Film Reviews by RP

Truly dreadful, weak, unfunny US 'comedy' horror. Mad Cow Disease mutates and turns happy hamburger-eating Americans into rage filled zombies. Nerdy virgin student (Jesse Eisenberg) wanders the zombie-infested land with a set of silly rules to avoid falling foul of unexpected zombies, meets up with gun toting older man (Woody Harrelson) in search of a Twinkie, and a pair of gun-toting sisters. [Aside: As a non-American I had to look up what a Twinkie is. Apparently a Hostess Twinkie is made up of soft, yellow sponge cake with a creamy white filling inside. Yuk.] The ill-matched foursome have assorted silly adventures, splattering assorted zombies in the process, and meet up with a very unfunny Bill Murray. And after yet more silly adventures in a zombie-infested funfair they go off happily together into the zombie-infested land. This is a deeply unfunny film. Perhaps USAnian 'humor' isn't my thing, but my face never cracked into a grin for the whole boring 84 minutes. In fact that's the best thing about it - it's mercifully short. Oh yes: never mind the lack of humour, there's no horror here either. 2/5 stars - but only because I really have seen worse.

I waited to write a review of this film until I had seen 'Neds' which - in theory at least - deals with similar issues in that both are coming-of-age / rites-of-passage films set on a council estate. But there the similarities end. Frankly, 'Goodbye Charlie Bright' is for wimps. It's too prettified and cleaned up, from the brightly coloured garage doors (to add colour) to the digitally brightened sky (to add more colour) to the long-hot-summer setting (to add yet more brightness), to the opening streak-run. Yes, I know that was the director's intention: not to have yet another Ken Loach / Mike Leigh / social realist, gritty, grey film - but in my opinion it overshadows the message and no matter how many muggings, robberies, drug scenes, gun incidents, shootings there may be, these seem to be played for laughs. I know the gun scene with the small boy at the end is shocking, but the grinning hero's exit in the back of the police car for Justin (Roland Manookian) is too 'happy' a message for me. It really should have been a tragedy that Justin was now locked into life on the estate while Charlie (Paul Nicholls) and the others have escaped into manhood and the wide world outside. I found the sarf Landan dialogue and humour to be realistic, but why oh why were the location shots done in Kingston-on-Thames of all places? What else felt wrong - err, Dani Behr as 'Blondie' was her usual dreadful self, the awful over-the-top character of Hector (Richard Driscoll) and the fact that there isn't any coherent storyline, just what felt like a series of disconnected episodes. 'Goodbye Charlie Bright' isn't a bad film - but it isn't excellent either, so the best I can give it is 3/5 stars.

'Apocalypse Now' is widely regarded as one of the finest films on the Vietnam war – but having seen it several times now, I am uncertain whether it is a pro- or anti-war film. This is the so-called 'redux' version released in 2001 which includes several scenes cut from the original 1979 version, principally a lengthy scene among a French-colonial plantation owning family. As far as the storyline goes, it is this: Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) is tasked with venturing far inland and across the Cambodian border to kill a mysterious Colonel Kurtz (played by an overweight Marlon Brando), a much decorated Special Forces officer who has gone rogue and is operating his own forces outside of any US control. He sails far up the Nung river in a small river patrol boat and on the way encounters a series of bizarre incidents and characters – random senseless killing of innocent civilians, airborne attacks to the music of Wagner, napalm attacks, surfing while under fire, water skiing behind the patrol boat, entertainment by Playboy Playmates etc. And at the end he accomplishes his mission, with Brando echoing the ending of Joseph Conrad's novella 'The Heart Of Darkness', his final words being 'The horror! The horror!'. Be advised that the film is *very* long at 3 hours 14 minutes (PAL DVD) - but it's definitely worth it. Highly recommended - 5/5 stars.

Having recently seen Peter Mullan as the leading actor in 'Tyrannosaur' I sought out his other films, and came across 'Neds' which he both directed and takes a role as the drunken, abusive father. 'Neds', like so many others, is a gritty coming-of-age / rites of passage film of the social realist school, set on a council estate. But there similarities end, because this is *really* gritty, not some namby pamby cleaned up Technicolor version like for example 'Goodbye Charlie Bright'. Set in 1970s Glasgow, the accents so thick that I needed to use the subtitles, and with constant f-ing and blinding, this is a tale of adolescent gang culture which feels so close to life. It tells the tale of John McGill (very well played by newcomer Conor McCarron) who comes from an unpromising home background but is top of his class at primary school and who then goes on to secondary school where he is seen as a swot and bullied - but over the summer hols drops out and becomes a violent, knife wielding gang member. Violent, filled with rage and revenge, this film needs to be experienced rather than just reading this review. While it has weaknesses (does someone turn from a swot to a violent delinquent in six weeks? religious hallucination after glue sniffing?) this is a strong, powerful film that will leave you feeling seriously uncomfortable. Superb stuff - 5/5 stars.

