Film Reviews by RP

I was watching the very poor 'Slither' a while ago which features slug-like creatures and I remembered a book by the British author Shaun Hutson called 'Slugs' and wondered if that had been filmed. Well it has, way back in 1988, the only one of his books to be filmed, so here I am watching it. And it is - of course - poor.

Shaun Hutson (aka 'the godfather of gore') is a prolific author of around 60 books including under a number of pseudonyms, mostly in the horror genre. Designed for a fast read, the prose is pithy and definitely non-intellectual, and there's always plenty of gore and gruesome imagery with a couple of explicit sex scenes thrown in for good measure. Apart from horror he has written a number of war books and even the novelisation of the excellent film 'The Terminator'. One of his first books was 'Slugs' and there's also a sequel, 'Breeding Ground'. Of its genre, it's escapist popular fiction, although British horror fiction books seem to be thin on the ground nowadays after the death of Frank Herbert.

The film of 'Slugs' has been shifted to the USA and filmed by a Spanish director and includes several Spanish actors whose lines are badly dubbed into English. The slugs themselves are slow-moving and not at all scary, so as a horror movie frankly it's a failure. There is a fair bit of gore, but the film is so badly scripted and the acting so wooden as to be embarrassing.

Apart from the setting, the film follows the book moderately closely - it just doesn't get 'under the skin' as it were in the same way as the book. It's poor, but isn't bad enough to make the 'so bad it's good' category.

I'll give it 2/5 stars, because I have seen even worse - and that includes the truly awful 'Slither'. A poor creature feature it may be, but it's miles better than that awful dross.

I was looking for films with Clive Owen and came across this rather pleasant, lightweight British comedy...

I usually find Mr Owen to be a bit of a 'wooden' actor but here his singularly unsmiling features work well as a prisoner who finds redemption through gardening. The film has an excellent cast - the aforementioned Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Warren Clarke, the late David Kelly and also the tiresome Danny Dyer (yes, I'm sure many like him - but not me...).

It tells an somewhat old-fashioned tale of how a group of prisoners at an open prison are redeemed, their lives turned round, by a new-found interest in gardening, culminating in an entry to a prestigious RHS show and with a little twist at the end.

It's the sort of film that seems so very British and could probably be described as 'charming'. Not bad, undemanding, mildly entertaining - I'll give it 3/5 stars.

Liam Neeson has a distinguished acting career, probably peaking with his leading role in Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' in 1993. But from 2008 onwards he has re-invented himself as a (somewhat elderly) all action hero, first with his role in 'Taken' (and a couple of sequels), 'Unknown', 'The Grey', 'Non-Stop', and 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' (I might have missed one or two - and I'm not counting the 'Batman etc' films). This latest (2015) offering 'Run All Night' is his third with director Jaume Collet-Serra, the others being 'Unknown' and 'Non-Stop'.

My problem with Liam Neeson is that, like perhaps Clint Eastwood in his day, he continues to take on 'action' roles when a little too old for the part. In 'Non-Stop' there was an effort to cover this by dating his passport 3 years younger than his real age - but in 'Run All Night' he seems to have done the sensible thing and accepted an age-appropriate role. The man is 63, after all...

Neeson plays retired mob hitman Jimmy 'Gravedigger' Conlon. His mobster boss and long-time friend Shawn Maguire is played by the always excellent Ed Harris. Conlon is estranged from his son and in a somewhat silly plot device, Conlon shoots Maguire's son - so Maguire orders his men, including an outside contract killer, to kill Conlon, his son and his son's family. There follows lots of gun violence and the usual car chase. Err - that's it.

The film is formulaic and full of clichés, but the pairing of Neeson with Harris works well, and Neeson's portrayal of his character as a grizzled, past-his-prime has-been on the verge of alcohol dependency is frankly far more appropriate to his age than some of his earlier efforts.

I liked the noir-ish look and feel of the film but while it has its moments, it's just too predictable. You know that our hero is going to get the better of the 'ordinary' hitmen, you know that the outside contract killer is going to be (almost) unstoppable - and you just know what the ending will be.

To be honest I'm a little disappointed, as I really liked 'A Walk Among the Tombstones'. This one isn't bad, it will while away the time quite well but it's not a film I would watch again. I'll give it 3/5 stars.

It's a wartime romance with added Germans. Err, that's it.

What makes this different from so many similar films are a number of factors:

- it's set in France, in a small town occupied by the Germans

- the central character falls for a German officer

- no-one speaks French!

- the story of how the book came to be written is quite moving. Look it up on Wikipedia.

