Film Reviews by GI

A very famous and entertaining British war film about the well known bombing raid on the Ruhr Valley dams. The actual raid was a huge morale booster for the British at the time and the film captures the sense of achievement. But ultimately this is an uplifting film rather than an actual portrayal of the events where very little strategic significance was achieved. Richard Todd, a major British star at the time, plays Wing Commander Guy Gibson, affable and much loved by his men who is given the task of training for the raid which involved using a new and bizarre invention, a bouncing bomb. (The real Gibson was an unpopular martinet). The bomb has been invented by the eccentric Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave), a genius engineer, who becomes obsessed with the notion that destroying the dams will win the war. The film is roughly in three sections that all fit perfectly; Wallis' coming up with the idea and then persuading the higher ups to go along with it, Gibson and his men training for the mission and the climax of the mission itself. This is a classic British war film, well structured and highlights the plucky British airmen as well as the boffin who is slightly bonkers. A great British support cast and keen eyed viewers will spot early appearances of Robert Shaw and Patrick McGoohan. And of course there is the modern day issue with the name of Gibson's dog! Overall this is a great war film especially about bomber command. Interestingly the coda of the film gives a lot to reflecting on the aircrews who died in the raid but doesn't mention the large amount of German civilians who died as a consequence of it. Still a film that all good film lovers should make sure they see, it deserves rediscovery.

The advertising all points to a gritty disaster movie but what you actually get is a small community drama with loads of family tensions and every social issue going on including abortion rights, homophobia, illegal immigration, racism, disability, single parenting...it goes on and a big tornado then pops along and makes nearly everyone have a rethink about their prejudices. The tornado has a brief visit in the narrative after which the film refocuses itself onto the plight of extreme weather victims in the USA. Overall this crams so much and gives none of the issues any weight or significance leaving the film a rambling jaunt of about two hours. Dull.

Adapted by John Le Carré from his own novel this spy story is a dark comedy that is well written but ultimately an unsatisfying film. Pierce Brosnan plays disgraced MI6 agent Andy Osnard, a serial womaniser and sleazy spy who is sent to Panama where he needs to make an impression. Andy focuses his attention on Harry (Geoffrey Rush), a former Savile Row tailor who makes suits for all the local bigwigs. He's also a bit of a fraud and seriously in debt. Andy recruits him to pass on all the secrets his customers supposedly tell him and ~Harry sees a chance to sort his finances out. Both have their own agenda that quickly gets out of hand. In many ways this is Brosnan playing a spy the polar opposite of his 007 persona. He's not bad here and is clearly relishing the borderline corrupt character of Osnard. He and Rush are aided by a good support cast including Jamie Lee Curtis, Catherine McCormack and a miscast Brendan Gleeson. Daniel Radcliffe is also there in a very early role. The film has it's moments but it drifts along and is not quite funny enough or dramatic enough to make it memorable or entertaining.

One of the best of the cycle of revisionist westerns made in the 70s, influenced by Sam Peckinpah's westerns and with hints of Sergio Leone's spaghetti western style. From the opening credits of sepia photographs this film posits itself as an authentic retelling of the west. In this case it's focused on the cattle drive, a familiar subject in the genre, but here the myths of the honest, hard working frontier life of a cowboy are sharply deconstructed. This is told through the central character of Ben (Gary Grimes), a young boy who joins the cattle drive of Frank Culpepper (Billy Green Bush), a no nonsense cattleman taking his herd across the wilderness to Colorado. Ben has dreamt of being a cowboy but he quickly learns it's a lowly job, with no honour or camaraderie and a life spiced with sudden death and violence. His presence and inexperience as well as his innocence eventually cause a chain of events that gives the violent men around him some redemption when they face up to a domineering land baron. The film is violent without heroics. The men face a final showdown but do so for selfish reasons and in the final analysis Ben realises everyone is just out for themselves and others lives have no meaning. This is a western that is rather excellent and one that rarely gets mentioned today. Yet it deserves to be ranked with the great westerns of the late 60s and the 1970s for its attempt to show the American west as historical drama rather than myth and legend.

