Film Reviews by RP

A nicely ironic title for a film that is a cross between a chase thriller and 'Deliverance'.

The story goes like this: part-time soldiers (National Guard, something like our TA) are on a weekend training exercise in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana, their guns loaded with blanks. They 'borrow' canoes they find and manage to upset (well, a bit more than just 'upset') the Cajun locals when one of the platoon fires - blanks of course - at them. Locals don't see the funny side of this and proceed to track and kill them off one by one. There aren't many survivors.

Some regard this film as a metaphor for Vietnam - a depiction of poorly trained, ill equipped, aggressive Americans in a land where they are unwanted, don't understand the people and don't speak the language. I don't buy this metaphor/allegory thing - director Walter Hill is not renowned for being that subtle. Just enjoy it for what it is. If anything, it is similar to Walter Hill's 1979 film 'The Warriors' where gang members have to fight their way home...

There's a nice (if ambiguous) finale and with evocative guitar theme music by Ry Cooder plus some excellent Cajun music this is a rather good film of its type. I enjoyed it and it's worth 4/5 stars from me, although that does seem generous.

[Aside: the copy that I received is in 4:3 aspect ratio and the print quality is quite grainy, but that doesn't detract too much]

I watched the 2010 remake of 'Brighton Rock' recently and ordered a copy of the original 1947 version so that I could re-watch a classic film starring a young Richard Attenborough - and to compare the two.

It probably goes without saying that the original is the better film - it has a far darker atmosphere, Pinky Brown is more naive yet far more menacing, and the understated violence seems far more shocking. It's set in the 1930s and the period detail (cobbles, short trousered boys, lack of telephones, gas lighting, uniformed waitresses in the cafe) is quite evocative - even the use of 'Kolley Kibber' as a technique to drum up business for the newspaper.

[Aside: As a boy, I remember 'Lobby Lud' from the 'News Chronicle' in the late 1950s- but by then the challenge was 'You are Lobby Lud and I claim my five pounds'. That's inflation for you - but I digress...]

The underlying theme of Graham Greene's novel is about faith, guilt, sin, good and evil, right and wrong, hatred, love, damnation, confession and redemption. Much of this is present in the film - mentions of Catholicism, the rosary, the dialogue with the nun at the end - but the significance is reduced compared to the novel. A major difference from the novel is the ending - the film has the climax on Brighton pier rather than the coast at Peacehaven and has the record jumping so that it cynically repeats 'I love you', rather than the novel's original ending where Rose will hear 'the greatest horror of all'.

4/5 stars - recommended. And it's definitely superior to the 2010 remake.

Until the last 15 minutes or so you might find this to be a fairly run-of-the-mill Western: Indians attack US cavalry troop, two survivors (naive private + woman who has been freed from Indian captivity) trek across country making for Fort Reunion.

But the final 15 minutes shows the hideous slaughter of defenceless women and children as they cower in tepees while the cavalry bombard a Cheyenne village with cannon fire and charge with sabres drawn. The ensuing massacre and mutilation is shown in gruesome detail.

I saw this at the cinema waaaaaaaay back in 1970 and was shocked - and it's still shocking today. Recently, a friend who worked at a cinema at the time said that of all the hundreds of films she had seen there, this was the one that she simply couldn't watch.

It is a re-telling of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre (look it up on Wikipedia) when some 30 men and 100 women and children were killed and seeing this film led me to take an interest in native American history and to read historian Dee Brown's book 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'.

The film is beautifully photographed, the songs from Buffy Sainte-Marie (herself of Cree Indian stock) are evocative, and while Candice Bergen's acting and the character she plays are somewhat anachronistic, this does not detract from the power of the film.

It is perhaps a commentary on today's sensibilities that this film is still cut - but today, the cuts are not to spare us from the bloodshed and killings and the depiction of man's inhumanity to man, but according to the BBFC, "to remove the presence of cruel, dangerous and illegal horse falls". Words fail me.

5/5 stars - a little high perhaps, but this reflects the impact the film had on me. Watch it and weep.

I watched (and was disappointed by) 'The World's End' a week or two ago and started to wonder about other films with a similar 'aliens among us' theme. The obvious ones include 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'Alien Nation', although in the latter their presence is well known. Then I came across 'They Live', directed by John Carpenter.

John Carpenter is well known for his cult sci-fi / horror films from the 1970s and 80s. Examples of his work include 'Halloween', 'The Thing', 'The Fog', 'Starman', 'Escape from New York' as well as the excellent original classic version of 'Assault on Precinct 13', so I knew the likely style.

