Film Reviews by RP

Richard Condon is one of my favourite authors - I like his excruciating detail and the sharp satire he brings to bear. Several of his books have been filmed: the best known is probably 'The Manchurian Candidate' (twice) and 'Prizzi's Honor' is another, based on the first of a series of Condon's books.

I've been catching up a few of Jack Nicholson's films that I've either missed or seen many years ago and he stars in this black comedy as Charley Partanna, a dim-witted Mafia hitman working for the Prizzi family. He falls for Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), spurning Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston) in the process, but does not initially know that Irene is also a contract killer and double-crossing the organisation. Things go downhill as Irene is hired to whack Charley, and Charley is told that Irene 'has to go'...

Anjelica Huston won a 'Best Supporting Actress' Oscar but good acting must have been thin on the ground that year - it's really nothing special. The film won several Golden Globes for its stars and director and a BAFTA for 'Best Screenplay' but it really doesn't seem all that great and while it's not unlikeable it is most definitely not one of Mr Nicholson's best.

3/5 stars. Pretty average, despite the awards, the A-list cast and the director.

It's a violent black comedy, directed by William Friedkin (perhaps best known for 'The French Connection' and 'The Exorcist'). Lots of violence, bloodshed, f-ing and blinding, nudity - and one notorious scene featuring a fried chicken leg. So if that's your thing this could be for you - or it could put you off KFC for life...

The story goes something like this: trailer trash family (slow witted father, dotty daughter, slutty stepmother) live on a trailer park. Son lives with his natural mother + her boyfriend and is a part time drug dealer, suspects mother of stealing his coke supply and forcing him into debt. Hatches plan to hire a contract killer (the 'Killer Joe' of the title) to kill his mother for the insurance money. Things go downhill. Err, that's it...

The best part is played by Brit actress Juno Temple as the dotty daughter called, err, Dottie. The film is in fact well acted and directed, but the story is silly, even for a black comedy, and the comedy is overlayed with just too much violence.

I'll give it 3/5 stars. I've seen a lot worse - just don't watch it with your granny. Or with a bucket of KFC.

This is definitely a film for the boys - lots of crash-bang-wallop, chases, fisticuffs in space, explosions, spaceship crashes, flashy visual effects and plenty of technobabble. While I liked the 2009 Start Trek reboot, this current film is a bit of a disappointment.

Directed again by J. J. Abrams, he manages to assemble the same main actors with the too-pretty Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and introduces the also too-pretty Alice Eve as a weapons expert and the rather good Benedict Cumberbatch as super-baddy Kahn (now, a Brit as a baddy - who'd a thunk it). There also seems to be much use of blue contact lenses to make everyone look good.

I won't go over the plot, such as it is, only to say that it's weak with a weak script and dodgy dialogue - especially that from Simon Pegg with an extremely dodgy Scottish accent.

Not bad, just average. And the visual effects are rather good. 3/5 stars.

Sean Penn is not only an multi Oscar-winning actor but also a talented director. Perhaps his best known film as director is 'Into The Wild' which personally I found disappointing, but I've recently explored some of his earlier directorial efforts including the excellent 'The Pledge' and 'The Crossing Guard' both starring Jack Nicholson.

His first film is 'The Indian Runner', a tale of two brothers Joe (a goody) and Frank Roberts (a baddy). The story is loosely based on a song by Bruce Springsteen ('Highway Patrolman' from the somewhat bleak 1982 album 'Nebraska') with extra padding and characters to flesh out the story.

I liked it. Frank is played by Viggo Mortensen in one of his roles before he became really famous for his role as Aragorn in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and here he proves rather good in the role of a Vietnam vet who returns home but falls out with not only his brother, a cop, but his parents as well, and is prone to unpredictable violence.

Joe is played by the excellent David Morse (who Sean Penn also cast in 'The Crossing Guard') and other well known actors have small parts, including Dennis Hopper, Charles Bronson and Sandy Dennis. In fact I wonder how Sean Penn got such big name actors to appear in his early films - he must be very well connected/respected.

[Aside: he also seems to be a Springsteen fan - but then he did go out with Bruce's sister Pamela...]

There are inevitably some weak spots. The script is a bit thin, and being based on the characters from a 5 minute song has clearly been stretched out over its sensible length and although there are extra characters and scenes sometimes they feel like a bit too much padding. On the other hand, it remains reasonably true to the song lyrics, including the 'Buick with Ohio plates'.

It's worth 4/5 stars from me.

[Aside: maybe I'm just a little bit generous by being a Springsteen fan myself - I've seen him live more times than I can remember over the last 35+ years.]

Tense. Gripping. Claustrophobic. An excellent film from Danish director Tobias Lindholm (the writer of 'The Hunt' and the TV drama series 'Borgen') tells the story of a cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates who hold the ship and crew hostage for a multi-million dollar ransom. The story is told from two sides: the imprisoned and terrorised crew, and the negotiation team back at the shipping company's HQ.

It's in subtitled Danish with some English, but don't let that put you off - it's a superb drama. And there's no heroic rescue from a Hollywood superstar arriving with guns blazing - it's far more gritty and down to earth for that.

Great stuff. 5/5 stars.

Never mind low budget, this is a 'no budget' film (well, £3,000) written and directed by Christopher Nolan in his student days. The same Christopher Nolan who went on to fame and fortune as the director of 'Memento', 'The Prestige', 'Inception', the 'Dark Knight' Batman trilogy, 'Man of Steel' etc.

It is excellent - really, really good despite the almost non-existent budget, using fellow students at UCL as actors, and shot on a 16mm wind-up Bolex camera. It already shows a maturity of direction and the use of a non-linear storyline that Nolan deploys in later films.

It tells the story of an unemployed young would-be writer who follows strangers in the hope that they will give him ideas for a novel. He allows himself to get too close to one, who involves him in a world of burglary. But he is (of course) being set up as a patsy...

This is perhaps the best film I have seen recently - well directed, well photographed, tightly written, well acted. Oh yes, and it's gripping.

Excellent - 5/5 stars. Highly recommended.

I enjoy books by Robert Harris ('Fatherland', 'Enigma', 'Archangel', 'Pompeii' etc) most of which have also been made into films or TV dramas [Aside: 'Fatherland' was filmed by HBO Pictures and released on VHS video, with no DVD release, so a decent copy is tricky to get hold of. It also has a *very* altered ending. But I digress...]

Having read his book 'Ghost' about a ghost writer working on the political memoirs of ex British Prime Minister Adam Lang (reputedly based on Tony Blair) and who uncovers a dodgy secret from the past, I was interested in seeing the film version.

Frankly, I felt the book to be one of Mr Harris' weaker works - and that's my verdict on the film as well: it's weak. Although it has a strong, skilled director (Roman Polanski) and Robert Harris and Polanski co-wrote the script, my view is that the actors are wrong. Adam Lang is played by Pierce Brosnan, and while Polanski gets him to act a little rather than to just look pretty, he does not come across as a credible PM. Ewan McGregor plays the ghost writer - but he's a wooden actor, and doesn't really convince. The best acting is by Olivia Williams as Lang's wife, who is creepily convincing.

I was disappointed - it's really very average stuff, so I'll give it 3/5 stars. But I was expecting better...

Morgan Freeman? Angelina Jolie? Tell me you did it for the money - it certainly wasn't to enhance your acting reputation. This is mindless, violent tripe which attempts to avoid boring the audience with special effects, blood spatter and comic book silliness, combining the worst bits of 'Bulletproof Monk' with 'The Matrix'. Loud and silly beyond words. And if Miss Jolie thinks that having multiple tattoos is attractive, let me tell her - it isn't. And poor James McAvoy - you won awards for your performance in 'Atonement' - but not in this one, I'm afraid.

2/5 stars - but only because (unfortunately) I have seen even worse :(

Paddy Considine is one of my favourite actors but this is one film of his that I hadn't seen. Certainly it never passed my local cinema - perhaps (unjustly) it went straight to DVD?

It's based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and the reference to the owl is as a harbinger of doom. That sounds very pretentious, and the film does suffer somewhat from a sense of its own importance.

The story is one of stalking in reverse. Robert Forrester (Paddy Considine) works for an aerospace company, but after a bitter divorce becomes obsessed with Jenny Thierolf (Julia Stiles) and spies on her. Strangely, she invites him into her house, then breaks off her engagement and starts to stalk Robert, who distances himself from her. There is a fight between Robert and the ex-fiance, the ex is left on a riverbank but disappears, and Robert becomes a murder suspect. Things go from bad to worse and Jenny ends up killed. Perhaps Robert really is a harbinger of doom?

It sets out to be a psychological thriller - but misses the target. There aren't any thrills, what psychology there is is bogus, and there isn't really much drama either. So it must be pretty bad then? Well, I rather liked it - but it could have been so much better. And I think that falls to the choice of actors. There just isn't any chemistry between Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles [Aside: they both appeared in 'The Bourne Ultimatum', but not together] and frankly Paddy doesn't have the looks for this part.

I'll give it 3/5 stars - I enjoyed it, but it's fairly average stuff.

Jack Nicholson is a powerful actor, but some of his later films have relied too much on earlier glories and the over-use of his 'devilish' expression. Perhaps my favourite Nicholson film is the early 'Five Easy Pieces' - and for what it's worth, I think that his performance in 'The Crossing Guard', while over the top in many respects, approaches that early peak.

Director Sean Penn has an excellent cast to work with here and does manage to coax good performances from them. It is perhaps unfortunate that the script they are working to is somewhat weak, with a mix of good scenes intermingled with overblown and pretentious moments.

As for the story, it is the tale of the fall of the central character Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) into drink-ridden despair and self-inflicted pain after his daughter is killed by drunk driver John Booth (David Morse). Gale promises to kill Booth on his release from prison. But is this a promise to impress his estranged wife, well played by Anjelica Huston? Booth is ridden by guilt and lives in a caravan parked on the drive of his parents' house. After a painful, emotion-filled confrontation with his ex-wife, Gale drives off to kill Booth but is himself stopped by police for drunk driving. Making a run for it, he chases Booth only to end up at his daughter's grave, where the characters clasp hands in an emotion-filled, somewhat mawkish, finale.

If that slow, emotion-laden, dark and overblown tale sounds your thing, give it a watch. Despite the uneven direction and weak script both Nicholson and Huston (ex-partners themselves in real life) give good performances. And there is a rather good, if bleak, Bruce Springsteen song ('Missing') in there as well.

I'll give it an over-generous 4/5 stars, but it's one of those films you'll either love or hate.

ason Statham is not one of my favourite actors. He seems to be typecast into hard-man, mockney gangster, tough-man roles, with not much scope to display acting ability. That is, if he has any - frankly, it's not been much in evidence in his so-called 'action' films. And there's not a lot of difference here, although there is some pretence that he's Irish - but his acting is much better. And there's no special effects.

On the other hand, Paddy Considine is one of my favourite actors. He has excellent acting skills, proved himself adept at a range of characters and accents and has appeared alongside big name stars (Matt Damon, Russell Crowe) without being outclassed. He has also written and directed his own films, winning a couple of BAFTAs in the process. And he even has his own band ('Riding The Low' - they're not bad - check out their 2009 EP and 2013 album).

'Blitz' is based on a novel by Ken Bruen. Perhaps unfortunately it is the 4th in Bruen's Tom Brant series, which leads to a few loose ends as the backstory of the characters is never explained. But that's a minor point...

'Blitz' opens with gritty, tough DS Tom Brant (Jason Statham) using a hurley (=Irish hockey stick) to mete out (humorous?) punishment to local foul-mouthed, car stealing youths. Having established his Irish credentials, the plot progresses as a couple of local police are killed by someone calling himself 'The Blitz'. Along comes Acting DI Porter Nash (Paddy Considine) to take over the investigation. Nash is openly gay, which leads to some banter with the unreconstructed Brant; anyway, the two seem to get on just fine and jointly break not a few rules and heads as they identify the killer and punish him fatally. Err, that's it.

It's a fairly straightforward Brit cop/crime film with the usual ignoring of police procedure and familiar grim, depressing urban setting - but apart from the rather peculiar labelling of the police as 'London' rather Metropolitan Police, there is none of the River Thames / Big Ben / red double-decker bus scene setting that seems to be required fodder for the American market. So it must be for the UK market, then? If so, it's not been too successful...

Having said that, I quite enjoyed it - it's better than I expected. Yes, it's tough and violent with a fair quotient of f-ing and blinding, but it did allow Statham to take the central role without the martial art / Hollywood gloss that perhaps he's had too much of.

I'll give it 4/5 stars, although that does seem a little generous. If you like the genre, give it a try.