The central character is played by Michelle Williams who I found too wimpish for the role. Better is Matthias Schoenaerts who plays the German officer - and composer! - she falls for, but best is the always excellent Kristin Scott Thomas as the dominating mother-in-law.

The film is beautifully photographed, the Germans are not just portrayed as black-and-white caricatures and Matthias Schoenaerts' character is cultured but knows his duty - and (of course) ignores it at the so predictable end.

However, I disliked intensely the decision to have the dialogue in English. Yes, the Germans spoke German - but the French spoke perfect English. The film would have worked far better made as a French film, in French. Not only that, but Kristin Scott Thomas speaks the language fluently, having lived there since she was 19.

No bad, just average - but could have been so much better. 3/5 stars.

'Birdman' won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay - and I hated it.

I go to the cinema to be entertained - and I usually am, perhaps because over the years I've learned to avoid seeing films that I know I won't like. And although I'd like to think that I have quite broad tastes, the films that I tend to avoid are the almost incestuous, self-referential films about actors, films about acting, films about film-making, films about Hollywood.

And guess what - 'Birdman' is just such a film, so no, I didn't like it. It's rare that I don't watch a film through to the end, bit I found it unwatchable and gave up after about 20 minutes.

I guess it's a film you either love or hate. Yes, I know it's a satirical look at Hollywood but I didn't like it. Perhaps I'm a Philistine but I can only give it 1/5 stars.

It's a low budget, gritty, made-for-TV film in which a remarkably young-looking Bob Geldof plays a dodgy young snooker hustler being exploited by his dodgy manager and aiming for the world snooker championship.

Before he became 'Saint' Bob, known for Band Aid/Live Aid and raising unrivalled amounts of money for Africa, Bob Geldof was the front man for the band the Boomtown Rats - and a wannabe actor. Here he plays a flash, 'Hurricane' Higgins-style snooker hall hustler called err, Harry 'Flash' Gordon. The name evokes both the space opera comic strip character and also the Harry Flashman character from the Flashman Papers series of books. But that's far too serious an analysis for this film...

Apart from Mr (not Sir, although he's now got a KBE) Geldof, the film stars the much-missed Mel Rees as local bookie, wide-boy and all round dodgy character as 'Flash' Harry's manager and the always excellent Alison Steadman as a local prostitute - and Harry's girlfriend, that is when he's not picking up schoolgirls. There is a part for P.H. Moriarty ('Hatchet Harry' from 'Lock, Stock...'), a small part for the late Ian Dury (better known as the front man for the Blockheads), small parts for Phil Daniels and Alun Armstrong and a walk-on part for Ray Winstone - blink and you'll miss it. So, lots of faces to look out for, even if many of the characters are mere stereotypes.

There's a bit of violence and more f-ing and blinding than I was expecting, but it all adds to the gritty background.

Geldof's acting is not the best (he probably wishes the film could be forgotten), his accent is almost unintelligible, but of its kind 'Number One' is quite entertaining. It was made for TV but apparently also had a cinema release. It shows the usual grimy London backgrounds but also has shots of the old Wembley Conference Centre, of Blackpool, and the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, famous for hosting top snooker tournaments. And the real-life Ted Lowe is seen as a commentator.

I enjoyed it. Yes, the acting is dodgy, the storyline is dodgy (local nobody rises to the top in a matter of days), the characters are dodgy and the quality of the transfer to DVD is dodgy. But it is humorous and while the characters are thinly drawn, the film is held together by the acting skills of Rees and Steadman.

I'll give it a very, very generous 4/5 stars.

[Aside: This is a film rarely seen nowadays - or even its day! - so many thanks to Cinema Paradiso for sourcing a copy]

I enjoyed the book by Tom Rob Smith when it was published in 2008 and I have also read (but enjoyed a little less) his follow-up books 'The Secret Speech' and 'Agent 6', all featuring Leo Demidov as the central character. So I was very much looking forward to the film - only to be seriously disappointed.

The book conveys well the starvation in Ukraine in the 1930s and the fear of the citizens and the paranoia of the whole state in Stalin's USSR. Not only does the film not convey this particularly well, but the beginning and end of the killer are entirely different from the book, and the bizarre relationship between the killer and Leo Demidov is entirely missing. Since this is a crucial part of why and how the serial killer commits his murders, having a different method in the film makes for a critical difference. While the film is clearly based on the book, there are so many detailed differences that if you have read the book, the film is a disappointment.

