Film Reviews by PV

OK so the start of the extras (I only watched a bit of the first short) says that the man is the damsel in distress getting saved by the woman who now has agency, and is labelled brave, strong and independent for overcoming past trauma. Like most movies from Hollywood these days, it is infected with a nasty tang of wokery with added #metoo juice which all leaves a bitter and boring taste.

To say you have to suspend your disbelief to watch this to the end is the understatement of the century, and maybe even two or three. It is absurd, all of it. The flashbacks and the twisty, incredible, patience-testing plot. I asked myself WHY BOTHER. Why didn't they XYZ instead? No spoilers but really, WHAT A FAFF! And WHERE are the police?

As with most TV drama now, male characters can be one of two things - violent abusive pervy monsters, or, at best, clueless buffoons. ALL male characters here fall into one or t'other except to the sidekick bland two-dimensional man Henry she is dating, and her son (a typical trick to show us what a selfless GOODIE she is). If that couples chemisty were put in a chemistry set, it';s be invisible...

2 stars. Meh

The handheld camera work here and the dull grey colour palette make this 1970s-set story even more creepy. This is rural southern smalltown Germany, and looks bad enough - all grey and brown and hardcore Lutheran puritanical religiosity, so imagine how bad East Germany must've been!

The title Requiem is lame and does not describe the story at all. Surely something else could've been chosen?

I read some of the EXTRA pages - text from the director which were interesting and make this tragic tale sadder still.

For those wanting horror, there's The Exorcist, and for trashy loud horror there's The Conjuring series of movies and many, more more.

But none is as sad and tragic as this very bleak true story.

I really enjoyed this - a reboot of the ailing FINAL DESTINATION franchise whose later sequels to 2011 got progressively lamer, after the great fun first film.

The prologue here is just BRILLIANT - the first 20 minutes if 5 star stuff, reminded me of 1970s disaster movies like THE TOWERING INFERNO, and my own personal visit to the CN TOWER TORONTO complete with its glass floor!

After that, the film does sag a tad especially in the final act, but I remember the endings of these Final Destination films were always a bit abrupt and sudden (no spoilers).

Having said that, it's a great ride, and the best FD film since the first one imho.

Great to watch it on DVD as one can rewind and rewatch the fun sudden deaths. Also be great to watch in a packed Friday Night cinema or film night with friends at home. It's that sort of movie - do not think TOO much about the plot, of the timelines/ages of characters, or why some seem to suddenly vanish, or the pure hokum logic here. Just strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.

The film is dedicated to CANDYMAN himself, Tony Todd, as Mr Bludworth, who was ill with stomach cancer when he signed for the film (and he does look gaunt and ill), and was allowed to adlib his poignant final line:

"Life is precious, enjoy every single second. You never know when. Good luck."

4 stars.

I really wanted to like this. The thing is, it's not entertaining, funny or profound.

I watched the 3 sketches on the extras - shot on hand-held video, maybe sketches done before the film as some scenes rehearsed there. Tbh performance artist David Hoyle would have been better served by a short TV drama with this wafer-thin story, or maybe a stand-up spot, a TV revue? A feature film is just the wrong context for his talent imho. Which is why this falls so flat. I'd prefer to see Hoyle live really in a venue, doing an act. I dare say it'd work well too in a way this just does not.

The 18 certificate is just for the footage of porn on screens in the background sometimes, I think, as just flaccid male nudity on show from professional porn actor Ashley Ryder so this must have been an easy gig for him then as he does not have to DO anything much. he is way too old to be playing a teenager too,. The use of the actor's real names David and Ashley for characters is very meta and postmodern, but ultimately rather pointless and pretentious.