Whilst Kevin Costner gets the odd opportunity here to show his action chops this is a weak, clumsy and inept film that makes little sense and struggles to classify itself. It clearly wants to be an action spy film built around the likes of the Mission Impossible series but then drifts into family comedy drama and the two don't always make for good story here. Costner plays Ethan (not Hunt I may add), a tough CIA field agent who is forced to retire after a mission goes awry and it turns out he has terminal cancer. He decides to go to Paris to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen). But on the promise of a revolutionary cure he succumbs to the invite of sultry agent Vivi (Amber Heard) to finish off his last job. This threatens his new relationship with his family which cues a mix of killing and domestic strife! The film has it's moments mostly in the gritty fight sequences with a coughing and spluttering Costner seeming to find enough oomph to take down some immensely built bad guys. Heard plays a femme fatale vixen who constantly changes her hair and dresses as a pornstar, hardly very covert. The baddies are all Bondesque villains ie bald, albino, mysterious etc etc and basically none of it makes any sense.

Often claimed to be one of the most accurate of war films this is one of the best British films ever made. Based on a celebrated novel it's a story of Royal Navy escorts during the Battle of The Atlantic and the Arctic convoys in the Second World War. It has a documentary realism and seamlessly weaves actual war footage into the film making it very tense. It's a story built around two naval officers, Captain Ericson (Jack Hawkins) and Lieutenant Lockhart (Donald Sinden) and their tours of duty on two ships that attempt to protect merchant convoys from U-Boat attacks. The film captures the monotony, fear, camaraderie and terror of the war at sea as the two enemies stalk one another and all the while the sea presents the most frightening danger. Controversially it shows the awful and difficult decisions that men have to make when faced with war. Hawkins and Sinden give first class performances and this film cemented Hawkins as a major British star. There's a host of British character actors in support too. This is a significant war film, certainly one of the few that didn't go in for the false heroics of Hollywood films in this genre but sought to capture the realities of war. It shows that a war film can be intense and gripping without the need for gratuitousness. A remarkable film that deserves a modern audience and it is most certainly a film I highly recommend if you've never seen it.

An award winning apocalyptic film from New Zealand. An interesting story about a scientist (Bruno Lawrence) who finds himself the only human left after a massive energy project goes wrong. Of course he's not the last man standing as he finds a couple of others along his journey that involves his struggles with isolation through to trying to put right what has happened. It's a little enigmatic and the scenes involving the loneliness are ideas seen in any number of similar films. The film has it's fans although viewed today it seems a little dated and at times clichéd. The tensions between the three survivors are never pursued quite as satisfactorily as the film promises but the strange ending leaves the film feeling like it's something different and a bit mysterious. Worth checking out.

A tough, uncompromising, realistic and very thought provoking war film set on the Russian Front during the Second World War. Twenty years before the celebrated realism of Saving Private Ryan (1998) came along director Sam Peckinpah made this film that Orson Welles described as one of the greatest war films ever made. He was right, this is a remarkable film with some of there most authentic combat scenes committed to film. It's a story of ordinary men thrust into the maelstrom of war and reliant on luck and experience to survive. Death by random shellfire litters the film and the constant fear in the characters is always evident and battle is experienced by the soldiers everyday. James Coburn plays highly decorated Sergeant Steiner, a German soldier who has become highly respected by his men and the officers above him for his combat skills and ability to survive. But he hates the establishment and ideology that forces ordinary young men into war. He therefore immediately distrusts his new commander, Captain Stravinsky (Maximilian Schell), a class obsessed man desperate to win the Iron Cross. When Stansky lies in order to win the medal Steiner stands against him so Stravinsky sets about ensuring Steiner and his men will not survive. This is Peckinpah's last great film, a genius director mired by alcoholism, but who turned ordinary stories into something very special. This film is a bloody, compelling indictment of war. The battle scenes are epic in construction and exciting while portraying the horrors of war. Thematically this delves into the philosophy of humanities obsession with war through politics and ideologies where the victims are those forced to fight. A masterpiece and a film I highly recommend.