Just to re-cap the storyline: Set in 1953, the final year of Stalin's rule, Leo Demidov is an Moscow-based MGB officer. A friend and fellow officer's son is found murdered - but as there is 'no crime' in the USSR, this is explained away. Separately, Leo arrests a vet who has customers from the US Embassy, making him a probable spy. Under torture, the vet denounces a number of people - including Leo's wife, Raisa. Leo refuses to denounce his wife, insisting she is innocent, and is demoted to the militia and sent to a small town in the sticks. Here he finds evidence of other murders and risks his career - and his life - tracking down the killer. His friend's son (the initial victim) was in fact the 44th, hence the title 'Child 44'. The killer is eventually tracked down and the film ends on a hopeful note (as indeed it does in the book).

There are some well-known actors in the cast - but for example Gary Oldman who gets second billing has only a minor role. The central characters are played by Tom Hardy as Leo Demidov (miscast and too muscly), Naomi Rapace (still trying to escape the typecasting of being the 'Dragon Tattoo' girl) who isn't bad in the role of Demidov's wife Raisa, and one of my favourite Brit actors Paddy Considine as the killer. But even he seems miscast.

Events in the film are poorly explained - if at all - and it can be difficult to follow. Things aren't helped by the silly, bogus Russian accents nor by the low lighting levels throughout most of the film. Perhaps it's an attempt to make the old USSR look grey and unattractive...

I appreciate that it's not easy to translate a novel from the page onto the screen and I can appreciate a film as being a drama entirely separate from the written word on which it may be based. But frankly, this is a poor and disappointing film.

Despite the big-name actors and having Ridley Scott as producer, this is at best an average sort of film so I would normally give it 3/5 stars. But because it's such a disappointment after the book, I'm going to mark it down to 2/5 stars.

It's a highly derivative, disappointing S African wannabe Robocop-like sci-fi film. Err, that's it.

With the pedigree of director Neill Blomkamp ('District 9') and a load of well-known actors and with the (potentially) intriguing premise of a sentient law-enforcement robot I was looking forward to an exciting, interesting sci-fi film, perhaps along the lines of 'Robocop' crossed with the recent 'Ex Machina'. But no - it was yet another disappointment.

The production values are high, the locations well chosen, the motion capture CG FX for Chappie the robot was good - so a good start. But oh dear, the storyline is dire and full of plot holes and technical stupidity. The big-name actors (Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman) seemed entirely miscast and Dev Patel (he from 'Slumdog Millionaire') was an awful choice. And I can well believe that the grossly incompetent 'gangsters' with whom Chappie fell in were indeed played by inexperienced actors - they were dire.

I spent some 10 years working on knowledge based systems, including machine learning, and my usual reaction to the typical movie treatment of any kind of computing, let alone anything about AI, is to cringe at the inevitable inaccuracies. This film shows an embarrassingly poor grasp of the technical realities of robotics, of AI, of computing, of software development, of security and risk management - indeed, of any kind of professional industrial-scale computing. Yes, I know it's a drama, but it's a continuing disappointment to me to have my worst expectations of the movie treatment of computers continually met.

If your expectations are low, you might enjoy this. If you're looking for something good, see the original 'Robocop' (not the disappointing remake) or the excellent 'District 9' and give 'Chappie' a miss. 2/5 stars - disappointing stuff.

My wife has discovered the 'Poldark' novels of Winston Graham. There are 12, the first four published between 1945-1953, the last eight between 1973-2002. The author died in 2003. [Aside: I think she's reading the 7th book ('The Angry Tide') in bed as I write this!]

We missed the recent (2015) 8-part BBC series on TV so I ordered up the box set and we watched it together in two massive sittings. And it's not bad - in fact it's pretty good, but then the Beeb always was good at historical costume drama. [Aside: It was produced by Mammoth Screen for the BBC, but the discs are distributed by ITV. Strange or what?]. This series covers the first two-and-a-bit books, so there's plenty of future material to go at.

My wife tells me that (perhaps inevitably) much of the detail in the books is missing from the TV series and that Demelza, the surprising bride of the dark, dangerous, handsome Ross Poldark, was first taken into his home as a child, rather than the young woman shown - but she tells me that otherwise it's a pretty good adaptation. I think I'll order up the 1975 series to compare...

It isn't my usual cup of tea, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it - 5/5 stars.

Directed by Tim Burton, it's a US drama about how Margaret Keane (played by Amy Adams) was so dominated by her husband Walter (played by Christoph Waltz) that she allowed him to take credit for her hugely successful paintings featuring children with, guess what, big eyes. The truth (?) comes out in a bitter court case.