I kept watching to be honest to see the landscape on the Isle of Sheppey which I know well. This is filmed on the east side of the island around Leysdown where the amusement arcades are - I have visited that place just once age 18/19. However, at the western point of the Isle of Sheppey is Sheerness where I spent many happy childhood holidays in the static caravan by dad owned - not on a gated organised site like there (and no running water in caravans, a communal tap and toilets is what we had in 1970s and 80s). Now a Tesco carpark, next to a Napoleonic moat and not far from Bluetown by the docks where Charles Dickens lived 2 years as a boy - he based Magwitch from Great Expectations on a real case and a prison ship moored off the east of the island.

There've been a lot of found footage horror films now, ever since the Blair Witch Project kicked off the craze (and earlier movies to that too, though less well known). This is one of the better ones imho. As ever with horror films, one asked WHY DIDN'T THEY XYZ? But then if they left or called authorities there'd be no story...and/or a bigger budget.

It's clearly low budget, as are many horror films, especially those who use the haunted house trope. Some may be disappointed at the lack of gore or CGI/model monsters etc. But it's not that sort of film.

I wanted the ancient Greek demon story to be outlined more - there is no mention of Mormo anywhere in the script, not that I heard anyway. Mysteries are great, sure, and too much reveal can spoil a story BUT so can too much concealment and esoteric hinting at things and mysteries never expanded upon. I found that annoying anyway.

It ends abruptly in the framework of an investigation trawling through footage found on phones and digital devices. The first part of the film works best.

3 stars

I made a mistake. I watched this mess of a monster movie while comparing it to the original THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT from 1974 - a decent enough film with stop-motion monsters, as is THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969) which is where the last T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park comes from and other scenes too. My bad.

This is truly atrocious - I tried to like it, I really did, as I adore dinosaurs and dino films too. Some low-budget modern ones are great like THE DINOSAUR PROJECT - a British found footage dinodrama from 2012.

I laughed out loud several times. The acting is so hammy it could feed everyone on that tropical island for 65 million years and often so wooden they could build cities of houses with it too. The German WWI submariner is pure Herr Flick from ALLO ALLO, 1980s WWII TV sitcom. Unintentionally funny.

The CGI effects look cheap - the original Jurassic Park only had dinosaurs on screen (CGI and models) for 6 and a half minutes. The rest was building tension, sounds, rustling trees, impact tremors on a glass of water etc. Learn from that.

As for the plot? The 1974 original film's plot MADE SENSE despite the hokum. This? Even the actors look like they cannot believe they are spouting such badly-written nonsense. The producer of this has form - loads of cheaply-made monster movies etc, so obviously they earn cash on DVD releases.

Do yourself a favour and rent the 1974 THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT and 1969's VALLEY OR GWANGI.

The ancestors of birds today are dinosaurs, of course, and boy oh boy is this a turkey AKA a failed dinosaur.

I liked this, especially the first and second acts. The third? Well... no doubt a horror audience demands that sort of money shot. It spoils the film really though no spoilers!

I loved the way it was told from the POV of various characters, their point of views of the same scenes are reminiscent of arthouse movies & stuff like Short Cuts etc. This is common in novels but not so much in movies, esp horror films, so I LOVED that intelligence in the script.

Maybe the movie overall reminds me of the classic British film THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) based on the 1957 novel THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS - way better than the 2022 TV series. The 1964 sequel CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED is also passable with an early multi-ethnic UN-style cast of kids.

Some have compared this to THE SHINING (1980) which I have always considered a massively over-rated movie. For a (male) teacher who's the victim of a witch hunt after false allegations just watch THE HUNT (2012) with the brilliant Mads Mikkelsen. Tbh I struggled here to 1) think a female teacher could be targeted as the one here - a male teacher, sure and 2) a teacher with a drink driving conviction and removal from another school would, in the UK anyway, be referred to a teaching panel and maybe banned from teaching for a while or for ever, or is able to return to teaching at primary school only with conditions.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) seems to be references a bit here too. This movie is a real mish-mash of influences. I was also reminded of David Cronenberg's THE BROOD (1979) with Oliver Reed and maybe The Sixth Sense too. Kids are creepy, basically...

