Film Reviews by PV

I do not usually like action movies, but this had my hooked. I watched all 4 episodes in one go from DVD disc 1 then did the same for disc 2. That sort of series.

I have watched series 1 and 2 and do wish the extras had a 10 minute recap of series 2 and even 1 as it is a LONG time since I watched them and I really cannot remember all the plot twists then.

Internecine warfare, shifting loyalities, betrayal, blackmail, love, hate, lust, drugs, murder - and seemingly no police anywhere on the streets (at least that bit is realistic then - UK police all down the nick starting at screens scouring the internet for hurty words these days to get easy meat arrested using bad thought crime laws).

Like Breaking Bad or Peaky Blinders in the levels of violence and body count. Maybe some room here for British gangsters - the Richardsons a famous real-life gang, so it is not all foreigners or Irish or Pakistanis or Kurds or Jamaicans etc.

Watch the short extras films - short but informative! Wonderful how foreign scenes all shot in UK studios - see how they made a palace in Pakistan's heat in the UK.

The set pieces in locations chosen to be eyecatching are as fun as a funfair, which is used to its full potential - and even an old hall of mirrors sequence which was used in the original AVENGERS in 1960s, But why not? Chose great locations and landmarks.

The main director is Korean and this definitely has an Asian flavour - and Sky is aiming it at the Chinese/Far East market for sure.

The character arcs and plotlines intersect well, with so many twists that views have to pay attention of the shifting loyalties. Acting is great.

The moral questions give depth to the characters too, more so than in many action movies and it is that psychology I like - it helps me to forgive the OTT absurd plots and violence, in a fantasy London, a city where shooting a gun gets no police response at all, even after half an hour...

BUT it is not realism; it is stylised fantasy, and best watched as that. Just roll with it.

No spoilers but ambiguous in last part, so there may well be a series 4.

4 stars.

OK so there have been MANY films about robots gone wrong, the WESTWORLD movie 1973 is a great example, and I suppose Spielberg's AI (2001) and the under-rated 1988 Canadian horror film PIN. I suppose The Stepford Wives (1970s movie the best) counts too and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. So nothing new here.

In fact, this theme can be traced back to ventriloquism, as shown in DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) and 1970s Tony Hopkins film MAGIC, and of course FRANKENSTEIN. And before that to Automata, like the Mechanical Turk built in 1770 which toured Europe for 85 years and beat men at chess (a scam really, a human chess player was hidden within). So we humans find this human-not-human trope fascinatingly spooky and disturbing then.

This is an effective and entertaining horror, silly in the third act which jumps the robotic shark and then some. Plot full of holes and lack of realise - we are meant to believe some genius young female robotics engineer managed to create a near-human robot in a week - now that's what I call a side hustle! And the robot walks and runs just like a real girl! Well of course it does seeing as a child actress is of course playing the 'robot'.

Total blarney, and not just for the superhuman achievement. Fact is, IT industry is 80% male and robotics probably 100% male - just the way it is, innate evolutionary reasons why males tend to invent big stuff and females do not. BUT this is post #metoo Hollywood so OF COURSE the main characters have to be strong and independent women and girls, and the slacker buffoons are all male characters as is the bullying boy (with a magical stretchy ear).

There is a lame attempt to balance the inherent sexism here with 3 mad older female characters (no spoilers). Tiresomely eyerolling. I look forward to the day when Hollywood movies can bring themselves to have male leads and male stories again.

Some complete rip-offs in this plot, from Jurassic Park (2023) amongst others. And of course Michael Crichton wrote that THEME PARK GONE WRONG shtick first as WESTWORLD and Jurassic Park has the precise same conceit. Well, why not. If it ain't broke...

Best not to think too hard about the scientific absurdity of this. A perfect solid silly nasty horror movie to watch with friends with beers and takeaways on a Friday night tbh.