I've hesitated for quite a while before writing a review of this film. It left a lasting impression on me, not particularly because of the scenes of torture shown here – disturbing though they are - but the nightmarish possibility that there might be such individuals in reality. 'Martyrs' is a French-Canadian film with subtitles – it contains the most visually awful torture scenes that I have seen depicted on film. It is not for the squeamish and is genuinely disturbing. Having said that, not only is the storyline convincing but it made me jump a few times and the final part had me cringing, which can't be bad. Entertaining? Well, you certainly won't laugh at it, and it's not a film for a cosy night in with the family. But it is a well realised horror film for grown-ups – just don't watch it with your granny. 4/5 stars. Highly recommended.

I seem to have watched quite a few Australian films recently – and here's another, this time a teen / romance / horror film. What? You've seen many similar US-made films in the same vein? Think again – this one is as black as they come. Jilted wannabe prom queen gets daddy to kidnap the boy she fancies, tortures him, and adds him to the many others in the cellar. Err – that's it. There is gore but the film is not particularly scary, and although the torture scenes are nasty enough it's mostly off-screen or in your imagination. The film is laced with the blackest of black humour and this makes it watchable enough – although my favourite gorefest from down under is still Peter Jackson's 'Braindead' which is laugh-out-loud funny, if you like that kind of thing (yes, I know it's from New Zealand...). 'The Loved Ones' is OK, but it really needed to make me jump a lot more to get above 3/5 stars.

Lantana is a variety of flowering shrub which apparently grows like a weed in Australia, forming a tangled undergrowth with attractive flowers on the surface. And so it is with this Australian film which deals with the intertwined relationships between a number of people – superficially satisfactory, but deeply entangled and unsatisfactory beneath the surface. It focuses on trust in relationships and exposes just how corrosive a lack of trust can be.

Dr Valerie Somers (played by Barbara Hershey) provides marriage guidance / relationship counselling. She is disturbed by counselling sessions with a gay man who is in a relationship with a married man and which she relates to her husband (played by Geoffrey Rush) whose relationship with his wife is under tension from grief stemming from the death of their daughter. Policeman Leon Zat (played by Anthony LaPaglia) has an affair with Jane, whom he met at Latin dancing classes which he attends with his wife Sonja. Unknown to her husband, Sonja also has counselling sessions with Dr Somers.

Valerie Somers has a car breakdown and disappears on a lonely back road. Jane sees her next door neighbour throwing something into the lantana opposite her house. She find a woman's shoe - Valerie's shoe. She reports this to the police, so losing the trust of her neighbour. Leon investigates and confesses his affair to his wife, so losing her trust – and so it goes, each character losing the trust they depend upon and searching for ways to rebuild it. And through it all there is a mystery – what has happened to Valerie...

All the characters are related to each other, through visits to Dr Somers, or by sexual relationship, by happenstance or other contact. Each relationship comes under serious strain – which, if any, will survive?

'Lantana' is excellent – a first class character drama, derived from a stage play, but not appearing too 'stagey'. I thoroughly enjoyed it – the acting is excellent throughout and the tangled, intertwined storylines are resolved only to the extent required in real life and there are no artificial happy endings. The film has won a host of Australian awards but I wasn't aware of it until searching for films starring Geoffrey Rush who starred in the more recent 'The King's Speech'. 4/5 stars – highly recommended.

'Saturday Night And Sunday Morning' is a classic of the British New Wave / social realism / kitchen sink films of the late 1950s / early 1960s and stars Albert Finney as anti-hero Arthur Seaton.

Allan Sillitoe wrote the novel on which the film is based – and also the screenplay for the film - and I suspect much of it is semi-autobiographical. He worked for Raleigh in Nottingham, at one time the largest cycle manufacturer in the world. Those times are gone, Raleigh moved out of Nottingham some years ago (and has now been sold to a Dutch company) and its UK operations reduced to distributing bikes imported from the far East.