Anyhoo, the initial mystery is nicely weird, and the image on the film poster is excellent - coming up with an original LOOK, with those arms 'flying' works.

The plot may well be daft and lacks detail - lots of sly plants here about parasites early on but the viewer is left asking WHY? All the way through, to the end and beyond. WHY anything. WHY this? WHY that? Especially when a certain character appears...

You have to willingly suspend your disbelief a LOT by the end.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, especially the first half, so 4 stars. A decent watch.

And I see I gave the same director's earlier movie BARBARIAN 3 stars so...

I really enjoyed this, even though I do not usually like cop thrillers with car chases and shooting etc.

The characters all have appropriate arcs between goodie/baddie and this movie also explores interesting moral questions, such as WHAT WOULD I DO?

There is no flab on it or diversity-worship box-ticking, and there's even a cute dog. What more can you want from a crime thriller?

Maybe a bit corny and unrealistic, even a B-movie, but a good one - highly entertaining.

My biggest criticism is 2 of the cops look so similar though in the second half that is less of an issue (no spoilers).

It is what it is, and has no pretentions to be anything else. I enjoyed it thoroughly hence the 4 stars.

Despite some laugh-out-loud funny lines, this descends into cartoon character comedy horror with a big martial arts mood - and I always find the latter, the endless theatrical mock fights, boring in all films.

No-one else seems to mention the comedy element but I felt that was a strength here, some cracking comic one liners esp in the first half made this movie bearable.

The plot's a tad convoluted esp for a younger audience. And it's all scientific nonsense of course, as per the first film M3GAN which pushed the credibility bar hard.

The ending is OTT, no spoilers, and i must admit I almost fell asleep in the last third of the film. The first half, first act, is strongest.

I see I gave the first MEGAN film 3 stars;

this squeal marks a decline, so 2 stars for MEGAN 2.0

The same Philippou brother director team and same co-writer Bill Hinzman that made 2022's TALK TO ME so it again with an effective and commercial horror movie from Down Under. British actress Sally Hawkins is not usually a favourite of mine but here she nails it, incl the mild Aussie accent.

The other actors nail it too, those playing the teenage boy and his blind half-sister - very clever actually how her blindness is woven into the plot, as of course she cannot see so believes what she is told...

Glad to see some movies not manblaming all the time too, and instead focusing on female violence and what could be called 'psychowomen' like Kathy Bates in MISERY or TV drama BABY REINDEER.

It is very gory and gruesome in parts. Maybe OTT, but the violence is set up with 'plants' earlier in the plot for foreshadow later events - though I am not entirely sure I believe what happens to characters or the story's origins. But hey, it's a movie, so fiction. Roll with it...

Best not think too much about the plot holes or ask questions like 'Why/How could police/social services not know...?" etc.

It made me think of other films with spooking kids, of course THE INNOCENTS (1961) based on THE TURN OF THE SCREW, and imitators like THE OTHERS (2001), as well as more recent films like Dutch-Danish SPEAK NO EVIL (2022). Kids are creepy, basically!

This is a film that's stay with you like a bad smell. 4 stars

I really REALLY wanted to like this - the era and music of the 1960s and location in SoHo which I've known well since the 80s attracted me instantly.

It's the last film Terence Stamp acted in too. I presume it was filmed in 2019 before Covid lockdown then had a delayed release.

However, this turns out to be a sort of #metoo manhating revenge drama. It looks and feels like a film school student short film, maybe a vanity project, and is set in the pub and streets where the writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns worked and lived in her youth in London in the late 2000s. No doubt working through some issues here. Her career boosted by Sam Mandes handpicking her to cowrite 1917 with him. Lucky her...

The ending? Well, meh. All unlikely and a fantasy, and one wonders if a man doing what a woman did would be so readily forgiven.

As ever I play the EQUAL AND OPPOSITE game - if a movie showed all women as being monsters and all men as innocent victims, it would annoy me as much as this. It's just plain silly not to mention sexist, really quite misandrist and the portrayal of Hackney cab drivers is borderline libellous and defamatory perhaps.

