Film Reviews by PS

Two-thirds through this film I found myself wandering around the living room tidying up, not paying attention. That is how un-engaging I found it.

A friend recommended 'Open Range' to me, after I was singing the praises of Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'. The friend described Open Range as a similar story to Unforgiven and worth watching. The two stories are superficially similar but Open Range has none of the subtlety, nuance, or intelligence of Unforgiven. The only character with much depth or charm is Robert Duvall playing 'Boss'. Kevin Costner plays Kevin Costner: attempting the moody and mysterious ageing cowboy but failing to pull it off convincingly for me. In case you didn't get the clumsy hints about his troubled past and emotional baggage, he just blurts out his backstory by the campfire one evening, as if it's a therapy session.

Without giving too many spoilers, the baddies are all one-note nasty gits bent on greed and vindictive violence, while the plucky townsfolk are only too happy to fall in behind Costner and Duvall, as they are clearly the righteous goodies.

Saying all that, the final shootout is very well done and might be worth the laboured build-up, if you enjoy Costner's antics.

Summing up, all the way through I was thinking about how much better Unforgiven is in every way. Wish I had watched that again instead of this.

Other reviews have covered the story very well, but I'd just add that the quality of the cast really surprised me. From the gravitas of the struggling fisherman and his brother, to the dopey entitled middle-class boy, I found it very impressive and well judged. It was also a film that stayed in my thoughts for several days after watching, which is fairly unusual.

The low quality of the footage seemed a bit contrived, and as a first impression it immediately made me think of a po-faced film student, taking his art very seriously. However the strength of the story and cast soon won me over, and in the end I found the unusual presentation added to the atmosphere.

As an aside; I do occasionally process film myself and know it's relatively easy to avoid damaging it as profoundly as this, but that's for low-volume still photos. If this feature-length film was entirely processed and scanned by amateurs I can understand that you'd have significantly more dust and damage, but still wonder if they deliberately abused the film to make it so scratchy.

A beautifully shot and well-constructed documentary on the origins, action and mythology of the iconic aeroplane. Lots of archive footage, modern flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, and interviews with ex-pilots and Wrens. There was more than one moment when I developed a strange patriotic lump in my throat! This film does suffer slightly from the modern documentarian's obsession with background music, but it's not as bad as most.

Incidentally one of the Battle of Britain veterans they interview is the late Geoffrey Wellum, who wrote a really compelling memoir of his experiences training and fighting in the RAF. Well worth a read for a deeper insight.

I watched this on BBC iPlayer recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. Well-observed characters, exaggerated just the right amount to keep them on the plausible side of hilarious. It has the dry and occasionally dark humour of Peep Show or Black Books. I've got small children so am probably the target audience, but am sure I'd have laughed at this before I had kids. Refreshing and pleasing to see a sit-com with mostly female leads, without it feeling remotely forced or self-conscious.