A pyschological thriller that doesn't quite find itself. This is one of those narratives where the audience are constantly torn between did it happen or is it all in his mind. Aaron Eckhart plays Arthur, an ex cop now private eye but who is also a conspiracy theorist and mentally unstable. He's mired by grief due to a family trauma. He gets hired by a woman claiming her daughter was mysteriously killed in the small border town of Wander. The circumstances have a similarity to something in Arthur's past and so he sets off to investigate. Once there he uncovers a conspiracy that affects the entire population....or does he? Eckhart's detective is too far gone here to make the story interesting, he does more stumbling onto things than actually investigate and of course you're constantly being juggled between is it his delusion or actually happening with a fairly predictable denouement at the end. It's all a bit drab and uninteresting. Heather Graham lends support.

Aussie comedian Paul Hogan wrote and starred in what he thought would be a nice little Australian comedy but this became one of the biggest grossing films of 1986. Viewed today it is guilty of cliché and it's really a clash of cultures, fish-out-of-water romcom but it exudes enormous charm and it's really funny even though there's some jokes about race and sexuality that might fall a bit flat today. The narrative falls into two neat halves, the first being the better of the two. Journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski, in her first screen role) travels to a small town in the Australian outback in search of the story of a local man who was allegedly attacked by a crocodile, lost his leg but manages to crawl out of the bush to safety. She finds instead Mick Dundee (Hogan), a poacher who has lived all his life in the outback and he takes her on a trip into the bush where he has to save her from a crocodile. Here the seeds of a romance begin and Sue invites Mick back to New York where he finds the frenzied and trashy life of Americans very difficult to comprehend and faces the competition of Sue's fiancé for her love. The comedy of the first half is in introducing the contradictory character of Dundee and seeing a rich and somewhat naïve woman suddenly faced with the mysteries of aborigines and wild animals. The second half is more predictable with Dundee having to deal with escalators, bidets, LGBT Americans, prostitutes etc etc. The thing is it's still a funny and warm film with some great comedy moments. There were two sequels which didn't offer much new so are best avoided but this, the first, is worthy of rediscovery.

A delightful true crime caper and underdog story that has that streak of British eccentricity which will appeal especially to UK audiences. This tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of the portrait of the Duke Of Wellington by Goya from the National Gallery in 1961. Jim Broadbent, a national treasure if ever there was one, plays Kempton Bunton, who lives in the north east with his wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren), who is constantly frustrated with Kempton's inability to keep a job because he can't help standing up to the establishment, his big cause being the paying of a TV licence for OAPs, so he refuses to have one of those too. When he sees how much the government have paid for the Wellington portrait he decides to 'kidnap' it for awhile and hold it for ransom. The police are convinced its a highly professional theft until Kempton decides he has to return it and he has to face the consequences. There's an element of comedy kitchen sink drama to this lovely little film made more funny and interesting by it being based on a true story. There's also a plot twist which makes it even more poignant. Overall this is a film enhanced by Broadbent especially and Mirren as his long suffering wife. There's the usual narrative digs at the class system which was very deeply ingrained at the times and the film has the air of the old Ealing style comedies making it very amusing and very watchable.

Jeff Bridges gives an award winning performance in this marvellous modern day drama. He plays 'Bad' Blake, a former country & western star now sadly broke, alcoholic and reduced to performing in bowling alleys and small bars. His manager urges him to start writing new songs if not for himself but for top star Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), once Bad's protegé. As his health deteriorates Bad is given a chance of redemption when he meets music journalist Jean (Maggie Gylenhaal) and they begin a romance. Bad warms to her young son, Buddy and he feels his life may now turn good again. But his alcoholism soon causes big problems. Bridges is one of the best of American actors around today and he always delivers a performance that is reason to see this film. Here he is a broken man trying to rekindle his genius but scarred by life and tries to find hope in love. The film has sadness, despair and redemption and above all showcases this remarkable actor. Robert Duvall also has a supporting role. A film I recommend.