And literally the ONLY male person here who is not a man monster is the black friend from the fashion student's course. It's almost like a bad episode of Woke Dr Who.

There are plenty of better timeslip dramas out there. This gets bogged down in gender politics way too much. Great soundtrack, sure, and I liked the way the switch between characters happens BUT there is no real reason for it for happen, it just does. You'll need to make a great effort to suspend your disbelief here really...

Edgar Wright's peak was Shaun of the Dead way back in 2004.

And I wanted to like this more, I really did, and almost 3 stars but not quite, so 2 stars. This is really mediocre stuff, to be honest.

This is just awful. I saw it get 4 or more stars in reviews. WHY? It is - and I do not use this word often about films - boring.

Maybe a vanity project? So self-indulgent. I'd edit and cut a lot of flab put of this film - about an hour's worth. Then we may be able to salvage a mediocre short film from the wreckage...

But it is not only boring, it is utterly confusing and pointless - what is this film trying to say? Who knows? Who cares? I've seen more depth in a puddle in a car park, frankly.

Watch HOST (2020) instead - a British horror which is a masterclass in how to make an effective, scary horror film with a message on a budget.

No stars

This is a very VERY English folk horror written by Alex Garland (with a posh BoHo Hampstead privileged background) who wrote the novel The Beach and the screenplay for that & 28 Days Later and who now seems to write and direct science-fiction films of varying quality, often based on video games.

He's worked a lot before as a screenwriter with Danny Boyle (almost 70 years old, a working class Lancashire grammar school boy who went to Bangor uni in Wales, started in theatre in 1980s then TV in 1990s incl directing 2 episodes of MORSE) whose SHALLOW GRAVE (not written by him) from 1995 is still a classic, I think miles better than the famous TRAINSPOTTING that came after it. He famously directed the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony Isle of Wonder.

So, to the film. It's a folk horror which treads well-trodden tropes of the future returning to some sort of rural even feudal past. Many novels/films have explored this before (I won't list them). I LOVED the very VERY northern English character of this film, the accents, location in historic island Lindisfarne (watch VIKINGS TV drama to see what happened there), & the landscape though I see some was filmed in Cheddar Gorge which is most definitely not northern England (it's Somerset, the West Country). THANK GOODNESS Danny Boyle is not one for tickbox diversity colourblind casting. Well done him. I shudder to think what the BBC would have done with the casting. Thankfully, they're too broke to make something like this.

The first half is brilliant, real edge-of-your-seat horror. Boyle is superb at such action scenes, fast-editing, making cinema exciting - which many Zombie films are not. 2016's Britflick THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is my absolute fave zombie film).

I see what the screenwriter is doing in the 2nd half of his script - adding jeopardy, bigger obstacles, as per screenwriting course classes; he does this by introducing new characters which does slow things down and is not always effective. Btw do not think too much about logic of how humans can evolve into 3 distinct species in just 28 years... Just go with the sometimes cartoonish comic-strip computer game vibe. Forget too about the much-touted Brexit allegory claims which are beyond silly. Britain is an island. As is Ireland, Deal with it. LA RAGE is the name for RABIES which they had on continental Europe, in France, but the Channel & customs stopped it coming to the UK. So there!

Danny Boyle says he was inspired to make movies by APOCALYPSE NOW, & so a Kurtz-style figure appears, at first talked of darkly & mysteriously, just like in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS & the Viet Nam movie's script too. A common technique to inspire dread and foreboding (cf Hannibal Lecter). It sort of works, and I recommend watching the EXTRAS - short films which show the effort needed to make the BONE TEMPLE (which is the name of the next film, part 3, which i believe was filmed at the same time with the young actor playing 12-yr-old Spike, quick, before his voice broke...) I really liked the unstuffy un-maudlin un-emotional response to death.

