle dialogue on most gangland movies.

I could watch this film several times and still enjoy it.

This film is watchable - and I enjoyed watching it, whilst laughing at how absurd it all was and also how very politically correct (no doubt the setting and the ethnic diversity helped get the funding too). Good acting, all in all, too, especially from the character 'Pest' (Alex Esmail?)........... All in all, the silly story moves along in its cliched way - the USP of this film simply being the fact it's set on an awful 'sarf lundun' estate and most of the characters are black - and muggers or drug dealers: and there lies the central problem of this movie, whose ridiculous story can survive the cheapo special effects and the fluffy teddy bears - supposedly aliens - who want to kill them. The fact is that, having lived near an estate like this and put up with the kind of mugger scum who live there, I was very much on the side of the aliens and wanted all the kids who are the 'heroes' of this story to be ripped to shreds by the alien lifeforms. I cheered every time the aliens got someone!!!!............... Now, I notice that this movie is written and directed by Joe Cornish - the ex-public school boy from a stinking rich family - who, no doubt, finds all the multicoloured durg dealing people on hellhole estates like this terribly cool - so long as he can play at being 'street' and always return to his country pad. I've known a lot of white guys like this in London - such fun to play at being gangsta when one can go back to real life somewhere else eh?.................... Those of us from ordinary families who have had to put up with the crap from feral kids from estates like this would never, ever be able to sympathise withy any of them - because we've been mugged and attacked by them, as they ruin inner city areas and make people's lives a misery. Maybe a remake then? Shot from the side of the aliens - who all seem much more attractive than the drug dealing mugging scum from the estate? For real...and ting, blud. As Master Cornish would not doubt way in his Westminster School accent...

I see that lottery funding and the Film Council partly funded this film. Well, on this basis, I'm glad the Film Council is gone! This really is such a lame comedy - with trite predictable jokes and a ropey script wasted on the good actors. There is also a crude misandrist feminist message throughout: that girls are great and men are vile and/or useless. I look forward to the lottery funded a film that promotes the equal and opposite! According to this movie, all men are such useless cooks that they can only make beans on toast and can't even use a microwave! Yeah, right... According to this, all businessmen are vile abusive perverts. According to this, it's quite OK for a woman to physically assault a man by hitting him in the testicles with a ski pole. Well, would it be so funny if the man hit the girl between the legs with one? If not, why not?Discuss........

Anyway, I suppose this is aimed at young teenage girls with brains full of fluff and hormones - so aims for a wish fulfillment fantasy for every girl was wants BOTH to be like a boy AND to be a girly girl who marries a rich prince... Yuck.... The problem is, the sports footage is not good enough to appeal to the snowboarders - the vast majority of whom are boys anyway, so will be turned off by a girl actor pretending to do it!.............And the script is not good enough to make a good believable comedy - I didn't laugh once, but groaned throughout looking at my watch.............................................In short: this film is a good example of how not to make a comedy, and should be watched by all who mourn the loss of the Film Council, though 13 year old girls might like it. All others, avoid. Unless you want to watch Bill Nighy phoning it in with his usual posh defuddled character...

This is another one of those Britflick comedies that is not very funny but which passes the time. Most jokes fall flat - or they did for me anyway - though the acting is good from all present. Some lines should have been cut, as should some very theatrical (almost pantomime) moments, and some attempts at crude humour really do not work. It thinks it is way funnier than it is though!!! And it tries SO hard for laughs. BUT It's worth watching to pass 90 minutes - but don't expect to laugh much. Yet again, a British film is ruined by its being way too theatrical. This film is so forgettable that I can't remember how it ends - and I watched it last night!

I think this series is well-filmed and acted, but, to be honest, I preferred The Pacific, made years later by the same team. Why? Well, perhaps because the Pacific war was largely Americans fighting; whereas, the fighting in Europe was not - though Band or Brothers and all other American films try to make out that WWII as Germany V the USA! I understand that the whole focus has to be on a few men, but, nevertheless, I think it's wrong and somewhat offensive to do that - especially since the USA didn't even enter the war until over 2 years after Britain had been fighting! There are a couple of moments in this where things that go wrong are blamed on 'limeys' - despite the massive sacrifice of the British and Canadians at Arnhem and elsewhere. As always, the Brits are ONLY ever portrayed as upper class twit officers, except for one mockney private! I think that those who are not very educated about WWII will be misinformed by this TV mini-series really, and that's a shame and wrong. I did however like the well-filmed scenes and also the muddy morals of it all: US soldiers looting, and casually killing Germans who surrendered, for example, and drunken yanks crashing cars after the war's end. But I still preferred The Pacific as a drama. I thought the ending was great though - not the usual American saccharine sentimentalism.