The central character (played by ex-wrestler Roddy Piper) suspects something strange is going on at a local church and hears a blind preacher telling people to 'wake up'. He finds a pair of special sunglasses that reveal the truth - advertising hoardings with instructions to Obey and to Conform, magazine pages with similar authoritarian instructions, TV programmes with the same message - and aliens with skull-like faces everywhere. It transpires that the Earth's ruling classes have conspired with the aliens to make money and consolidate their own power while (of course) keeping the workers in their place...

It's all a bit clumsily done and it certainly looks dated, but I quite enjoyed it. It also features Carpenter's signature style of self-composed synthesiser-driven them music, but the film isn't a classic as some of his others turned out to be.

An interesting curiosity - worth seeing, but not one to watch again and again. 3/5 stars.

Continuing the (mis)adventures of mild mannered high school chemistry teacher Walter White. Season 2 of 'Breaking Bad' stars where Season 1 leaves off - you really do need to watch Season 1 first as they're definitely not standalone.

This is great TV: I waited as the set of discs arrived separately in the post, eager to watch the next episodes - but I guess this is the downside of a rental service :(

The medical costs of treating his lung cancer lead Walter into 'cooking' more crystal meth and into even greater dependence on his dropout addict drug-dealer partner. But this secret double life causes an ever-increasing web of lies that leads his wife to suspect that all is not well with Walt and inevitably leads to a breakdown in trust.

There are a number of threads to the storyline but the major effects of all these are:

- Walt's lies becoming over-complex

- the need to sell drugs to pay for Walt's medical treatment

- Walt becoming more assertive and significantly less mild mannered

Walt is played by Bryan Cranston who is excellent in the role - his face is by turn expressive or deadpan as the situation demands. The other characters are well played and by now seem to have settled well into their roles within the storyline, which is tightly controlled even though episodes have different directors.

Despite the criminal activities that are committed and the semi-random violence that occurs, there are always items of black humour throughout. Perhaps the standout one is the head on the tortoise - you'll know it when you see it :)

Excellent stuff - 5/5 stars again. And yes, I will order up Season 3.

[Aside: the cost of Walt's medical treatment given that he was not covered by medical insurance made me feel extremely grateful for the NHS]

When I were but a lad, everyone knew of the amazing 1947 journey from S. America westwards to the S. Pacific islands by Thor Heyerdahl on a balsa-wood raft. I suspect that this knowledge is fading into history, so it's good to have fresh life breathed into the epic tale.

Beautifully photographed, the film tells the story from Thor Heyerdahl and his wife developing the theory, through fundraising, the selection of a crew, building the raft and the trials of the voyage.

But unfortunately, despite this film having been nominated for the 2013 Oscar for 'Best Foreign Language Film' only to be beaten by the excellent 'Amour', it has not (February 2014) been released in the UK, either in cinemas or on disc. And that's a real pity - the film is excellent. It also means that a rental copy is not available from Cinema Paradiso...

Unusually, the film was made in both Norwegian and English, each scene apparently shot first in one language then the other. A copy is fairly easy to track down - there are PAL Region 2 versions available in spoken English and with German, Dutch or Spanish subtitles, and you can buy them via Amazon, with a little bit of digging. However, beware the NTSC Region 1 version which has been significantly shortened. I chose to buy an Australian Region 4 version that has spoken English and English subtitles on eBay.

This is a magnificent adventure story - see it on the biggest screen you can. 5/5 stars - highly recommended.

[Aside: Yes, 'Amour' did deserve the Oscar - I rated that film as 5/5, as I did 'A Royal Affair' which was also a contender. All are different; all are excellent in their own right]

Mike Hodges directed the classic Brit gangster film 'Get Carter' - and here he is again, directing another low budget Brit (although, other than a few scene-setting location shots, filmed in Germany) classic film noir, this time starring Clive Owen.

I have always found Clive Owen to be a 'wooden' actor yet here his impassive face is perfect for his central role as a croupier in a casino, observing the punters as they inevitably lose their money.

Clive Owen plays aspiring author Jack Manfred, under pressure from his girlfriend who sees herself living with a successful author. Just for the money, he gets a job as a croupier at a London casino - he's had experience of the job while in S Africa - and uses his observations of the other staff as the basis for a novel. He is approached to be the 'inside man' for a bungled heist, his girlfriend is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and there is an ambiguous ending. But throughout it all, Jack / Jake (the protagonist in his novel) keeps a detached view on the gambling world and its losers...

It's not a thriller, it's quite slow moving, there's no crash-bang-wallop (there is a little bit of violence and mild sex scenes), and the attempted heist is a very minor part of the story. But the atmosphere and the cool, over-calculating presence of the perhaps unnaturally detached central character, Jack / Jake the croupier, is quite remarkable.

5/5 stars - excellent.

[Aside: Mike Hodges also directed Clive Owen in the slow-moving, atmospheric 2003 Brit gangster film 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' - that's another of those films you either love or hate. Me, I quite liked it...]

