Film Reviews by SB

Especially if you are a follower of the series. Scrips and animation have been used to recreate some lost short episodes. Once you get used to the animated figures, you almost forget the different format - although backgrounds etc are necessarily sketchy.

film about a triangle of sorts in 1930s Paris. A lot of talk which is less meaningful than appears, and a lot of energetic rather than erotic sex. Keeps the attention just through the locations and performances

from the majority of critics' reviews. Gloomily stylish in design, and with one caveat, the performances of the leads are good (as are some other cast members like Kathy Staff and George Cole). The pacing is good, so interest does not flag. The last 15 minutes are a little messy and could perhaps have been done better. The only other negative I would note is that Julia Roberts cannot do an Irish accent, and might as well not have bothered to try - the director should have done something about that from the start.

This tale of how cold-war espionage continues under 'Glasnost' has a somewhat unlikely opening scenario, but then settles down to a very wordy puzzle over who is deceiving whom out of the UK, USSR and USA intelligence services. Well, of course they are all deceiving each other, but perhaps the issue is really which will will end up with their real objective achieved.

Be prepared to either pay a lot of attention or go to sleep. It's a bit unfortunate to see Diana Quick struggling with lines she clearly has no belief in, and some other good actors give an impression of having a heavy time of it. Alan Howard's crumpled cynic reappears but is even more puzzling than usual. But if you like this sort of stuff, it may be worth watching once. Set mainly in London and the US (the 'Moscow' scene plainly shot in London).

This is a documentary introduction to the socially important world of dance portrayed in most of Jane Austen's books - although its importance to the plot varies. Amanda Vickery is a genuine authority on the period and her co-presenter is willing to 'get stuck in' to dance rehearsals. What went alongside the dancing, especially food, is also dealt with in detail. Those who know little about the subject will certainly gain from watching this, and for those who know more anyway, it is still a pleasurable experience.

It isn't easy to make a 'disaster movie' about a disaster which only lasted a few minutes, had a known outcome with more suvivors than dead, and has a setting which is much less flexible than an ocean liner, a volcano or a skyscraper. With the loss of the airship Hindenburg, the only fertile ground is offered by the continuing mystery over the cause of its fatal explosion on landing in New Jersey. That is what drives this would-be blockbuster, which offers one explanation for what happened. The 2013 German TV miniseries 'Last Flight of the Hindenberg' also took this approach, and was rather more successful on several counts.

The film is a leaden affair, with a solid cast struggling through a mundane script. George C Scott is a glum lead, meant to be conflicted but really just dull, as he plods around trying to locate a bomb(er). At the end, director Robert Wise spends a good deal of effort and money on stretching out the final minutes - but in a very confusing and irritating way, intercut with newsreel footage.

It is somewhat of an indictment of the film that the greatest tension arises in the episode where one of the crew might or might not fall into the ocean during repairs to the airship's hull.

Good for a dozy afternoon after Sunday lunch.

more complete adaptations of Sense and Sensibility (the BBC has made three, most recently the 2008 version) that you realise how many chunks of the story have been omitted from this version, and also how many characters are lost, as well as gratuitous changes made to details (although not the main plot line). Of course, a two hour film version must inevitably be selective, but the losses are considerable.

On the credit side, most of the performances are very good, although some of the cast are far too old for the roles they are meant to play. Alan Rickman especially, but also Emma Thompson and Greg Wise. Imogen Stubbs as Lucy Steele stands out, and Hugh Grant is good in a relatively early role as Edmund Ferrars - very restrained. Harriet Walter is perhaps too harsh rather than feline as Fanny and Elizabeth Spriggs overdoes it a bit as Mrs Jennings.

Not all of the locations are satisfactory - Sir John Middleton's house is far too grand, for example. But the overall scenic and costume design are good.

Although now very old in style, this version is still well worth watching for the performances, with clear and intelligent delivery of a very full script. For example, you really get to feel how irritating Miss Bates is, and what a fusspot Emma's father is. There is more genuine tension and feeling in some ways than in later versions. Mr Knightley comes across as rather stiff but kindly, while Frank Churchill is given much more scope than usual to be charming but devious.

Location work is very limited, with most of the series being shot indoors.

Difficult to know where to start with this one, it's so....pink. It starts out well, with the basic idea of juxtaposing Barbie world and the 'real world' and examing relations between men and women in each, but the second half gets rather bogged down and improbable. Some trimming might have helped.

The most effective scenes are probably those satirising corporate life at Mattel (which of course has done very well from this film). No doubt it is a triumph of technical achievement in film technique also. But I found myself dozing somewhat towards the end. Margot Robbie looks wonderul in her pink cat suit.............