This is the kind of TV drama series that TV critics rave over: it's oh so post modern and ironic, and says so much about our bumb zombie culture. Even more ironic that it's made by the makers of Big Brother - shamelessly cashing in on their TV reality show, now that everyone's lost interest (a common reason for postmodern trickery). This is also TV made especially for the FaceSpace generation - all those teens and infantile 20-somethings who usually have an online, bitesize, goldfish-like attention span. For anyone who left school before the 90s, this drama will be rather dull and predicatble - attemtping to ape the gore-fest of teen movies with the (yawn) zombie attack plot. There are massive plot holes and nonsensical sequences. However, this is saved by a decent script by Charlie Brooker and by a superb performance by Andy Newman as the monstrous Big Brother director/producer: he clearly played this as ridiculous comedy and it works on that level. It is slightly spoilt by what is becoming a cliche on TV adverts and drama: all men are portrayed as useless idiots or perverts or monsters, while all women are portrayed as sorted, confident and much better than the men in every way! Imagine if it were the other way round! Would it be sexist? Yes, and so is this new TV tradition. (Of course, the only males allowed to be worthy and noble are always black or Asian, as they are here, which is blatant racism too). But then, people who work in TV really are as awful as portrayed here - even worse actually - with their 12 year old mentalities and hunger for ratings! That's why TV is so dumbed down and awful these days. But TV execs are SO desperate and hungry to get a share of the online generation, so love stuff like this which is fast,young and diverse and gets the FaceSpace generation watching episodes online. That means they can get advertising revenues! That means TV Producerette - she happy baby!

Three stars for the comedy and Andy Newman's performance; take those out and it gets 1 star.

This film gets 3 and a half stars (rounded up to four).

It would have been higher but there are three things that really annoyed me about this film: 1) the sound was awful - and I would advise anyone to use subtitles with it! All that naturalistic acting and mumbling and fast talking meant many good lines wre missed by all those who watched it at my house! 2) It is just too theatrical and stagy - like so much British drama, it started in the theatre, I think, and it SMELLS of the stage really, like mostradio drama too; 30 the plot twist was no surprise to me - perhaps because I have seen the same character reversal in the theatre a thousand times! I had guessed the ending well in the first act, so the twist in the third that was meant to shock and delight had me yawning instead!

ON THE PLUS SIDE: it's a great little low budget Brit flick which maintains the audience's interest throughout. The characters, though stagy, so bounce off each other with some nice verbal sparring and character arcs. The scenery is lovely (meant to be Suffolk but is in fact in Kent - possibly Sheppey) and I certainly have never seen a film set in a birdwatching hut before! And the flocks of birds look lovely too!

This is an intelligent film well worth watching. Just a shame that it didn't lose some of the stage dialogue before going into production.

I loved this film - I thought it was funny, witty, full dark ironies and great characters - and actually quite true to life too sometimes. This is amazing for me, because I usually HATE Woody Allen movies - and I mean REALLY hate them. His other movies leave me cold and I find them totally unfunny, but this is a wonderful characters comedy. Of course, the usual suspects will complain that it's not realistic and doesn't show a true picture of London - of course it doesn't, it's not a documentary of social issues set on a sink estate! But this film just really made me laugh: I know people just like the ones portrayed in the film - I particularly liked the gold-digging female characters, and also the failed writer character. Tony Hopkins also shows he can do comedy! This is the best Woody Allen film - ever! And the only one that made me laugh!

As it usual with Chinese films such as Red Cliff, this film os full of CGI battle scenes and clan warfare. So far, so good. For a Western audience the melodrama is overplayed to comic levels, of course, and the history may well be a bit confusing. But this is not my main criticism. It is clear from the subtitles given on the actual film at the end especially that the purpose of this film is to make the claim that Confusius is the greatest thinker ever - of all time - which is actually written on screen at the end! Not Socrates, Plato or Aristotle then; not Shakespeare or Newton or Einstein; no, because you see, they are not Chinese! Watching this is like watching one of those nazi propaganda films from the 30s - claiming that the master race is German, or Chinese in this case, and the trying to build a foundation for that 'truth' by trawling through ancient history and myths to prop up bigoted nationalism. The Chinese olympic ceremony was like the Berlin 1936 olympics too. As such, this film is very offensive and dangerous. It is also rather a boring movie, but no doubt Chinese nationalists will agree with its sentiment that ' a love of country comes before anything else'. This is film making as propaganda for a claim to Chinese superiority and that all other races are inferior. Backwards and old fashioned film making. Avoid.

I watched this movie expected a lame comedy of the type Hugh Grant has done a great deal in recent years; however, I was pleased to find myself laughing at this larger than life satire of reality TV. It's a good fun movie, and manages to get in the president of the USA, white trash wannabee singers for Pop Idol type shows, Lot sof Jewish humour and slapstick, the middle east peace process and Islamic terrorists all in one movie! Tightly written and fund, this is one of the best comedies to come out of Hollywood in the last decade. Hugh Grant is good as the Simon Cowell tyep Brit in America, but other actors are excellent too. This type of movie never wins prizes (Oscars are of course reserved for boring films about Jews, Nazis, diabled people, and Britflicks about royalty) - but this movie is way more enjoyable to watch than most worthy po-faced Oscar nominees. I could watch this movie again right now! It is FUNNY!

Of course, we should never forget that the first of these Pop Idol and Popstars type shows started in the UK and the US bought the format!

It's good to see a film in Welsh - partly - and which shows the wonderful scenery of Wales. Unfortunately, this is a typical state-funded film that looks like it's been created by committee. All the social issues are ticked. Moreover, it is achingly predictable and very slow too. And the ending - (won't spoil it) - is just ridicuolus - can screenwriters not learn some law? There are more holes in this that Swiss cheese - the biggest being that the old woman could havem through her young pretty teenboy neighbour, have found out all about Wales using the internet without ever leaving Argentina! And Duffy in this is really Duff - and I hadn't realised until the close-ups lingering on her face just how ugly she is. What a pug!

Two stars for the fact it's an unusual film and the scenery. The story would have been better left unwritten though - but then, this is the type of rubbish state-funded projects often spew out. Slow, dull, unrealistic and, frankly, amateur.