Is it an adventure classic, a great Disney family film - or is it a dated and badly acted load of old tosh?

My vote is for the great family classic - my kids nearly wore out the VHS tape we had, and my grandchildren really enjoyed watching it on DVD, even though they've been weaned on modern action films and computer games.

Watching it now, I do wonder at the somewhat unusual mix of animals and also at the age of some of the actors. Janet Munro (Bertie/Roberta) was 26 when the film was made...

Nice, wholesome old-fashioned family viewing - 4/5 stars.

What can I say about this, apart from the fact that I didn't like it very much?

It's based on an old (1974) George V. Higgins novel, updated to 2008 (dating by the political ads for Obama's election campaign, shown in the background) and set in a wrecked New Orleans, presumably the result of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. This desolate backdrop and the economic recession is the setting for a complex mob revenge film - an amateurish heist of a mob-protected gambling game, followed by revenge on the operator of the game (Ray Liotta), the robbers, and the guy who set up the heist. Brad Pitt plays Jackie Cogan, a cynical hitman hired for the revenge killings, and there's a short appearance by the late James Gandolfini as another burned out boozy wreck of a hired hitman.

Unfortunately I didn't find Brad Pitt very convincing in his role. He's too pretty, not 'hard' enough somehow - and however much Mr Pitt tries to play the part of a violent, cynical killer, the less convincing he becomes.

Too much f-ing and blinding for my taste, a loose cast of characters acting out a loosely scripted and unwholesome, violent tale. It's sometimes difficult to follow who's who and what's what, never mind the fact that it's slow moving with boring dialogue. But the soundtrack music is good...

Apparently this was well received by the critics. I found it below average so I'll give it 2/5. Sorry, Brad :(

I rented this because I've been catching up on films directed by the late Tony Scott, the less successful brother of Ridley Scott. Having said he's 'less successful' he has directed some fairly well known films - including, in no particular order, 'Man on Fire' and 'Deja Vu' with Denzel Washington, 'Top Gun' with Tom Cruise, 'Enemy of the State' with Will Smith, 'Beverley Hills Cop II' with Eddie Murphy etc etc.

This film stars Bruce Willis (still with hair back in 1991), so you know immediately that it's going to have lots of crash-bang-wallop and gunfire - and so it proves. Plenty of violence and bloodshed, too much f-ing and blinding (even his on-screen 15-year-old daughter is foul mouthed), and the usual car chases, crashes and explosions.

The plot - I think there's a plot in there somewhere - is based around sports gambling, a dodgy American football team owner, a crooked politician, an ex-footballer as sidekick to private eye Bruce Willis who (of course) takes a few beatings but (of course) saves the day. Halle Berry gets an early small part as an exotic dancer and Taylor Negron makes an excellent baddy.

Above all, it's a mish-mash of action film clichés. Of its genre it's OK - I've seen a lot worse, but I've also seen a lot better so I'll give it 3/5 stars.

Yes, it's another 'assassinate the President' film - but a very good one.

It's clichéd of course - mad-as-a-box-of-frogs loner ex-agent uses his disguise skills to get close to the Pres and only Clint Eastwood can save him. Save him he does, and (of course) gets the girl.

So why is this different from so many other similar films? Well, it's got Clint - and here he's actually playing an older man (albeit younger than Clint), not just pretending to be young - and it works very well in his part of a veteran agent who failed to protect JFK and doesn't intend to fail again. It's got John Malkovich who makes an excellent baddy. But most of all it's the tight direction that makes it work - and that's down to Wolfgang Petersen. He is perhaps best known for directing 'Das Boot' - if you've not seen it, do!

Most of Clint's later films he directed himself and produced via his own production company. The previous year he directed and starred in the Oscar winning 'Unforgiven', so this must have had something about it to attract him - it has, it's great and was nominated for 3 Oscars and 3 BAFTAs. It deserved to win awards, but somehow failed.

Despite the clichés, this is excellent. 5/5 stars - highly recommended.

This is the second film in an unofficial trilogy - the others are 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'The World's End'. Having recently seen 'The World's End' and found it very disappointing, not to mention unfunny, I thought I'd watch 'Hot Fuzz' to see if it was as amusing as I remembered it - and it is.

You know the storyline - straitlaced supercop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is offloaded to rural Sandford in the middle of nowhere, where he teams up with bumbling PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) and uncovers a bunch of demented village serial killers.

Ridiculous of course, but great fun. It is of course silly - and much of its humour derives from just that, together with every cop movie cliché in the book, not to mention some satisfyingly gory bits. Great stuff!

Look out for a raft of British acting talent in minor roles - Olivia Colman as a very non-PC PC, Paddy Considine, Billie Whitelaw, even Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan - and a few well-known actors in bigger roles including Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward. Everybody gets a look-in - even a heavily disguised Cate Blanchett gets a part...