The set design, costumes, locations etc are great as is the acting & cinematography. I still prefer 28 DAYS LATER however, as it's more believable - it COULD happen. This? Nah. Not with humans evolving into 3 new species in 28 years and someone mainland Europe not being infected - when they are way more vulnerable than the British Isles (COVID first entered Europe into Italy with Chinese owners/workers who've bought up the leather-making industry in the suburbs of Florence in the last 20+ years)

The ending? Hmmm. For me it does not work and makes a real horror film a cartoon character one, NO SPOILERS. I liked the ending up until that point and the absurd silly JIMMYS which I presume reference the prologue in this film and the boy there. It may not auger well for the third film if it is more of that...

Overall, a decent and very entertaining watch. 4 stars

OK so the warning bells went off in my head when the puff piece for this movie said it was 'critically acclaimed' unlike this TV director's other features. However, I was pleasantly surprised - a slow start but then a wicked first half which I enjoyed.

Yes it is OTT satire but I like OTT satire! Some may not. Watch TV drama HANNIBAL to see the gourmet theme taken to the max. But this is an OLD idea - a famous short story from 1948 called The Speciality of the House by Stanley Ellin - I think adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents - mines the same horrific ground.

Ralph Fiennes does his best worst Hannibal Lecter/Tony Hopkins impression; Nicholas Hoult seems to be playing a puppy of some kind; I recognise some actors from BREAKING BAD and JURASSIC PARK films too... But the behaviour of guests and staff is highly improbable tbh, including his... The actors do well, incl the main character - Margot - though I do wonder if I shall ever watch a Hollywood film again WITHOUT a 'strong and independent' female lead who bests the men. Some of it, fine; when that is all we are being served, it is tiresomely #metoo pc boring.

I enjoyed the pretentious gourmet restaurant stuff, though to be fair, that word salad nonsense is not hard to mock, lampoon and satirise. I actually thought the per head price here was rather low - there are show-off City boy types and oligarchs who've spent £14000 at London restaurants, mostly on the wine but... these diners also drink rare and expensive vintage wines, from a specific row of grapes in a famous vineyard, so...

Viewers will need to suspend their belief massively by the end - no spoilers. It is really best thought of as a fantasy - best not thick to hard about the whys and wherefores - you may well fall into a snow foam of Gouda cheese landscape of plot holes sitting on your plate, I mean...slate, or lump of wood... I HATE pretentious restaurants...and TV shows which defer to their absurdity too. I like REAL food, where the locals go, always, wherever I visit.

All great fun despite it lagging in the second half and getting beyond silly. 3.5 stars rounded up. The first half gets 4.

This film reminds me of MISOMMAR (2019) or GRETA (2018) or several TV dramas with a seemingly innocent family/couple who are, in fact, not what they seem...

I saw the plot and ending coming a mile off, perhaps because I have watched all those films and TV dramas... I doubt most viewers will, so they can experience a horrific pleasure denied to me then!

No spoilers - just suspend your disbelief as such stories are always so full of holes, especially in an age of CCTV, cameras on roads and credit-debit card use not to mention smartphone tracking. It asks more questions than it answers, leaving enough loose ends to strangle strangers galore with yet more gore...

The writer/director of this (who also directed the English language version 2 years later which I have not watched) clearly sat down and wrote A PARENT'S WORST NIGHTMARE at the top of a fag packet as his starting point. Many horror films start that way maybe...

Well-made and the characters are mostly believable. The whole thing is well-filmed, beautifully shot in parts, and creeps up on your like a disease as you watch it.

I say MOSTLY because the Dutch couple to whose isolated home the seemingly perfect Danish couple foolishly choose to visit are believable, and the actor playing the Dutchman nails it, perhaps in a textbooks psychological study way.

The visiting Danish couple, like SO many in horror films, come over as rather dim and thick, overly polite, feeble and wet. But their right-on Scandi parenting and opinions are bang on. I just did not believe their behaviours and decisions in some parts though - no spoilers.

This is a film whose horrors and characters will stay with you long after it has ended.

4 stars