3 stars

I watched the director's last film BLURRED LINES which I gave 3 stars; the main actress here Leonie Benesch won the German Film Award for this movie, and she was in the superb PERSIAN LESSONS which I gave 5 stars and Berlin Babylon, an excellent German TV series. She is one to watch for sure and is utterly believable here as the idealistic newbie teacher confronted with the cynicism of the real world.

This film is called Das Lehrerzimmer in German, literally TEACHERs' ROOM, so STAFF ROOM in British English, though they are absurdly called TEAM ROOMS a lot now in UK.

Filmed in a disused school in Hamburg before demolition (very weird, as it looks GREAT, modern, nearly new - compare to many crumbling UK schools!).

I cringed in recognition at SO much here, having worked in UK colleges, and so witnessed the nasty, snide, sneaky office politics and backbiting of teaching staff. Apparently teaching has more bullying than any other profession. I believe it! The women especially can be so underhand with their agendas. I found the students fine; it was always my colleagues I disliked and often avoided. I winced at what was happening in the staffroom here as it is all so believable, the timeserver teachers who've been there years and so pick on the newbie; the little cliques sticking together; the passing of the buck always.

Anyway, the acting is superb amongst the kids too. This is like a YEAR 7 or 1st year UK school class, age 11/12 though this is a like a British Middle School. for years 7 and 8 up to age 13; then in Germany and countries with German influence like the Czech republic, kids go to high schools which in Germany means a selective school system (no US comprehensive school system imported there - they have grammar schools for the academic, vocational schools for the less academic but then they also have the manufacturing jobs and apprenticeships for school leavers, and general high schools).

Those wanting easy resolution endings will not like this. That is me, tbh, so I found the ending deeply unsatisfying but perhaps necessary. I found Act 3 frustrating though.

Not sure I believed ALL of the plot - the initial investigation is based on a real event the director saw, but later on, the jeopardy is ramped up in perhaps an unrealistic way (I did not believe the angelic teacher would not report some of the worst stuff). Did I believe the set-up, plot point one, regarding a fellow staff member and allegations and how it went after that? Not really.

The director said the film is to ask questions not to provide answers. But it is NOT about race or racism really, as it of course would be if made by British directors or the BBC/BFI. Why I prefer German and foreign films and TV drama really, it shuns tickbox diversity casting and preachy woke lectures and sermons. This movie would so easily have gone that way, and would if made by Brits or UK TV, but did not THANKFULLY. It showed. It did not tell or lecture or sermonise. Phew!

Reminded me a bit of 2008 German film set in a high school THE WAVE.

4.5 stars, 4 stars overall, acts 1 and 2 were 5 star quality though.

This is the movie and NOT the 8 part French TV series with Jeremy Irons also from 2024.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, which I could not stop watching although I'd only planned to watch half - so I stayed up 90 minutes past my planned bedtime to watch it. i was HOOKED. It is good old-fashioned story-telling, with love, passion, betrayal, war, violence, hate, revenge/vengeance, and a theme of justice throughout. I loved it!

Thankfully no colourblind casting which it WOULD have in Hollywood BUT this is the sort of great entertainment Tinsel Town USED to make, but no more. Ironic as Alexander Dumas did have an African slave grandmother and a nobleman French grandfather - their St Dominique(Haiti)-born son was a high-ranking French general, so his son Alexander Dumas was high-born and privileged indeed.

Dumas was highly prolific, almost a French Dickens, with serialised novels (as MonteCristo was in magazines first in 1844) BUT Charles Dickens wrote all his own work. Not so, Dumas. He has a factory system, a bit like novelist James Patterson now, with a team of writers in a production line and Dumas providing a plot which was then embellished and added to. Of course, Dumas did write a lot too. but...

The Count of Monet Cristo, like many of his novels, was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter, Auguste Maquet who did take Dumas to court in 1851 but lost.

A big budget is needed here and pays dividends. The character list and complex relationships DO require concentration, though on Wiki and online there's a handy character map for anyone who gets lost.

Yes, the plot is silly and unbelievable BUT it is fiction, not a documentary - and Dumas himself had to flee France after Napoleon III took over in 1851 so lived in Italy and Russia, so his life was an adventure! But where would Shakespeare be without the conceit of disguise? A bit James Bond at times and the Kingsman films BUT this is WAY more entertaining for me than either.

Some gripes: the phrase 'red in tooth and class' is used. It originates in English poet Tennyson's IN MEMORIAM (1850); this story is set from 1815 and 25 or so years ahead.

Secondly, Britain banned the slave trade and enforced the ban from 1807 at great cost to herself in all ways (one third of the British navy died doing it). So that does not fit UNLESS these are illegal slave ships mentioned. maybe to the birthplace of Dumas, modern-day Haiti. Not sure. Dumas is his slave mother's surname (and she was later sold on as alves with her two daughters, sisters of Alexander, before their father returned to France). The statue in France of Dumas's mixed-race father was melted down by the Nazis in 1941).

This is, in a word, GREAT entertainment - for the family too as no explicit sex or swearing - and was the 2nd highest grossing French film of 2024. I loved it. 4 stars because it sags a bit in the third act and one or two minor characters needed a more explicit backstory stated (BUT this film is GOOD at explaining often, as the inter-relationship multi-character landscape can confuse - a large cast here!)

4 stars. 4.5 even.

Co-written by Herman Cohen who also wrote 1957 horror I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and more, in the same vein, and the last film to be directed by Arthur Crabtree who made the Will Hay and Arthur Askey films, then was a salaried director with Gainsborough in 1930s and 40s, this is a technicolour horror alright.

It starts well, the first half is tense with jeopardy and scares and gore, which is the whole reason for making it in colour - to show the fake blood! Some ingenious deaths. Plus a Poundland Marilyn Monroe/Diana Dors dancing. BUT Shirley Anne Field played a victim in the great Michael Powell classic PEEPING TOM (1960), The Entertainer (1960) and kitchen sink drama, and she was also apparently a friend of John F. Kennedy...who was obviously very attracted by her nice pair of...eyes, and intellectual acumen.

Plus some non-pc misogyny in Michael Gough's character's monologues which would get the metoo mob triggered and a half! Not that the rather wooden Welsh-born actor Graham Curnow retired from film and was the long term partner of Victor Spinetti (famous for being in the Beatles films).

It all gets a bit silly really and sags badly in the second half. Some dodgy makeup and illogical plotline with a mention of Jekyl and Hyde does not help. And it rather reminded me of CARRY ON SCREAMING - I wonder if this is where they got the idea for 'dipping' people in vats of solution (FRYING TONIGHT!). The film's plot is as thin as the boiling water really. BUT the point of this story is GORE and it was aimed at late night cinema goers, couples, watching a X certificate with girls hugging their boys in terror, which was good for the boys, and girls, maybe.

Unintentionally funny at times to laugh-out-load levels - especially the primitive computer technology with pointless flashing lights which is there, for what reason? The film attempts to blind with science AND it probably worked in 1959. This is a B-Movie for sure.

Nice to see 1959 streets, cars and a funfair though. Always love a ghost train (see THE GIRL ON THE PIER 1953 and Brighton Rock 1948 for more).

3 stars, almost more, first half is 4 stars.

This is based on a novel, not a memoir, but depicts the notorious Magdalen laundries operating in Ireland for many decades until 1998. 56000 young pregnant women were sent to them, much as in the UK and Europe, to give birth and have their babies adopted out - and who can say that was not for the best? For stable lives and opportunities for those kids.

However, the iron rod by the notoriously stern and harsh nuns was not necessary and seems just sadistic. Female violence and abuse is often ignored utterly by the media and film industry which portrays all females as victims of monster men as standard, so it is healthy to get it out in the open. 40% dv done to men mostly by women, after all, and much child abuse; most babies killed are killed by women too.