'The World's End' failed for me because Simon Pegg's on-screen character was unlikeable with few if any redeeming features. Here, you can laugh at him and eventually with him as his character begins to loosen up. Made me laugh anyway - which is more than I can say of 'The World's End'

Great stuff - I'd probably give it 4/5 stars, but as I find it even funnier than 'Shaun of the Dead' I'll give it an over-generous 5/5.

There are a number of US TV series that are so highly rated by their fans that it can seem a little over the top. I'm thinking in particular of 'The Wire', 'The Sopranos' and now 'Breaking Bad'. I missed them all on TV - and when I finally caught up with 'The Wire' and (fairly recently) 'The Sopranos' on disc they did indeed turn out to be excellent. So, is 'Breaking Bad' the same?

So far, yes. This is Season 1 so I'm sure there's much more plot and character development to come, but so far I'm impressed. This is a darkly funny, tense drama about a mild mannered man placed in a dreadful situation - and the bad choices he makes and the consequences of those bad decisions form the story line.

Walter White is a mild mannered high school chemistry teacher. Once a near-genius research chemist, he never capitalised on those skills but has coasted through life. He has a son disabled with cerebral palsy and his wife is expecting their second child. They are in financial trouble, he has a second job at a car wash of all places - and then comes the news that he has terminal lung cancer. So what does he do? Well it's obvious, isn't it: he teams up with a dropout drug dealer and starts to cook methamphetamine to bring in some desperately needed cash.

From that somewhat unrealistic premise and the first of many bad decisions the drama flows. It's tense in parts, the tension is relieved by moments of black comedy, then builds again as Walt begins to change. Is his personality growing? I guess I'll find out more when I watch Season 2.

My favourite TV series is probably the French cop/legal drama 'Spiral' but that doesn't have too many laughs, so I'll order up the next season of 'Breaking Bad' for a little more black humour as Walt stumbles on...

5/5 stars - excellent stuff.

Ian McEwan is widely regarded as the leading English novelist and is a personal favourite of mine. I've read all his published novels and short stories and enjoyed them - what I particularly like are the well-researched background details, the analytic and sometimes satirical treatment of the subjects and his sophisticated use of language.

His first two collections of short stories and his first two novels, 'The Cement Garden' and 'The Comfort of Strangers', were widely regarded as covering somewhat unwholesome, sometimes unmentionable, dark topics and earned him the nickname 'Ian Macabre'. And the subject matter of this film is nothing if not macabre.

The film is a pretty close adaptation of the novel (with the exception that in the book, Julie's boyfriend Derek is a professional snooker player, which I don't recall being mentioned in the film). The screenplay was written by Andrew Birkin who also directed it - and very well done it is too. [Aside: Andrew Birkin also wrote the script for 'The Name of the Rose', perhaps my favourite Sean Connery film].

I said the story is macabre - it goes something like this: father of four children dies of a heart attack while working to cover the garden with cement, mother dies a few months later, older children (Julie 17, Jack 15) bury her in cement in a cabinet (in the book, a trunk) in the cellar. The children, left to fend for themselves, live in some squalor and the youngest regresses into a baby state. The body starts to decompose and smell, Julie's boyfriend Derek begins to suspect, and the children are drawn ever closer together...

I waited until I had re-read the book before writing this review and my admiration for Ian McEwan's writing is confirmed again in this early short (127 page) novel. 'The Cement Garden' is a dark, almost gothic tale told and filmed almost as if it were normality. But it isn't, and the subject matter and adolescent nudity probably means you shouldn't watch it with your granny. 4/5 stars - highly recommended.

[Aside: the desolate location shots were filmed in Beckton, East London]

Seeing a trailer for the 2013 Disney film 'Saving Mr Banks' about the making of 'Mary Poppins' prompted me to rent the film. I have seen it many times before - one of my daughters virtually wore out the VHS copy we had - but was interested to see if it was anything like I remembered it.

I watched it with two granddaughters, one of whom exclaimed "I'd forgotten how good it was!" - and indeed it is. Forget the embarrassingly bad supposedly 'Cockney' accent of Dick Van Dyke, forget that Julie Andrews is far too good looking and far less strict than the character in PL Travers' books, forget the overall cheesiness and the length of the film (2 hours 13 minutes) and it's great - really, really entertaining.

I'm not a great fan of recent Disney films (I saw the highly derivative 'Frozen' a couple of weeks ago and found it poor, despite good reviews) as they have moved to CGI animation. The early films from the 1920s to 1950s were excellent and 'Mary Poppins' from 1964 is what I consider to be mid-period and has a certain charm - it certainly made me laugh and smile.

5/5 stars - excellent family entertainment. It would of course be a cliché to says that it's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious :)