Film Reviews by RP

I was looking forward to seeing this as I had heard good things about it - but I found it very disappointing.

It tells the story of a middle-class American father who goes 'overseas' (that is, to France) to identify and retrieve the body of his adult son who has been killed by a freak storm as he started to walk El Camino de Santiago, a 500+ mile Christian pilgrimage route across the Pyrenees from France into Spain and on to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. He decides to have the body of his son cremated, to complete his unfinished pilgrimage and to scatter the ashes along the route.

Along the way he meets some seriously boring people - a pot-smoking Dutchman, a chain-smoking Canadian woman and, most boring of all, an Irishman with writer's block who has lost his faith. This last part is played by James Nesbitt - and he really is very, very boring even as his character attempts unsuccessfully to inject some life into the dull story.

I found it tedious, dull, uninteresting, turgid stuff with stilted dialogue, cardboard characters and wooden acting. I regret watching it through to the end, but I did - and I even watched the interviews with Martin Sheen (who played the lead role) and the director Emilio Estevez [Aside: who is Martin Sheen's son], hoping against hope that they would highlight something I had missed. But nope, no such luck. And I also didn't appreciate the glaring product placement for The North Face outdoor clothing company.

2/5 stars from me. And did I mention that it was boring?

I have a few favourite sci-fi films which include 'Blade Runner', 'Alien' and 'Aliens' – and this one.

It's supposed to be based on Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name - and the name is about all it shares as the story has been more than a little changed; but that's certainly not unusual for film adaptations.

So what do I like about it? Well, it's space fiction with proper alien monsters, 1950s style cheesy cardboard characters, lots of action / violence / blood and gore - and not a little irony and political messaging thrown in for good measure. It's set in a future totalitarian state where the masses require citizenship to be able to vote etc, but if you're rich enough then citizenship doesn't matter. But the way to get citizenship is through military service - and the poor bloody infantry get slaughtered in a war against nasty arachnid aliens, referred to as 'bugs'.

In many ways it's a classic war story: school days and friendship, boot camp and friendship, war, death and the loss of friends, victory and reunion. But the recruitment ads for the military are fascistic in tone and there is a subtext that the future is not at all a pleasant democratic place.

As an aside, unlike most similar films, 'home' is not smalltown USA but Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Yes it's cheesy, not everybody likes (or can even see) the irony, but I like it. And the action - when it starts - is relentless, as are the unending hordes of mean, nasty bugs.

Great stuff - 5/5 stars.

As the old song says: And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain...

At last - Steve Trovato has patiently 'done it his way' and led the beginning blues guitarist through 6 DVDs worth of lessons. Yes, 6 DVDs worth but certainly not 6 weeks worth - as I have said in my reviews of this series, there really isn't enough material in each DVD to fill an entire week: you should be able to master a scale + chromatic and blues variations in a day and a further day - 2 at the outside - to master the licks. So, about ½ a week's worth of material on each DVD - and the rest of the material on each disc is filler, being trailers for further Lick Library products. Frankly, if I'd paid the commercial price for these (£17 each) I'd feel robbed - as it is, I rented them from Cinema Paradiso and found them OK, just a little slow going.

Having said that, Steve Trovato is a patient teacher - but there is a fundamental problem with the medium, particularly when rented: there is no written information, so unless you're actually watching the DVD, there is no material to work from.

For what it's worth, Mr Trovato has written two books (each including a DVD) covering much of the same material, and to a greater depth. These are: 'Beginning Blues: Rhythm Guitar' and '...Lead Guitar', which also include backing tracks as MP3 files. Note that this is better than the '6 Weeks' series which doesn't include the backing tracks except as soundtrack on the DVD, nor are they available on the 'Lick Library' site, although it's not beyond the wit of man to demux the audio from the DVD. And the same/similar backing tracks are on the 'Beginning Blues' DVDs as data files.

