Film Reviews by PV

Welcome to PV's film reviews page. PV has written 1464 reviews and rated 2347 films.

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Irreversible

Boring load of old Gallic guff! No stars.

(Edit) 20/02/2011

This film deserves less than one star. Why? It's boring boring boring - pretentious (well it is French) and adolescent in its desire to shock. You can almost hear the film makers saying 'yeah, let's do a long rape scene to shock people to get free publicity!' and another saying 'cool, and hardcore gay stuff will look well good' and another saying ' and I know, let's tell the stpry backwards to be really cool!'. The fact of the matter is, it'd be obvious to all how lacking in redeeming features this film is if it were told in a linear fashion. I was not shocked at all - I have seen it all before and I have no objection to rape or anything else being shown in the cinema. But boy was this a pretentiou boring load of old gallic guff! Watch to see what up-themselves film critics love these days... There are much much much better films about sex and abuse out there. Unboring ones! Ones that are not desperate to shock like an attention seeking sex-obsessed young teenage boy!

0 out of 9 members found this review helpful.

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Amores Perros

Great foreign film about love and dogs

(Edit) 20/02/2011

This film starts slowly and the viewer needs patience at the start - but then, after a while, it turns into a really quite excellent movie - three disticnt stories, all connecting, is a bit like Short Cuts - but the theme of love and dogs (amores perros) develop beautifully. Best of all is the old tramp's story, but the young thugs' story and the yuppie couple's story, also work well - and are really quite damning about south American society, with its massive divisions. Highloy recommended to anyone who likes foreign films; also anyone who's a dog lover will like it - I'm not really, but still really loved it.

1 out of 4 members found this review helpful.

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Heartbreaker

Tedious unfunny French nonsense

(Edit) 14/01/2011

If you are French, you probably think this film is funny. Sadly, no-one else will.

Some pretty shots of Monaco: that's the ONLY thing that makes this silly, girly film is worth watching. Really. The only thing!

And Vanessa Paradis used to be so cool and pretty with Joe le Taxi too! How the sexy have fallen...

1 out of 7 members found this review helpful.

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Mind Your Language: The Best Of: Vol.1

Great classic comedy

(Edit) 07/11/2010

This show is much maligned by the PC mafia - they accuse it of terrible racism and it has actually been banned by the BBC!

But it's not at all racist - and, unlike Hardeep et al at the BBC, it's actually funny!

It is comedy based on cariacature - of foreign people AND an Englishman who teaches them. Its comedy is warm and fond and the intention is not racist at all.

The BBC stormtroopers however have decided it's a racist show so must be destroyed!

Give me this rather than any PC ethnic comedy from now - Jocelyn, Amos, Koli - all tripe compared to 1970s classics like Mind Your Lnaguage!

0 out of 3 members found this review helpful.

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The Wave

Excellent film

(Edit) 30/07/2010

This is an excellent film: well written and directed and acted with a great soundtrack. And it actually has something to say too.

Makes most Hollywood movies look like the trite commercial brain dead trash they are.

Highly recommended to all intelligent and thinking people who hate dumb Hollywood action movie dumb teen fodder.

1 out of 4 members found this review helpful.

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35 Shots of Rum

Such a boring film

(Edit) 27/02/2011

I usualy like foreign language films - though French ones have a reputation for being slow and tedious, and this is no exception. The movie can be summarised thus: lots of ethnic minority people go to work and come back to their tower block in the suburbs of Paris, then go out in a taxi, break down in the rain, go to a bar, drink run (though no-one ever explains why 35 shots of rum...) and a man drives a train; their is much philosophical and depressive talk of age and death. A shame really: there are much better films to be made about the French immigrant population. Perhaps it's because it's directed by a woman, and women directors usually focus on family relationships and soapy stuff rather than good plot and the story. Maybe this would have been better as a TV series?

So, in summary - if you want good entertainment, do not watch this self-indulgent French yawn-fest. If however you are suffering from insomnia, however, and need something to put you to sleep, this movie is highly recommended.

One or two stars - maybe one and a half, for the good acting.

0 out of 6 members found this review helpful.

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Please Give

Disappointing

(Edit) 10/02/2011

I found this film very diappointing; it's one of the US movies about family life and therapy and how life is a journey and we should all have a group hug etc etc etc - and if you like therapy based stuff and care about characters who live in New York worrying about this and that, then you'd like this.

Some great lines from the old woman character however that makes it all worthwhile - so not a complete waste of atwo hours of my life!

0 out of 3 members found this review helpful.

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Piranha

Silly and boring gore-fest

(Edit) 17/04/2011

1 or 2 stars for this movie. Why? Because it manages to be dull and boring, despite the fact it's all about killer fish killing people! Why? Well, it's made for American teens - therefore, it must have lots of sexual references and also lots of gore. Treat it as comedy and it won't drag so much. Oddly, the 1978 version of Piranha has more dramatic tension with 10% of the gore! Perhaps that's the problem - too much gore and not enough of a good script. Watching people splashing around in the sea which is full of fake blood is, actually, boring - perhaps someone should have told the director! Maybe it makes more sense in 3D of course. The most annoying this is the crudeness of some of the sexual imagery - they use the same fake circumcised (as most Americans are) plastic penis that I have seen in Teeth and Hostel 2! Same size, colour, shape! Is there only one in Hollywood? And can those with unmultilated (uncircumcised) penises also get screen representation huh?