Workhouses were pretty standard in all the UK until well into the 20th century. And boys in such places and children's homes and borstals often had sexual abuse to deal with as well. Sadly, abuse of the vulnerable, female or male, is universal, especially in totalitarian societies, which is what Ireland was under the rule of the Catholic church, until very recently indeed.

Of course, the best depiction of this brutal abusive Catholic culture is in the wonderful film PHILOMENA based on the nonfiction book by Martin Sixsmith and that IS based on a real true story.

I often dislike state-funded kitchen sink dramas but this sucked me in and I watched it intently to try and understand which bits were flashbacks to the 1960s and which were set in 1980s - I feel DATES on-screen were needed to be honest. Some undercurrents here lightly sketched and ambiguous too, esp the relationships of the Bill's mother and her protector, the lady in the posh house on the hill.

But I enjoyed it, perhaps best watched as an add-on to PHILOMENA, a slight but well-made and acted film. Though a tad too ponderous at times. And confusing because of lack of dates on-screen - so if you watch, BE AWARE of the unflagged flashbacks!

Glad the film did not drag on, so well done for that - the abrupt ending worked!

3.5 stars rounded down.

Based on a 2022 sci-fi novel, this movie is not for me - I find the director massively over-rated too (who has a track record of silly monster movies in Korea, I see).

It is too long, silly, tiresome, misfiring satire - esp with Mark Ruffalo doing his best Trump impression - and eye-rollingly tiresome.

Not original - cloning etc done since Brave New World in 1930s and MANY times since. Various bodyshock dramas, films about twins etc.

It may appeal to sci-fi fans but I suspect the novel is better - imagining stuff is often better, esp re alien life forms etc. BUT only enough here to sustain a short story WHICH actually was the author Edward Ashton's original intention for the story.

The director here wrote the screenplay with the author - always a danger sign. EDITS NEEDED. Fresh eyes to slice off the flab and give the script focus. THIS is a bloated director's cut really and the Oscar-winner (for the over-rated Parasite) can obvs greenlight ANYTHING in Hollywood, which is NOT always a good thing. Because it leads to misfiring big-budget bloated pet projects like this.

The only new original idea here is the 3D-printing of people concept. The rest has been done.

Predictable CGI which is as OTT as the whole bloated movie, and some absurd, silly scenes - which were LAUGH AT not LAUGH WITH.

As another review said this socalled satire is just not funny and does not hit the target - ever. It's an OTT mess, a panto really with cartoon characters. A comic strip.

There is GREAT satire out there in novels and films too - find it; avoid this misfiring blobmonster mess of a movie.

Strictly for scifi fans only. 1.5 stars rounded up.

I enjoyed this - to a point. It rattles along at a rollicking pace with Adrian Brody's voiceover and split screens making it seem retro, like a 60s/70s madcap movie. I have never liked split screens - ever - though. No wonder the technique died out.

And I liked the fact it is based on real nuggets of truth (Agatha Christie DID state in the 1952 Mousetrap contract that a film could not be made until the end of the theatre run, which she assumed would be 8 months, 73 years later it is still going... hence no movie of it, this is the closest we can get!). Those who know the plot of the Mousetrap will enjoy the red herring here with the focus of suspicion on many but esp on the boozy detective. No spoilers, but those who want to can research what inspired the play.

What I found esp tiresome was the colourblind casting. This is 1953. There would not be a black british screenwriter then or a famous black archaeologist; at a push a fellow tenant neighbour might be black, Would an assistant to a big producer by a BAME woman? Remember, in 1939 there were just 6000 black people in britain of a population of 44 million and it was not much more in 1953. Just watch coronation footage, for goodness sake! Some like colourblind casting, I do not - it can work on stage BUT if you are making a movie that purports to have an authentic historical setting, colourblind casting is absurd. ANd the inconsistency is racist. if black actors can play 'white' characters then why not the equal and opposite, so maybe some 'white' Zulu warriors of Chinese emperors or Indian Maharajahs then? Do you see? It spoils it all!