So I'd recommend the 'Beginning Blues' books over the '6 Weeks' DVD set.

As for this final week, it's fine, it's the same approach as the others: scales + a few licks, this time in the style of Albert King. Now I just need a year or two to become fluent - it really is all about practice :)

[Aside: Perhaps it's just as well that each DVD doesn't take a whole week of study, as I was lucky (?) enough to receive the last 3 discs in the series within a couple of days...]

Hmmm.... This is one of those annoying films which, if you've read the book, you will find very disappointing. While the core of the storyline is similar - American in Paris is smitten with mysterious woman who comes to dominate him - virtually every surrounding detail has been changed.

In the book, Harry Ricks is an Ohio small-time college film studies prof on the run from being sued for bringing the college into disrepute after a dodgy affair with a student, who hightails it to Paris because that's where he and his ex-wife once wanted to settle. Here, he's Tom Ricks, a Minnesota literature prof and published novelist, who has a French wife and small daughter in Paris and who turns up after some unspecified hospitalisation? prison sentence? In the book, he contacts his teenage daughter by email from an Internet cafe. In the film he watches her at kindergarten. The background details to the story are simply so different and much of the detail of the poor immigrant community among which he lives is just lost. Likewise the name, nationality and backstory of the mystery woman, the 'woman in the fifth' (arrondissement) are also changed.

The film is a sort of erotic ghost story in which the mystery woman - well played by Kristin Scott Thomas - is a sort of guardian angel (or perhaps 'guardian succubus' might be a better description) looking out for the rather unlikeable Ricks character, taking revenge on his enemies and threatening Tom/Harry until he does her bidding. In the book, this revelation takes place only in the last ¼ or so of the pages - the other ¾ is the story detail that is missing from the film, and the denouement is the ruination of his wife's lover the college dean, and the life threatening illness of his daughter back in the US. In the film, she is lost in the woods of the Bois de Boulogne. Boring.

The book is not the best I have read and the film is not the best I have seen. The major differences from the book spoiled it for me and I can only give it 2/5 stars. I had hoped it would be better :(

Having just seen Willem Dafoe in the rather good film 'The Hunter', I thought I'd take a chance and watch him in 'Daybreakers'.

'Daybreakers' isn't a bad film - in fact it's better than many of the same/similar genre - but its weak point is Willem Dafoe. His character, bizarrely called Elvis, simply doesn't fit well with the rest of the film, although he does have some of the best lines.

The world is running out of food. Nothing new in that you might think, but here the population is largely vampires and their 'food' is human blood. Central character (Ethan Hawke) is a vampire doctor researching a synthetic blood substitute when along comes attractive human woman (Claudia Karvan) and Willem Dafoe, who plays an ex-vampire who has been 'cured'. Ethan Hawke takes the cure and gets his revenge on his former boss, played by Sam Neil.

With big name actors like Neil, Hawke and Dafoe and lots of creature effects, you might think this was a big budget Hollywood movie. But no, it's a subsidised Australian film - but quite well done.

It's nice to see vampires being scary again with plenty of blood and gore rather than the recent romantic twaddle. Some of the effects are pretty good, but once Willem Dafoe's character gets into the story the film goes rapidly downhill. Big bad boss defeated (of course), bad brother sacrifices himself for his good brother (of course), lots of blood splatter in last bloodletting sequence (of course) and finally (of course) the three goodies bask in the sunshine and ride off into a new dawn - just so, so predictable.

I quite enjoyed it (does one 'enjoy' a blood spattered vampire film?) so I'll rate it 3/5 stars. See it if you like the genre.

Cinema Paradiso has placed this film info the genres Classic Dramas + Adventure and I think that's about right. If you're looking for a crash-bang-wallop action thriller then you won't find it here.

What you will find is a beautifully photographed drama which blends the often clichéd man-against-the-wilderness theme with a slow burning story of human and animal tragedy. That may sound a bit pretentious, but I really enjoyed this and I regret not seeing it at the cinema - the landscapes really do deserve to be seen on a big screen.