There have been a lot of films concerned with the German occupation of Western Europe during WWII, but this one is more unusual – a Russian film about the Germn occupation of the western USSR in 1941 onwards whilst the battles of the Eastern front were going on. No battles are on view - the setting here is a quiet and poor village where the Germans are already installed with their local collaborators (what is collaboration in such circumstamnces?). The lead character is a teacher who now has to teach his bored pupils the Nazi-inspired curriculum, but probably there was no more enthusiasm for the previous Soviet one. He gets by, living with a beautiful widow

(Yuliya Peresild) and her disaffected son. He finds secret joy in Pushkin.

Then a series of events in the village, all quite mundane and probable in the circumstances, lead him down a slippery slope which starts with his trying to avoid involvement but ends with his undertaking a defiant act of resistance - which by analogy anyone else might also undertake.

The settings, acting and so on are all very good. The subtitles are often dodgy, and sometimes missing altogether. That is the only negative with a compelling film.

I watched this because I had not previously seen an adaptation of this classic Christie family crime story, and also because Stefanie Martini is in it, renewing her association with Julian Fellowes which produced the very good Doctor Thorne. I need not have bothered on the latter point, because Martini's performance is somewhat over-strained and unnatural. Amongst a motley crew, Max Irons as the personable private detective and Glenn Close as the eccentric aunt come off best; many other performances are forgettable. The location, costumes etc are well done although many interiors are strangely dark. The time in which the events are set are late 1950s rather than early fifties as in the book, apparently just so that a bit of pop culture can be thrown in.

I knew the identity of the murderer anyway, so did not need to waste time working out 'whodunnit', but the relevant clues seemed to be fairly distributed. Alright for an undemanding evening if you like watching people being being evasive, secretive and nasty - ie family life.

I generally like Woody Allen films and have enjoyed one of them ('Match Point') set in England and starring Scarlett Johansson; but 'Scoop' is really a dud, and an embarrassment to watch. The story line involving the undead, a silly reporter and an aristocrat who might be a murderer is basic and unfunny. Far too many English stereotypes on view. Johansson's performance is quite good - she can appear stupid with startling ease and she looks ravishing as always, - but it is in the service of a film which should not have seen the light of the day. Some critics havbe described it as Allen's worse, and it is hard to disagree.

This dramatised account of the way the Bronte sisters got into print whilst battling the circumstances of their lives is quite involving, helped by good performances, esepcially Chloe Pirrie as Emily Bronte and Jonathan Pryce as Rev Bronte. The tiresome alcoholic brother Bramwell, who was the biggest problem of all, is dealt with sympathetically. The habitat in which they lived is superbly realised. The difficulties women had getting published under their own names by the 1840s is perhaps a little overdone, mixed up with the 'unknown author' problem anyone can suffer from. But all in all, two hours of good drama. The very tragic aftermath is passed over rapidly.

This Russian film deals with a time and place virtually unknown in the West - the period in 1945 and subsequent years when many Soviet POWs held in wartime Germany were returned to the USSR and then interned in Siberian camps due to being suspected of collaboration with the Germans.

This film takes a discharged Red Army soldier who suffers mentally from the effect of combat injuries. He ends up deep in the Siberian taiga at a logging camp. He is a train engineer, and virtually bulldozes his way into the camp and a job on th trains which haul timber. He takes up with one of the women internees, who has a child she brought back from Germany. One day he gets across the huge river near the camp which used to be crossed by a now-broken rail bridge, and on the other bank he finds an abandoned locomotive and a young German woman who attacks him. Her story, and how they slowly come together through hostility and many adventures to a life away from the camps, forms the core of the film.

The performances are superb and the locations etc very authentic (although as usual the women have skin far too good for what they are meant to have gone through).

The film is in Russian with English sub-titles, and when German is spoken there is also Russian voiceover of the lines; this isn't too distracting.

Well worth seeing if you want something different. Some violence and sex, but nothing excessive or gratuitous; also some dark humour, especially if you love the melancholia of the Russian people.

This pair of discs contains the Christmas Special from Series 2 as well as the Series 3 episodes.

In many ways this series is as good as Series 1 and 2, in terms of location, cast performances and some story lines. This is particularly evident in the struugles of Helen to find what being a married woman means for her role, and Mrs Hall's attempts to feel connection with those who may or may not want it as much as she does.

More the pity, then, that the dead hand of political correctness has fallen across the series. An example is the character Florence Pandy, whom we hear endlessly 'really knows who she is', but in fact has no discernible dramatic function or occupation in life other than to be a multiracial person. This approach reaches its nadir in some crudely inserted scenes where Mrs Hall goes to see her son at a station, when very awkward interactions with a pair of women, one deaf and the other Asian, are jemmied in. This is slovenly and patronising.