But the irritation is more than that. Of course, like all modern movies, there must be the 'strong and independent' woman who is in charge, however unrealistic (watch LIFE ON MARS maybe, and that is set in 1970s!).

The acting is great however, the alcoholic police inspector and his female partner and everyone else.

And I did like the ending MOSTLY (no spoilers). It is a tad too madcap and farcical, black comedy. But a pleasant enough fantasy ride farce.

Maybe watch old classic Agatha Christie, movies and TV drama pre 2000 which is about when woke quotas ruined them; or Poirot on ITV3.

And watch BRIGHTON ROCK to see Richard Attenborough in his prime.

2.5 stars rounded down.

Amazing this is made in 1936. That means HG Wells himself visited the set! he died in 1946. Tbh this is based on one of his later, weaker novels.

More a curiosity piece now, the acting very stagey. The theme of the future being the destruction of civilisation and a return to a feudal farming system is not new, and has been used many times since in novels and movies, from Planet of the Apes and more. The Second Sleep novel by Robert Harris and in a way, Harvest by Jim Crace (which SHOULD have won the 2013 Booker prize). So many examples. All the post-nuclear war movies for a start.

Fascinating really the visions of a future with dates on screen, 1940, 1945, 1966/7, 1970 and 2036. And of course there are flying cars or similar - as ever in visions of the future!

In 1936 when the film was made, Fascist rule in Italy was over 12 years old and 3 years old in Germany, so HG Wells used that source material and details of USSR maybe, though Stalin's crimes were yet to be exposed.

One for fans only but an important British scifi film nonetheless. Watch with Fritz Lang's silent masterpieces like Metropolis and more.

THE big problem with this film is that the main story on stage is not what we get to see - the 'Palestinian' terrorists killing Israel athletes and taking hostages.

No, we get to stand in the wings with sports commentators.

Compare with Apollo 13 which had scenes in space and in the control room.

Tbh this was very wordy and annoying in the end, frustrating to watch, and bored me.

Watch Spielberg's MUNICH 2005 instead - this film can be a follow-on to that.

2 stars. Just

i LOVED this - maybe because of my lived experience of the publishing industry.

Remined me of YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER my fave Woody Allen film from 2010.

Honestly, I'd like to watch this film again, it is that good.

The usual tension of a character trying to keep a secret trop, but WHY NOT.

And the house! I'd love to live there. JUST beautiful AND trashes the nonsense-spouters who claim, absurdly, that only England has a class system or 'old money'.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Really excellent, though oddly coy re the sex scenes.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I am no fan of Bob Dylan though recognise him as a good songwriter, Interesting he usually plays in the key of C, on piano, which he played with Bobby Vee in the pre-fame late 1950s days! Some snooty musos mock piano players who do that. I do not,. The key matters not, just has to be in the range of the voice of the singer.

Thank goodness they had permission to use the songs Dylan wrote (unlike that Hendrix Biopic or Midas Man which had to rely on cover versions done by the Beatles).

MUCH of this film is singing and music, more than any other pop star biopic I have seen and not a bad thing - I enjoyed the songs, most I know but not all.

I recommend watching the COEN BROTHERS 'Inside Llewyn Davis' with this (Dylan appears at the end on stage).

What annoyed me? Well this is based on a book so not sure what the focus was there but here, and according to the new #metoo rules of Hollywood, women must be front and centre so we get long lingering focus on the - frankly - tedious love affairs of Dylan with Joan Baez and another girl, Yawn. Very irritating actually, what with all the water works. I shouted GROW UP WOMAN at the screen more than once...

Far more interesting is the portrayal of Bob as a less-then-perfect human being and a liar AKA fantasist, with claims of being in a carnival etc. There is NO mention that he got his name from Dylan Thomas Welsh poet who was massive in the USA and drank himself to death in New York in 1953 aged 39. Robert Zimmerman would have been 12 at the time and a teen in the aftermath so would have admired him.