Willem Dafoe's well-worn features echo the ancient landscape as he stalks his prey, the Tasmanian Tiger, last seen in a zoo in the 1930s. But he is not alone: not only is there an assortment of unfriendly locals (loggers, tree-huggers etc), friendly locals (the family he stays with) but also a succession of other hunters sent by the same mysterious biotech / pharma company.

Perhaps surprisingly, Willem Dafoe fits effortlessly into the lead role and gives a convincing performance of a man converted from a single minded hunter to a caring human being, conscious of the debt we owe to nature.

4/5 stars - highly recommended.

After renting the first two DVDs in this six DVD course and finding them insufficiently 'meaty' even for a (hopefully improving) beginner, I was waiting for this to provide me with something a little more challenging...

Well, it isn't very challenging. The series ploughs steadily on, in this lesson via the C major and C minor pentatonic and blues scales - not very complex. As I commented previously, if

you've had 'proper' lessons then little of the basic material on any of these first three DVDs in the series will be new. And again, the licks (on this DVD, claimed to be in the style of Albert Collins) need somewhat more practice but these too are fairly straightforward. But hopefully it's all coming together - the only question is when...

There definitely isn't enough 'meat' here for a whole week's worth of practice - but I'll persevere and order up the next one in the series. 3/5 stars.

[Aside: If you want to see a sample of what the series is like, search YouTube for "American Blues Guitar Lessons In Six Weeks" - you should find a trailer / promo for the series. Steve Trovato is a slow and patient teacher - perhaps his written material is more challenging, or rather something that I can work at without having to stop at the end of a single DVD, hungering to go on. Certainly it should help as there is no printed tab to accompany the lessons in the '...6 Weeks' series. He's written a couple of books for the beginning blues guitarist ('Beginning Blues: Rhythm Guitar' and '...Lead Guitar') and I've bought those - just waiting for them to be delivered.]

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. He has won the Booker Prize and several of his books have been made into films, one ('Atonement') winning an Oscar. In addition to all this, he has written a play and a number of screenplays - and one of these is 'The Ploughman's Lunch'.

I enjoyed the film very much. Set at the time of the Falklands conflict, it is a wide ranging satire on the media world and the politics of the day. The focus is on the main character, James Penfield (played by Jonathan Pryce) who works for BBC Radio News. He fancies Susan Barrington (played by Charlie Dore) who works for LWT and gets a friend (Jeremy Hancock, played by Tim Curry) to introduce them. James also wants to branch out from his somewhat humdrum BBC job and become and author, choosing the 1956 Suez conflict as his subject. It turns out that Susan's mother is an expert on the subject and James wangles an invitation to stay with her with the dual purpose of gaining material for his book and further contact with Susan. Susan's stepfather (played by Frank Finlay) is a womanising director of TV ads.

Intertwined with all this is James' alienation from his parents, the fatal illness of his mother, Susan's lack of interest in him, the duplicity of his friend Jeremy - and the triumphalist speeches of Margaret Thatcher et al.

In a slightly earlier era, the central character might have been described as an 'angry young man'. Here he represents a generation that has been educated far more than his parents and has few if any scruples about re-writing and bending history for his own ends, in this case to write a popular history of an ill-conceived war. His lack of scruples extend to pretending to be a socialist (he isn't), to using friends to do his own dirty deeds, to using Susan's mother for book material, having sex with her and abandoning her. Frankly, James isn't a very nice person.

There is an excellent sequence set at the Conservative Party Conference very cleverly filmed against real events and real politicians that emphases the underlying dishonesty and duplicitous nature of all of the characters.

If you're looking for a crash-bang-wallop action film or a thriller, then this isn't for you. But if you're looking for an intelligent, well written satire on media, mores and politics then you won't find much better than this.

5/5 stars - highly recommended.