Raleigh is where Arthur Seaton worked, machining cycle components from Monday to Friday, and on weekends was unleashed to consume large quantities of beer and chase the ladies. Arthur is angry, loud – and full of himself. He is involved with two women at once, one (Brenda, played by Rachel Roberts) the wife of a colleague at work, the other a young woman (Doreen, played by Shirley Anne Field) who has plans for marriage. Brenda fall pregnant, there are failed attempts at an abortion, Brenda's husband finds out, his soldier friends give Arthur a beating, but life goes on and the film ends with Arthur and Doreen talking about moving into a newly built house. So far, so grim – what do you expect of a 'social realist' film?

Arthur Seaton is not a likeable character: he is drunken, surly, rebellious, immoral and while the acting and the script are excellent it does not have the 'heart' of similar films such as, for example, 'This Sporting Life' made few years later in 1963, also with Rachel Roberts.

The film won 3 BAFTAs (Rachel Roberts – Best Actress, Karel Reisz – Best Director, Albert Finney – Best Newcomer to Film Role). And a minor point but something that often irritates me – the accents – work well here. Albert Finney is from Salford so manages a flat Midlands accent well, and Rachel Roberts although Welsh manages to sound fairly authentic.

Period details abound, from old-fashioned names (you don't find many Arthurs, Brendas or Doreens today), old-fashioned industries, manual lathes on the factory floor rather than CNC automation, old-fashioned pubs, to the wearing of a suit to go out to the pub.

The films of Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and others laid the foundation for modern British films that did not hark back to the war and did not depend on the Hollywood idiom. The film is a classic, but it's very much a period piece that provides a window onto a lost world of Midlands industry and life which is now long gone. 4/5 stars - highly recommended.

If Leonardo DiCaprio speaks fluent Arabic and can mingle unobserved in crowded Jordanian / Syrian towns then I'm a banana. And that's only part of the problem here: not only is DiCaprio's role unbelievable, but so is the whole film. Yes, it has its tense moments and it's a reasonable political thriller set in a post-9/11 world – but it's unbelievable. An overweight Russell Crowe plays an overweight Russell Crowe. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a CIA operative saving the world from Muslim extremists. Mark Strong plays the best role as the head of the Jordanian security services. And if that opening scene with the exploding bomb factory was shot in Manchester then I'll eat the aforementioned banana.

The film was directed by Ridley Scott ('Alien', 'Blade Runner', 'Black Rain', Thelma and Louise', 'Black Hawk Down' and a host of others) who does his usual thing with densely realised backgrounds and foreground action and I wish that I liked the film more. But I don't – the plot is over complex and silly: DiCaprio sets up an innocent architect to draw out the leader of an Al Qaeda lookalike organisation, but in fact it's DiCaprio who's being set up by the Jordanians. Satellite / unmanned drone camera shots are added for techno effect, but only add to the lack of realism.

As such thrillers go it's not bad and I wish I could overcome my sense of disbelief to give it a higher score. But I can't, so it gets 3/5 from me.

This was the last film directed by Tony Richardson, famed for his late 1950s/early 1960s stage plays and films of the British New Wave / social realism / kitchen sink genre - think 'Look Back in Anger', 'A Taste Of Honey', 'The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner', as well as 'Tom Jones' and a host of others. And here he had an good cast to work with including Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lange, who won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role here. But this film is very average: a mish-mash of stuff, confusing a romantic drama with a weak conspiracy plot. Tommy Lee Jones plays Tommy Lee Jones as a US Army nuclear engineer observing nuclear tests in the South Pacific and later underground tests in the Nevada desert. Jessica Lange plays his over flirtatious wife. Wife flirts with army base commander and (almost?) has an affair. Husband observes civilians exposed to radiation. Base commander sets-up husband to be committed to a mental hospital. Wife rescues him. Or something. Quite how Jessica Lange won an Oscar for this I really don't know – her acting is good but not exceptional. In fact the whole film is pretty average stuff – middle of the road American stuff with a boring story, the two threads of which go nowhere. 3/5 stars, but only because I've seen a lot worse.