When 'The Sopranos' was first shown on TV (was it really 14 years ago?) I only caught a couple of episodes, mostly to see what kind of an actor Steve Van Zandt is [Aside: he's best known for being a long-time member of Bruce Springsteen's 'E Street Band']. And now I've finally caught up...

There are those who claim that 'The Sopranos' is the greatest TV series of all time, others who claim that it's 'The Wire'. Having seen both, I think 'The Sopranos' just edges it, but as to whether it's the 'best of all time', who knows... [Aside: personally I'd give a nod to the French cop/legal drama series 'Engrenages' aka 'Spiral']

Whatever the competing merits, this is really great, compelling TV - tinged with some sadness by knowing that lead actor James Gandolfini died recently. From the opening sequence of scenes along the New Jersey Turnpike and the soundtrack music of Alabama 3's 'Woke Up This Morning', the somewhat bizarre scenario of an Italian-American mobster (Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini) visiting a psychiatrist to resolve his problems, the focus on Tony's friends / associates and his family rather than crimes and criminal investigation, this is a drama that turns the usual cop-focussed TV series on its head. And it works very well.

Despite the underlying casual violence of the life he leads, the assorted killings and beatings, the constant f-ing and blinding, we come to care more for Tony Soprano and his personal and family problems that we do about his criminal activities. Tony is clearly a shrewd operator when it comes to his 'business' dealings and the manipulative way he remains in control, but is unable to deal with his domineering mother and face up to the problems in his marriage. It also covers his relationship with his children, his sensitivity to psycho-sexual problems, and the role of Italian-Americans in US society. Now, does that sound like a typical gangster drama? Nope, didn't think so - and that's what made it unique in it's day, although others have since tried to follow.

Suffice to say that it works out in the end - but you'll have to sit through 13 episodes (well, the first one is the pilot (it says so on the subtitles) to see how this happens. I felt that the ending was a little rushed as if the loose ends were being too rapidly tied, but this was the only weak spot.

Excellent, compelling viewing. 5/5 stars. And I've even bought the soundtrack on CD...

I saw this at a film club way back in, I think, 1968. Made in 1965 by the BBC as a TV drama is was considered too alarming and didn't get a full TV showing in the UK until 1985. Although it's a drama it is told in a documentary style and bizarrely was nominated for and won the 1967 Oscar for Best Documentary...

Looking at it today several things about it are striking, ranging from the ignorance of the general population of the effects of a nuclear blast, through the naivety of so-called 'Civil Defence' publications that advocated building a fallout shelter in the garden, to the assumption on the behalf of government that a nuclear war was not only inevitable - but survivable.

Since 'The War Game' there have been many post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear drama films made, perhaps to the point where they are commonplace. But the black-and-white photography and the very naivety demonstrated in the film make for a supremely chilling message.

It is a film very much of its time - but everyone should see this. 5/5 stars.

Directed by Roger Corman this is one of his typical 'B' movies, an early 1960s low budget sci-fi film about a doctor who develops a serum to enhance the sensitivity of the eye to a wider spectrum - then experiments on himself.

The running time of 75 minutes is just right - the storyline is slim, and any longer would drag - as Dr Xavier (Ray Milland, wearing his usual hairpiece) sees his vision improve to where he can improve medical diagnosis, see through clothes, beat the house at a casino, then go downhill through 'mind reading' to being disabled by the sensitivity of his eyes...

Modern effects would both enhance and yet ruin this film - it is what it is, a period piece of science fiction. Superb stuff - 4/5 stars, although that does seem a little generous.

Sean Connery is not usually to be found in sc-fi films, yet here he is in 'Outland', set in a titanium mining colony on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. He plays the role of Marshal O'Niel, head of security in what is essentially a semi-lawless sort of Wild West frontier mining town.

In fact there are so many similarities to a Western that the film has the reputation of being 'High Noon' set in space. And indeed, there are similarities - most obviously the shuttle arrival countdown clock.

With good acting support from Frances Sternhagen as Dr Lazarus (?!) this is an enjoyable romp as Connery comes under attack from armed baddies as he hunts for those supplying drugs to the miners.

All good fun, nice to see Mr Connery in a (for him) unusual role and despite the dated technology that inevitably haunts sci-fi films made 30+ years ago, this is a good watch.

I enjoyed it a lot - 4/5 stars, although that does seem a bit generous...