Well, over the last few days I've seen three of 2012's comic-based superhero 'blockbuster' movies: 'Avengers Assemble', 'The Amazing Spider-Man' and 'The Dark Knight Rises'. And - from low to high - that's my order of preference.

The problem with this film is that's it's yet another remake - and by definition, that makes it not very original. I couldn't help but make continuous comparisons with the 2002 version directed by Sam Raimi with Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker / Spider-Man.

The 2012 version is directed by Marc Webb with Andrew Garfield in the lead role - and frankly, he's just not nerdy enough for his transformation into Spider-Man to be very interesting. Given that there's 10 years difference between the two films you'd expect the effects to be better. They are - I think - or at least they're bigger, but also more annoying. In fact I found the whole film to be annoying, from the silly too-good-looking, badly acted girlfriend to events like a procession of tower cranes helping Spider-Man swing across town.

Nope, I didn't like it much and at 2 hours 10 minutes it's far, far too long. I know it's taken lots of money at the box office, but I can only give it 2/5. It is slightly better than the poor 'Avengers Assemble' but it doesn't deserve any higher rating from me :(

Well, over the last few days I've seen three of 2012's comic-based superhero 'blockbuster' movies: 'Avengers Assemble', 'The Amazing Spider-Man' and now 'The Dark Knight Rises'. And - from low score to high score - that's my order of preference.

'Avengers Assemble' was too silly and took itself too seriously. The Spiderman remake/reboot unfortunately suffered from the 'remake syndrome' - by definition, it wasn't very original, although it did offer some novelty and a degree of humanity to its tale of a comic book hero. But I rather liked Christopher Nolan's third Batman film, even though it's too long at over 2½ hours, there's too much scene-setting and not enough Batman action until well into the film, the entire nuclear-bomb-in-the-city plot is both old and not very well done, and the film is full of plot holes. A bullet-proof batsuit that doesn't stop a knife? Remove the core of a fusion reactor to make a bomb - in minutes? Batman escapes from an underground prison in India (I think) and returns to Gotham in minutes? But these are minor issues...

I guess the reason I liked it is - in common with the other Nolan-directed Batman films - it's so dark. And it has a 'proper' baddie, in this case Bane (Tom Hardy) who's a nasty piece of work. Not up to Heath Ledger's psychopathic depiction of The Joker in 'The Dark Knight' but definitely bad, unlike the wuss Loki in 'Avengers'.

Ann Hathaway makes a good second-string baddie/goodie as Catwoman and steals just about every scene she appears in. Add supporting roles from Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard etc and that's a fine cast you've got there...

[Aside: perhaps sadly, I did watch the end credits and noticed rather a lot of Nolans in it, as well as small parts for Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Tom Conti, Mathew Modine, uncle Tom Cobley and all]

I enjoyed it and I'll give it 3/5 stars - a reasonably satisfying conclusion to Nolan's Batman trilogy, but not his best.

It's in French, with subtitles - and the dialogue is so sparse that I could follow it even with my limited French...

The film tells the story of a woman doctor who bungles a routine operation on a man's wife, and who then kidnaps her in revenge. A relationship develops between captive and captor (Google "Stockholm Syndrome") which only strengthens after her escape. She stalks him, then betrays him.

The disappointing things:

- The story is quite slight and can't seem to make up its mind where it's going

- The 'twist' at the end is telegraphed well in advance as issues about trust are explored

- The captor is just too handsome for his own good - it's pretty obvious what's going to happen

- The captor is named Ochberg - the name of the renowned psychiatrist who first defined the emotional attachment of captives to their captors. This is a bit lazy, even silly.

The better things:

- It's only 77 min long

- Kristin Scott Thomas is an excellent actress (with an excellent command of French) and her role as a doctor who has devoted almost everything to the pursuit of her career gives a strong background to the character she plays.

I enjoyed it, but found it mildly disappointing. 3/5 stars.