Based on the novel by Nick Hornby this is a let down. It's a complete misfire which leaves it as cringeworthy and all despite a sterling cast no doubt trying their best. The story is essentially one about depression and how support from friends can help deal with it yet here we have a clumsy, somewhat inappropriate attempt at comedy to explain this. Four depressed people, a disgraced TV show host (Pierce Brosnan), a lonely girl mourning her dead sister (Imogen Poots), a failed rock star (Aaron Paul) and a mum failing in her care for her disabled son (Toni Collette), all happen to meet at the top of a building where they intended to commit suicide. Once you get that zany coincidence you can try and buy into the plot where they bond as a support group of friends and then inadvertently become a media story but look out for each other through a series of ups and downs. Sam Neill, Joe Cole and Rosamund Pike lend their talents to this poorly conceived comedy that is best avoided.

Director Ridley Scott's elaborate and convoluted tale about greed centred in the world of drug trafficking. It's a thriller that is visually impressive, has a very complex script courtesy of novelist Cormac McCarthy, a highly impressive cast and some real shocking moments. It's a modern crime film told in an epic style that probably needs a couple of viewings to really appreciate it properly but it really is worth it. Michael Fassbender is criminal lawyer (or counsellor in American parlance) who has a lavish lifestyle. He is deeply in love with his beautiful fiancée, Laura (Penélope Cruz) but finds his finances can't match the life he wants for them. He thinks the easy solution is to fund a one off big drug deal where he can realise a massive profit. He arranges this through his client and dodgy nightclub owner, Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt), a go between with the cartel that imports the drugs. But things go quickly awry when, unknown to everyone, Reiner's girlfriend, Malkina (Cameron Diaz) sees an opportunity to enrich herself and arranges for the drug shipment to go missing. This has serious implications for the Counsellor. Admittedly the film has some long talking scenes that slows the flow but when things begin to happen you get the typical Scott action set pieces that are tough and brutal. This director's films are always worth your time and this underrated one is far better than it's reputation. It's not his best but definitely a cut above anything similar. If you like your crime films realistic and adult then look no further.

A dark, thriller styled new take on Batman with inspired casting of Robert Pattinson as the titular avenger. He's really good in the role from playing Bruce Wayne as a sort of rock star type recluse to the pumped up Batman, roaming the murky, rain drenched streets of Gotham City in the night time, claiming to anyone he deals justice too that he represents 'vengeance'. The film continues the visual styling that Christopher Nolan brought to his 'Dark Knight' trilogy and whilst this new film doesn't match the originality of those films it has a lot going for it. The story is a mystery, with a serial killer on the loose murdering the city's dignitaries claiming they were all corrupt, in this regard there's story and visual elements of Se7en (1995) at play here, he also keeps leaving clues/messages at the crime scenes for The Batman. There's some great set pieces and whilst the film is quite long it seems to fit it's time well and doesn't resort to a giant punch up at the end like the Marvel films tend to do. Director and writer Matt Reeves has managed very cleverly to bring in key characters from the franchise including Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), Riddler (Paul Dano) and Penguin (Colin Farrell - under heavy prosthetics). Andy Serkis as Alfred the butler is a little underused but does have 3 or 4 key scenes and the ever dependable Jeffrey Wright is Gordon the future commissioner of police. None of these characters is how you'd expect them to look or behave giving the film a fresh take on the franchise. There is the slight issue of having to tell the Batman's backstory which we've all seen in other films but it is wrapped up here in the film's central mystery plot so overall it works and for the most part feels fresh. Definitely a film to enjoy on a big screen as it's spectacular and atmospheric.