I don't like twee paintings of big-eyed waifs and I don't rate Amy Adams as an actress. I was unconvinced by her performance alongside Clint Eastwood in 'Trouble with the Curve' and also in 'Man of Steel' and although her performance here is much stronger, I really don't see how it was worth a Golden Globe for Best Actress nor a BAFTA nomination.

Christoph Waltz played his role as a slimy, over-the-top baddy and his courtroom performance as a buffoon. Even Terence Stamp (who has a small part) was over the top. Both are excellent actors, so I put that down to the direction.

It's a sloppy, soppy, over-American tale of male domination and fraud on a nice but weak-willed woman, who does eventually show some backbone and will not put up with further lying. Quite how true to life it is we'll perhaps never know, but it didn't come across as realistic to me. But hey, it's a movie drama...

Renting this film was my wife's choice, so I blame her. 2/5 stars - I didn't like it very much. Neither of us did.

It's a low budget Brit serial killer film. Err, that's it...

Except that's not 'it' at all - this film is very impressive indeed and just shows what can be achieved by talented actors, director and photographer working within a very limited budget, reputedly £40k. Yes, it's short (70+ minutes) but it crams in so much humanity (can one say that about a killer?) and the run-down areas he frequents that in a strange way is quite moving. The tagline 'London serial killer' has been added to latch on to the 'horror' market, but it's not really a horror film, rather a character study of a disturbed, sociopathic loner.

I had recently seen 'Hyena' (which I can also recommend) made by director Gerard Johnson and with Peter Ferdinando and looked for other films with the same team, and found 'Tony'. Peter Ferdinando is very convincing in the lead role as Tony Benson, a rather pathetic lonely man, living alone in a barely-decorated flat in a run down tower block. His only interest seems to be watching old 1980s 'action' films on videotape (Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme etc). He has no friends, no family (some unspecified abuse is hinted at) and is unable to interact with people, reduced to approaching strangers and striking up random conversations. He wanders the run-down streets of Dalston / Hackney / Poplar carrying blue plastic bags - which, it turns out, contain assorted body parts that he is dumping in the river. Because when he takes a dislike to someone he kills them and cuts them up, leading to a few grisly scenes. The victims are strangers who he has invited (or in the case of a TV licence inspector, entered) his lonely flat - and his lonely life, then offended him. And in a grim reference to the Dennis Nilsen case, when the bad smell in the flat is commented on, tells them that it's 'the drains'.

Tony lives alone, wanders the streets alone (there's lots of walking - although quite why he has to pass Kings Cross from Dalston to get to his flat escapes me...), drinks in pubs alone, goes to a gay pub (the now-closed 'Joiners Arms' in Hackney Road) alone, goes to a prostitute and asks for a cuddle. It's a bleak, lonely life, and leaving aside the 'killer' bits, could well be taken as a social commentary on certain aspects of London life.

The acting throughout is really good, but other than Peter Ferdinando the only 'name' actor to appear is Neil Maskell, who has a small part as a Jobcentre employee.

It's not a film to watch with your granny, there's lots of f-ing and blinding and the aforementioned grisly bits. But I rather liked it - 4/5 stars.

[Aside: the feature length film is derived from an earlier short, which is included on the disc]

It's a low budget Brit 'corrupt cop' thriller. Err, that's it...

What makes this one stand out from the herd of many similar films is the quality of acting (good), the photography (excellent) and the level of violence (very high). Gerard Johnson directs Peter Ferdinando in the lead role as deeply corrupt, yet efficient, cop DS Michael Logan. He has entered into a corrupt relationship with Turkish drug smugglers and 'invested' £100k to set up a new route into the UK, and expects to take a hefty cut of the profits. But a seriously dodgy pair of Albanian brothers move in, take over the operation and cut out Michael's contact from the deal - literally, as in they chop him up with a machete.

Michael tries to do a deal with the not-very-nice Albanians who are also into human trafficking, but he is under investigation for his corrupt activities - and the deal goes wrong, very wrong. Intertwined with this is a story about rescuing a trafficked woman.

The locations are in West London (makes a change from East London...) from Bayswater/Queensway to some of the seedier areas of Brent. The bleak streets are soaked in coloured neon and the photography is excellent, capturing a very seedy slice of London life.

There are a couple of nice touches if you keep your eye out for them; good old George Dixon pounded the beat in West London (Paddington Green), but this is nothing like that - no corruption in his day, surely. And there is an old Norman Wisdom film playing in the background of one scene - Norman Wisdom is/was very popular in Albania, where his films were the only Western fare allowed under the former Communist regime. Not many people know that...