This is a rather good adaptation of the classic 1940 Raymond Chandler novel featuring tough, hard drinking private eye Philip Marlowe. The Marlowe character has been played by many actors over the years including Humphrey Bogart - here he's played by Robert Mitchum, who a little to my surprise makes rather a good job of it.

Marlowe is hired by Moose Malloy ('built like a beer truck') to find his lovely girlfriend Velma Valento who has disappeared while he's been in jail. Marlowe follows a cold trail and unearths many connections between assorted dodgy characters. The 1940s settings give a believable film noir feel to the whole production, Robert Mitchum makes a good job of the lead character, the rather lovely British actress Charlotte Rampling appears as the femme fatale, and the then little known Sylvester Stallone has a bit part.

I enjoyed it - but I suspect it's a little on the slow side for modern audiences looking for more crash-bang-wallop. 3/5 stars.

The song that plays over the end titles is called "Kill Kill Kill" - and that gives you a good overview of what this film is about. It's a low budget British 'comedy horror' film directed by Paul Andrew Williams, who directed the very good (if somewhat grim) 'London To Brighton'.

The storyline goes like this: bungling kidnappers hole up in a remote cottage with their shrewish, foul-mouthed blonde victim. Her father sends two Korean hard men to the rescue, but they meet a sticky end. Murderous disfigured farmer from next door then proceeds to slaughter everybody - and I do mean everybody. There's also a final scene after the end credits.

Yes, I really do mean slaughter - violently, with assorted weapons, much gushing of blood, dismemberment, adding to an extensive collection of trophy body parts etc. Rather good if you like that sort of thing :)

There's far too much f-ing and blinding for my taste, but the film did make me smile in several places and the director pays homage to many other horror / thriller films - see how many you can spot. One that I'd not seen done before is a small tribute to 'Predator' as the maniacal killer removes spinal cord + head from one unfortunate victim - that should give you some idea of the shlock you'll see here.

The lead characters are played by Andy Serkis (perhaps best known for his Gollum), Reece Shearsmith (perhaps best known for 'League Of Gentlemen') and Jennifer Ellison (perhaps best known for her boobs, scouse accent and 'Brookside'). The film reminded me of 'Severance' - unfortunately it isn't as funny but does have the advantage of not having the tiresome Danny Dyer in the cast, but that minor advantage is lost by having other tiresome characters.

Because it made me smile I'll give it 3/5 stars - just don't watch it with your granny 'cos she probably won't appreciate the language and gore :)

I saw this at the cinema and my impressions then were confirmed as I watched it again at home...

It's a sanitised, white man's version of life in the US deep south in the 1960s. Yes, there are some uncomfortable facts about the seemingly idyllic life of the rich white women and their families contrasted with the lives of their domestic servants, but I found it very superficial and just too pretty-pretty.

I should have said that it's a white woman's version, as it is taken from the book by Kathryn Stockett based on her own + retold maids' lives and experiences in Jackson, Mississippi. The film has a bit of tugging at the heartstrings, a bit of humour, but is generally uplifting - however, the book does have some darker moments. What it most certainly is not is any realistic historical record - I suspect the reality if told by a black author would be very much darker still. The film - and the book - is just clichéd and simplistic.

My wife liked this very much. I found it very average and rate it 3/5 stars, and that's stretching it.

Cast against type, Richard Gere plays baddie cop Dennis Peck - so corrupt that he's almost a caricature. Andy Garcia plays good cop Raymond Avila who has recently joined the Internal Affairs Department and who takes it upon himself to investigate Peck.

But not only is the good cop now despised for working for Internal Affairs but the tentacles of corruption of the bad cop are far reaching, and he's sufficiently manipulative to get good cop believing his wife is unfaithful.

Well directed by British director Mike Figgis, this is a tense cop thriller with erotic overtones and still works well even though it's over 20 years old. I enjoyed it and rate it 4/5 stars - recommended.