The folk purist versus rock-n-roll electric clash is done well - and all stories need conflict, Edward Norton nails it as the rather smug, and irritatingly perpetually cheerful and friendly Pete Seeger (posh son of a musicologist and rich family who became a socialist/communist...) Other minor roles played well. Dylan's focused aggressive manager Albert Grossman played well too.

I did now know Dylan visited Woody Guthrie his folk hero in hospital (he was dying from the same inherited Huntingdon's disease which killed his mother and daughters). True though, Not sure if it all is. Yes, he played 3 songs at Newport and was cheered and boos BUT the cry of JUDAS was from a concert in the UK, in Manchester. The man who yelled it was studying teaching and became a teacher trainer, and died a decade or so back.

BUT all movies based on true stories, esp biopics, have to merge and concertina events into a time periods, here stretching from 1961 when Dylan went to New York aged 20 from his home in Minneapolis, and his early fame and probably best songs too. Later events have to be squeezed into that. Going to the UK and later dates would fragment the narrative so I see why the film makers did what they did how they did.

Me, I do not get all the fuss with 'going electric'. The precious puritan mindset of the folkies is deeply conservative and irritating. There are no rules in music or songwriting - you do what you FEEL, electric or not, WHY all the fuss? Songs are songs.

This movie was a pleasant surprise to me as was the main actor Timotei Chalamet who utterly nails it and probably should have won the best actor Oscar. He will, one day. I hated that film CALL ME BY MY NAME though. The actor has a French name and is bilingual BUT born and raised in New York to well-off parents.

4 stars. A definitive biopic.

I liked this. It's a surprising coy sexually-charged drama based on a real story from 1927. Not sure what has been invented or adapted therefore, as with any films 'based on a true story.

The undercurrent of festering sexual jealously and tension is done well, reflected in the sweltering heat and then the rain breaking. The acting is great. Well-written.

I'll be honest - I found this film a real slog. It is over 3 hours long for goodness sake! Though it does have a dinky interval halfway through (toilet break). In my opinion, only biblical sword-and-sandal epics deserve such length. 3 hours is a LONG time.

I felt this film was flabby, and an hour could have been sliced off this easily.

It tries to pose as a true story but is all fiction not even based on a real person, or a novel - though it feels like it.

The acting of Brody esp is great, and the cinematography, Maybe those into architecture will be in heaven here. I liked the Italian quarry scenes.

Sorry, I did not buy the plot (no spoilers) though the Van Buren patriarch's closeness to his mother meant I though I KNOW WHAT IS COMING HERE.

The music won an Oscar but is forgettable. I have forgotten it, i never remembered it! It's background strings, not a big theme as some old Oscar winners for scores were.

I object to the now-common full frontal nudity for men, with excited prosthetic etc. No need for that. Itis sexist too as the female equivalent is NOT a naked woman seen from the front, but a woman with her legs splayed open and the camera right up there shooting the stimulated genital area. WHY do we have this imbalance? Misandry from #metoo? Seen 3 or 4 examples of it recently. The film does NOT need it - why i object, I am no prude. I do object to sexism though.

So it is a MEH from me. Watchable but expect a numb bum. Over 3 hours for a story that could be told in 2.

Odd they should take the Van Buren name from the 8th president of the USA too.

3 stars. Some parts 4, some parts 2, so 3 average.

Whoever gave this documentary 2 stars should hang their head in shame.

This is a superb documentary, starting with a quite remarkable and genuinely strong woman Anita Lasker-W, who not only smokes like a chimney at the age of 100 but who is wonderfully opinionated and stubborn, which helped keep her alive in the Holocaust.

As a musician she was spared and also she was classed as a criminal, red triangle, not yellow star for Jewish.

The recording of her newly released from Auschwitz and speaking in her native German is remarkable too.

Many other stories here. At the end we learn who survived and who did not.

This should be shown in every single UK school - not the awful 'black people built Stonehenge' racist lies and other woke propaganda.

If you've ever moaned and whinged about a socalled microaggression, watch this and know what REAL trauma and strength is.

5 stars