Film Reviews by Dr Waerdnotte

John Mills acts his socks off in this mid-ranking Brit Noir. A fine cast of British actors - Calvert, Lom, Wannamaker, Hyde, Huntley and the joy that is Hyde-White.

Unfortunately the movie plods along as Mills piles through the drinks cabinet! It's also hard to empathise with the main character as he goes about covering up his accidental murder whilst driving around in various Rolls Royces so big you could house a small community in them. It is also difficult to feel any sympathy for a man who spends most of the movie justifying his seedy murder because the dead man was a nasty foreigner, and he deserves not to be found out because he is a successful family man and his wife seems to think using some dodgy gypsies as an alibi is perfectly okay.

The film reflects much of what was wrong with post war 1950s England, a dislike and distrust of anything "other" - foreigners and gypsies, and the acceptance that our "betters" should receive a different kind of justice to the ordinary people.

An okay movie, but definitely not one of Mills' movies that deserve a second viewing.

From the beginning the look of the movie is beautifully rendered. Swinton's character is engaging and the movie draws you in... and then the djinn appears, and the story becomes a three thousand year tale of sorrow, as the djinn recounts why he has appeared to Alithea. And the story goes on and on. However good it looks you can't help but feel that the narrative needs to move on. As the two characters indulge in some deep and meaningful discourse between the djinn's story the movie has a feeling of a theatre play, and then its back to the fantastic visuals, you just wish for the movie to move on and give us a bit more of Alithea's back story.

I love Swinton's acting and she is very adaptable, but her northern accent becomes increasingly out of place and Elba's attempt at a kind of middle eastern accent punctuated with bits of east London became troublesome as the story and his narrative dragged on. The third part bought the characters back to London (Primrose Hill by the looks of it) and the consummation of their love for each other, but their love was not to be...or was it? The predictability of the happy ending neatly tied up the story but left me underwhelmed.

A grown up fairly tale that totally pulls its punches. Great to look at...but, for me, an unfulfilling experience

An undemanding family drama that is more self celebration than self interrogation. So say the previous two reviewers and I would agree. The movie is very watchable mainly due to Michelle Williams, Paul Dano and Gabriel La Belle's performances. But the story is rather pedestrian and episodic - nothing exciting really happens in the 2 and a half hour running time. Spielberg uses all his usual skills to present a great slice of movie entertainment without really saying very much at all. Oh yes, and of course there is the predictable "happy ending". Really not one of Spielberg's best. Entertaining if a little overlong.

I just read the critic review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso, and it made me wonder if we had watched the same movie!

X is dreadful. It is a generic homage to horror and grindhouse movies that has been done with more skill and panache by better directors years ago. When Craven directed Scream and Tarantino Grindhouse, at least they were being ironic. West just shows that original thought is not one of his strengths, and the knowing asides by characters as they discuss movies may have worked for Tarantino 30 years ago but it is now a very tired student film maker trope. The biggest problem is that by making a homage to a genre of second rate movies, West has made a crap second rate movie. It is not scary, it is not erotic, it is not funny, the characters are two dimensional, the story is predictable and cliched, it has zero entertainment value.

A complete waste of 1 hour 45 minutes.

This underrated movie begins with an excellent piece of story exposition as it shows how all the characters involved end up at the motel, apart from the hotel manager (who's back story is explained toward the end of the movie for good reason).

The movie has a great cast lead by Cusack, Liotta and Peet, who are ably supported by a cast of fairly generic characters. The movie is essentially a whodunnit psycho drama, the story suggesting the obvious killer at first, and eventually leading us to believe the most implausible theory of who's the killer before turning the story on its head and revealing the reality behind the horror.

Well paced and inventive story telling that is well worth a watch.

The movie reveals the life the main protagonist of the movie has to come to terms with when she suddenly finds herself locked into a kind of enclosed world somewhere in the Austrian Alps. As the realisation dawns on her that she is cut off from all humanity the movie slowly reveals the pain and the joy as her life unravels.

The film is excellent and Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others, The Bader Meinhoff Complex)is quite remarkable in the role of the woman imprisoned in this world. The movie is brilliant, peaceful and yes, thought-provoking. Well worth watching.

From the get-go, Don Segal's version of the Hemingway story is brash, sexy and violent. Marvin and Gulager, as the no-nonsense contract killers, open the story by dispatching ex-racing driver Johnny North (Cassavetes) in a hit that pays them $25000. Marvin's character, Charlie Strom, ruminates on what makes the hit so lucrative, and he and his sidekick Lee, played by Gulager decide to investigate by paying Johnny North's race mechanic played by western stalwart, Claude Atkins, a visit.

From then on the story is told in flashback. Enter, the incredibly sexy Angie Dickenson, as the dame who who wants North but is owned by Ronald Reagan's character, mob boss Jack Browning - using North as their driver, this is the gang (Dickenson, Reagan, and Norman Fell) that robs a mail van for a million. After a lot of double crossing Strom gets to Jack Browning and the money, only to be taken out himself.

The movie is brilliantly paced. The dialogue is spot on, and the acting first rate - Marvin, Gulager, Dickenson, Cassavetes, Reagan, Fell and Atkins are a brilliant ensemble cast. The cinematography is perfect, using bright primary colours, and inventive camera shots. Siegel's direction is solid without being too flashy, making the most of the limited budget.

The movie is way ahead of its time - you can see hints of Pulp Fiction in the characters of the two hitmen and the overall style of the movie. Whilst the story may not be particularly different from many other noirish movies, the way Siegel has put it together creates a modernist crime caper, with a seething undercurrent of sex and violence.