Apart from Peter Ferdinando in the lead, there are also better-known actors (Neil Maskell, Stephen Graham) doing a pretty good job as well. The film is seriously violent with assorted beatings, stabbings, shootings, blood-spattered choppings and an unpleasant rape, so it's not a film to watch with your granny. It also has an ambiguous ending, one that reminded me of that long, long look at Bob Hoskyns at the end of 'The Long Good Friday'.

Yes, it's clichéd, yes, it borrows from many other films and no, it won't be to everyone's taste, but it is a rather good example of the genre. 4/5 stars.

It's a drama about a couple whose 6-year-old son goes missing while they're on holiday in France during the 2006 World Cup. In the course of 8 x 1 hour episodes using flashback and flash-forward between 2006, 2009 and the present day (well, 2014) the hunt for the missing child is explored through the eyes of the parents, and principally the father played by James Nesbitt as he never gives up hope of finding his son again.

With the whole gamut of emotions from despair through to rage, and covering some uncomfortable topics from child abduction, trafficking and paedophilia, drug abuse, police and judicial corruption, murder, stress, loss of trust and marriage break-up, the drama would test the best of both film makers and actors. And as might be expected there are some successes and failures.

The series is slow moving and thorough, exploring many uncomfortable corners of human life. Generally it feels believable - but there is a major let-down in the final episode where there is a too-rapid tidying up of loose ends, followed by an ambiguous ending.

Unfortunately for me I have always found James Nesbitt to be a 'wooden' actor - in some scenes that is an advantage as his internal turmoil is hidden, but for the most part his acting hides the emotional despair that any parent would feel. The mother is played by Frances O'Connor who is more believable. And then there are a series of characters who speak with a mix of genuine and bogus France accents, and one rather good portrayal by Arsher Ali of the thoroughly odious, manipulative journalist Malik Suri. [Aside: there is even a bit of leaping-on-the-bandwagon here, as he goes in for a minor bit of mobile phone voicemail 'hacking'].

I enjoyed it (if one can 'enjoy' a drama about such uncomfortable topics) but with some reservations. I'll give it 4/5 stars.

Liam Neeson has a distinguished acting career, probably peaking with his leading role in Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' in 1993. But from 2008 onwards he has re-invented himself as a (somewhat elderly) all action hero, first with his role in 'Taken' (and a couple of sequels), 'Unknown', 'The Grey', this film from 2014 - 'Non-Stop' and also from 2014, 'A Walk Among the Tombstones'. (I might have missed one or two - and I'm not counting the 'Batman etc' films).

This time round Liam's character is an ex-cop, an alcoholic, grieving for his daughter who died of leukaemia - but he's a US Federal Air Marshal this time, armed (of course), on board a British transatlantic airline flight (what?), with a planeload of suspicious passengers, one of whom is texting him threatening messages (what?). There's a bomb on board (of course) + two female-interest characters and a loveable child (of course). And (of course) good old Liam saves the day. Err that's it.

The 'female-interest characters' are played by the wooden Michelle Dockery (she from 'Downton Abbey') and the wooden-by-reason-of-botox Julianne Moore. Add to this more plot holes and technical stupidity than are sensible, the fact that Mr Neeson's passport shows him as 9 years younger than he is, very, very poor CGI effects and one wildly inappropriate use of the word 'wanker' by the pilot - and you may guess that I wasn't impressed.

If you want to watch a whodunnit set on a plane then close your eyes and let the plot holes pass you by and it might use up 100 minutes or so of your life. But if you're a thinking man, you'll definitely think that this is a flying turkey. Non-Stop? More like Non-Start :(

2/5 stars - but only because I have seen even worse.

Set during the miner's strike of 1984/85, the film is a comedy drama that tells the somewhat bizarre tale of a small group of gay activists who raise money for a small mining community in South Wales.

It has a shed load of top-notch Brit actors (including Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine, Dominic West (still trying to escape the typecasting of 'The Wire')) and while it has a few amusing moments, I found it deeply unfunny.

Why? Because it's too politically correct. It tries to superimpose a current day view of gay and lesbian rights onto the world of 30 years before - and for me, it just doesn't work. Part of it is the language - the thought that in a mining village in the 1980s gay men would be referred to as 'gay' is, frankly, just silly. It would be 'queer' (a word that has now been reclaimed with some pride) or worse. It's small things like this that make the whole film simply not ring true to me - the whole thing is unrealistic and the few homophobic characters depicted are clichéd.

It has won awards and praise, but while the film did bring the occasional smile to my face I found it overburdened by political correctness. Only 2/5 stars.