Film Reviews by DS

A very curious film, watchable yet not very engaging. The quote from George MacDonald Fraser in the wiki on the film says it best: “ The plot left me bewildered - in fact the whole bloody business is probably an excellent microcosm of the Thirty Years' War, with no clear picture of what is happening and half the cast ending up dead to no purpose. To that extent, it must be rated a successful film. ... As a drama, The Last Valley is not remarkable; as a reminder of what happened in Central Europe, 1618-48, and shaped the future of Germany, it reads an interesting lesson”

As for the DVD itself, it not one of the major studio issues listed in the wiki and is made by some very strange lesser company. The real disapppointment, as mentioned by the previous reviewer, is that this 70mm widescreen major production is a 4:3 pan and scan. Cinema Paradiso should replace it with a proper version — it’s the least that Michael Caine and Omar Sharif deserve.  

This film had the worst digital transfer I have ever seen. Even the titles were so blurred as to be barely legible, Dubbed into English with poor lip sync-ing and the voices were deadpan. Unwatchable. I ejected the film after 7-8 minutes.Yves Boisset is a very good director. This is his only film available on Cinema Paradiso. This is a shame as his cult films Le Prix du Danger, R.A.S., and Allons z’Enfants are great but not available.

More plot holes than a slice of Emmental. Continuity is an only a theory: who said it was useful? On top of this,, the viewer gets yet another instance of French cinema demonstrating that it has a hard time understanding the difference between ‘cool’ and a brand of scented cigarettes. Nice locations. Nicely filmed. I would never have guessed that the plot had potential. Yet Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck did: he took the basic story, fixed the plot holes,  brought in some of the totally lacking character development, introduced continuity to the storytelling, and made a fairly satisfying, sub-Bourne, comedy-thriller – The Tourist. (I watched Anthony Zimmer _after_ watching The Tourist, having read it was a remake. In that respect –and that alone– it was educational; in all others, it was a waste of time and cellulose acetate.

Watched 30 minutes of this badly acted nothing with my sons. What may possibly be attempts at  humour (or depictions of life as it is lived, it’s hard to tell) might possibly suit sub-80 IQs (or maybe sub-75)

This film exemplifies what would have happened if ever Mosfilm had come to the UK to make one of its overlong extravaganzas. It has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and sickle, with all acting theatrical ham (in particular the Prince Regent, although no-one on either farcically delineated side is excepted) and all depictions having the predictability and prejudice of a Pravda political cartoon. This is a shame as the Peterloo Massacre (only us Brits could call 15 killed out of 60,000 a ‘massacre’, a fact that says something very nice about us) was a significant watershed moment deserving of a much more nuanced telling.

The only thing going for this film is that it has a few nice scenery shots. The plot is non-existent in that in consists of three or four totally hackneyed sub-plots that the authors are incapable of linking into a sensible whole. The sub-plots could have been woven together to make a clichéd but acceptable story, but they weren’t. The whole is so insulting to one’s intelligence that suspension of disbelief is impossible. I was bored.

Great story — of course: Graham Greene — nicely carried over into film. Excellent capture of atmosphere.  Great acting all around. (I loved the older sister)

A good script, well filmed. What was particularly nice about this film was that the Russians were real and spoke proper Russian, not some western actor’s pathetic attempt.