From the beginning, the superb Scottish highland scenery provides an astonishingly beautiful backdrop to this rather good low budget British chase thriller. The story goes something like this: Mountain climbers accidentally find a trapped young girl. They rescue her but are chased by ruthless kidnappers, who kill them one by one. The survivors reach a village, but are still pursued. Party out to pay ransom takes revenge on kidnappers. So far, so average – but in this film the action is excellent throughout with much realistic climbing, chases and falls, a certain amount of blood, and the baddies are really bad. If there is a weak spot, it is the scene with the fire parade in the village – with those weird masks it looked like something from 'The Wicker Man' although I understand that there are a number of fire festivals held in Scotland. The acting is pretty good (Melissa George is excellent in the lead role) even if some of the dialogue is a little weak in parts. I enjoyed it and I'll give it 4/5 – highly recommended. [Aside: the 'extras' are also very good – unusually, the 'making of' featurette is well worth watching]

Hmm... Having enjoyed the original Swedish films and subsequently read the books, I was interested to see what this remake would be like. I say 'interested' rather than 'looking forward to' because I have quite a jaundiced view of remakes – by definition they aren't very original. And so it proves here. Unless you dislike subtitles, or are a great fan of Daniel Craig, I'm not really sure what this has to offer. Yes, I know that this remake version has its fans and has won critical acclaim, but I'm not convinced. I'm not going to dwell on differences between the two versions other than to say that in my opinion the character of Lisbeth Salander was portrayed better by Noomi Rapace in the original. This isn't a bad film by any means – it's just that I can't see that a remake is justified after only 2 years. 3/5 stars.

From the stage play of the same name by 18 year old Sheelagh Delaney with the author writing the screenplay for the film and directed by Tony Richardson, this is a superb example of the 'British New Wave' / 'social realism' / 'kitchen sink' dramas of the late 1950s / early 1960s.

Set in Salford, it tells the story of a schoolgirl (Jo, played by Rita Tushingham) who lives with her mother (Helen, played by Dora Bryan). Jo meets a young black seaman and falls pregnant. Mother leaves to marry her fancy man. Jo leaves school, goes to work in a shoe shop, meets a gay man, finds a cheap run-down room, and allows the gay man (Geoffrey, played by Murray Melvin) to live there. Mother returns, her new marriage having failed, and muscles Jo's friend out...

So far, so grim. What sets this apart is not only the context (in 1961 it was almost unheard of for a film to mention mixed race relationships, let alone pregnant schoolgirls and homosexuality), the fact that the film was made on location, the period details (Manchester Ship Canal with shipping, cobbled streets, children playing in the streets, playground songs, clothes, school uniform, boys in short trousers, dancing, outings to Blackpool etc), and of course the quality of the acting. Dora Bryan was an established performer and Murray Melvin had the same part in the stage production, but Rita Tushingham was a newcomer.

The accents too are in keeping (Dora Bryan grew up in Oldham, Rita Tushingham is from Liverpool) unlike many similar films where dodgy accents abound.

The film won four BAFTAs – Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Dora Bryan) and Best Newcomer (Rita Tushingham) – as well as assorted other awards. It thoroughly deserved them, and while it is a little 'stagey' (it was after all derived from a stage play) and somewhat dated, it still feels like an authentic, gritty slice of a life perhaps now gone, but not far away... Highly recommended – 5/5 stars.

I rented this film because I'm trying to catch up with films with the rather excellent Carey Mulligan in them. I didn't know anything about the subject matter – if I had then perhaps I wouldn't have bothered. It's about grief and how different members of a family deal with it following the death of a loved one – the "greatest" of the title, the greatest son / brother / boyfriend. And while first time director Shana Feste has assembled a cast of excellent actors, the film suffers from a perhaps inevitable Hollywood saccharine sweetness that is at odds with the raw grief that such an event brings. I know, I've been there – and if you too have grieved you will recognise the emotions. But here, they are distorted through the lens of a US movie. Not a bad film – I've seen many worse – and the director even manages to get Pierce Brosnan to act a little, but there are too many unfinished or unbelievable bits (maths teacher with a huge suburban house + beach house? A girl who attends bereavement counselling sessions after pretending her sister has died? A mother who waits by the prison hospital bedside of driver who killed her son?). As far as my reason for renting the film: yes, Carey Mulligan was excellent – but the film is worth at best 3/5 stars. Very average stuff.

Superb political "action thriller" from 1973 about events way back in 1962. I've used quotation marks because by today's tastes it's long and slow moving – there's no crash bang wallop here – and for a thriller there's not many thrills. But I can highly recommend it – the tension build slowly as a hired assassin (codename Jackal) carefully plans the assassination of General de Gaulle. The film is based on true events as the OAS, a far right French nationalist group, attempted to prevent independence of the French colony of Algeria. Edward Fox is perfect in the role of the ruthless assassin who meticulously plans every detail and even carries his anonymity to the grave. 4/5 stars – highly recommended.