Quite frankly this was appalling. Apart from the fact that it appeared to have had a lot of money spent on it (orchestral soundtrack?), there was no single redeeming feature about this movie. Dreadful hammy acting from the outset, dialogue that sounded like it had been written by a teenage boy (yeh, f**k you!), and twists and turns that were signposted throughout, (at no point did I think, "I wonder whats gonna happen next").

A great premise, that probably sounded fantastic when pitched to the studio, but as a finished product it fell way short of the mark. There are a few great "Games" movies out there - Game Night (2019), Escape Room (2019), Fermats Room (2007), even Sleuth (1972). Released in 2019, Ready or Not was obviously trying to cash in on the success of the other games movies of that year, but it is so devoid of the tension, excitement and humour of Game Night and Escape Room. It is just so stupid, vacuous, and lacking in any intelligence.

The worst thing about this movie is that it promises so much and delivers absolutely nothing, so I had to watch it all hoping it could redeem itself. Alas, I was fooled wasting an hour and a half of my life, when I really should have stopped it after 10 minutes. Don't make the same mistake.

I tried but 40 minutes in I called it a day. It was just dreadfully dull, and as other reviewers point out felt almost like a parody of a horror movie. Good music /soundscape though.

There are many things that are interesting about this movie, not least that it was McDowall's sole foray into directing (apart from his Planet of the Apes home movie!) McDowall does a pretty good job in creating something that falls between a 60s European art movie and a Hammer horror. McShane and Gardner bring a bit of gravitas to the proceedings but for me it is Stephanie Beecham who shines. Support from the likes of Joanna Lumley , Bruce Robinson and Sinead Cusack is rather uninspiring. God knows what Ava Gardner thought of the whole thing! Its worth the watch though for the final act that sees McShane, drugged up and being chased by the feral pack of bohemians, egged on by the devil witch that is Gardener's character. Also, the music by The Pentangle is fabulous.

This brings nothing new to the Brian Wilson narrative, in fact compared to what's already available it's pretty pedestrian. A lot of time is taken up with Brian and Jason chewing the fat, or rather Jason reassuring Brian as he struggles with his anxieties. Really rather dull. For Wilson obsessives only.

Considering Jordan Peele's previous work Nope is a real disappointment. The film doesn't pack a punch in the same way his previous films did; the story drifts and fails to achieve any narrative resolutions, it just feels like it stumbles around really failing to create tension. To be honest I just didn't really get it. Did it entertain? Nope! Did it scare? Nope! Would I watch it again? Nope! Would I recommend it? Nope!

Many Almodovar movies have a strong element of melodrama, and recently with Julieta and Parallel Mothers he seems to have settled into an easy going Mediterranean soap style. Parallel Mothers is fairly entertaining and has all the looks of a 21st century Almodovar movie, but it is nothing to get excited about. A pleasant enough way to pass a couple of hours.

Firstly, Whilst watching this and the other DVDs, I got the impression that, like Mick Jagger (My Life As A Rolling Stone), McCartney, Starkey and Ono had taken this opportunity to take control of their own narrative, and present a more balanced reading of the last days of the Beatles. Both McCartney and Ono come out of this looking a lot better than contemporary readings of their role in the demise of The Beatles would have us believe.

In this re-telling of the Beatles Let it Be project Jackson has created a sprawling opus which for me first and foremost reflects the often tedious hours spent noodling around, drinking tea and having mundane conversations, all of which would generally be edited out of a music documentary. However, with Get Back, Jackson gives a warts and all edit that for me is often tedious and occasionally enlightening. What did I take from this? Well, it has been well documented that from as far back as Revolver, McCartney had been trying to keep the band together and here you see the other three's boredom writ large. Lennon, Harrison and Starr don't hide how tedious they find the process. Harrison leaves the band and rejoins, Starr is obviously more interested in his burgeoning movie career (Peter Sellers cameo is hilarious), and Lennon swings from classroom clown to classroom bully. Most of the songs on the album are third rate, particularly when you consider what their contemporaries were producing.

The positives are, it looks good, you see how good a song writer McCartney is, Lennon's guitar playing is a lot better than I thought after listening to Anthology, Glyn Johns had a fantastic wardrobe and it's incredible to see how smoking was such an integral part of so many people's lives.

The negatives? So much of this is tedious to watch and not very interesting. I would love to see an edited version of Peter Jackson's Beatles: Get Back. Edited down to 2 hours yet presenting a different version of Lindsay-Hogg's Let It Be. It has to be remembered both the film and the accompanying album were pretty much junked by the Beatles. They showed no interest in it's release and for many years it was seen as one of the many reasons the Beatles split. Sub-standard music and a movie made to show the worst side of the Beatles and their entourage.

Does this redefine the end of the Beatles narrative? Yes. But sitting through so many hours of footage just to learn that McCartney and Ono weren't really the reason the Beatles split for me was not worth the time.

It's difficult to see why this was even made. Maybe it looked good on paper but the reality is that its a damp squid. Alex Winter is the only person who redeems himself, probably because he had so little to loose, while Keanu Reeves plummets the depths of caricature. More embarrassing though are Weaving and Lundy-Paine as the over enthusiastic daughters of Bill and Ted. No, No, No.

The movie does have its positives. The story is fun, well-paced and engaging. If you've got nothing better to do on a cold wet Sunday afternoon you could do worse, but really, you wood do better to bake a cake, smoke a pipe, throw a pot or plant a tree.