0 out of 3 members found this review helpful.

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The Social Network

Over-rated and too self-consciously 'cool'

(Edit) 27/02/2011

The first thing that strikes anyone about this movie is all the hype - we have all heard of it and most have Facebook accounts.

Then, when the film starts, the main thing that strikes anyone with a 'normal' TV set-yp is the terrible sound quality - which has clearly been sdesigned for a surround sound system in the cinema. In fact, unless you have a sooperdooper set-up at home, I'd advise turning on the English subtitles! This movie is written by the West Wing creator, so everyone speak quickly, naturalistically, and over each other - so it is so hard to understand what they say! YOu have been warned.

In general this film is passable. A great lead role from Jesse Eisenburg, utterly believable as the selfish spoilt geek.

Some stereotypical scenes of upper-classness in Henley on Thames (filmed at Eton'sa boating lakes) are completely unnecessary - but clearly the Americans think we all live lives like Prince William in the UK and go rowing every Sunday...

So all in all, this is OK - but masssively overrated. In fact, I'd summarise the movie like this: 'The Social Network is a movie that uncool people think is really cool' - people like the fifty something Kevin Spacey who produced it. It's not worthy of any Oscar, that's for sure.

0 out of 4 members found this review helpful.

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Gainsbourg

Disappointing biopic

(Edit) 30/03/2011

In France, Serge Gainsbourg is worshipped as some kind of god - an artist (so the French think) of such quality that he was allowed to behave in a rude, drunk, selfish way all the time becase he was an 'artist'.

In the UK and the restbof the worl, Gainsbourg can be seen for what he really was: a drunk, rude, pervy little man with a mediocre talent who tried to shock by showing off because his talent wasn't sufficient to speak for itself. So he wrote a number one hit? So what? So did Kagagoogoo! So did Mr Blobby. So did St Winifred's School Choir! Can we have a biopic about them then?

Also this movie can't just tell his life story. Oh no - it's a French biopic you see, so has to be arty and up its own derriere! So we have to put up with large puppets walking around with Monsieur Gainsbourg for no good reason.

I was actually hoping to learn something about Serge Gainsbourg watching thsi mnovie - but I didn't learn much, other than his songs are terribly dated and awful.

1 out of 5 members found this review helpful.

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Leon the Pig Farmer

Terrible film - unfunny and boring

(Edit) 19/03/2011

I heard someone raving about this movie on the radio so got it out. What a disappointment! This is a comedy is it? And how are you defining comedy then? This is a silly, tedious, unfunny, predictable movie that thinks it's funny but isn't - and that is quite simply one of the worst kinds of movies that exist. Avoid.

0 out of 4 members found this review helpful.

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No Man's Land

Superb film about war

(Edit) 19/03/2011

This film manages to chieve what so many movies about modern wars do not: it is entertaining as well as being dark and ironic. Most films about the former Yugoslavia or Africa or Iraq etc and terribly worthy - and didactic. This is darkly funny and entertaining - which makes it far more moving and worthy than those other movies. This film is superbly paced, with great dialogue, nice twists and an ending that perfect sums up to insanity and inanity of war. Superb!

1 out of 3 members found this review helpful.

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Nowhere Boy

A good little film

(Edit) 24/05/2010

This film, though not historically accurate, workd for one big reason: the script is well written. It focuses on the relationship between a boy, his mum and his aunt - and this relationship structures the film and adds its emotion.

OK, so Uncle George died when John Lennon was 12, so the film gets a lot wrong - for a start, the idea that the teenagers in the 50s had access to 21st century sex from available girls in nonsense. Also, John Lennon is predicatbly idealised - he was, in many ways, a violent and selfish thug, and that never gets shown really.

And certainly, the music played by early incantations of the Beatles - the Quarrymen and others - was nowhere near as good as it sounds here! (I know - I've listened to the tapes...).

But all in all - a good film.

0 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

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Departures

Excellent but Overlong

(Edit) 25/09/2010

I liked this - some good writing and characterisation. The first film I've ever seen about Japanese funeral rites, anyway!

The problem is that the film is just too long and the last third drags terribly. If the film had been 90 minutes, it would have been better. I also didn't understand why the main character;s wife was so hysterical because he was an undertaker. Baffling. Maybe it's like that in Japan...

Having said that, it's still an excellent and beautifully shot film.

1 out of 6 members found this review helpful.

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State of Play

average thriller

(Edit) 30/12/2007

Over-rated thriller, from a soap writer, but worth a watch. Starts well, with good set-up and acting. Disappointing ending though - all too convenient and pandering to TV ratings. It's being made into a film in Hollywood now by Brad Pitt - which may not necessarily be a good idea...

0 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
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