Film Reviews by PV

I loved this. Maybe I am a bit biased as a piano player but...

OK so it is written by numbers, with cartoon characters and capers. Knowing about screenwriting I can spot a plant a mile off, whether in a reference in dialogue or in an object, and there are plenty here. MAYBE a bit too by numbers, then. BUT it ticks all the boxes re screenplay structure and character development.

Dustin Hoffman is great, especially for someone born in 1937! The movie does sag a tad when he leaves the screen (NO SPOILERS). Note this is a Canadian film as the #metoo mob banished Dustin after unproven allegations a decade or so ago. Guilt by accusation yet again ruins careers. Just ask Kevin Spacey... SUCH injustice.

Anyway, the main character is played well though the hearing condition is a load of tosh.

Interesting sound design and also editing pep things up, with a hokum plot with so many holes I lost count (NO CCTV in this film universe or home security cameras, and would anyone really turn down a huge sum of money and since when did women refuse expensive jewellery? Not in the real world I know and endure, for sure!)

BUT the thing is, I was prepared to willingly suspend my disbelief because the story moves along at pace, with the expected jeopardy and plot plants and twists, ending as expected really. I enjoyed the interesting ethnic/international feel - with Israelis (a plant for later) and Koreans making a change from the usual nationalities portrayed in movies, as goodies and baddies.

I really liked it anyway. 4 stars. Maybe 4 and a half because of the wonderful piano theme and music!

OK so this sounded interesting as I am watching movies about isolated communities at the moment - such as CLUB ZERO.

This film is 1995 but feels like a 1970s film throughout - the music, the VERY slow pace, even the fashions and attitudes. I was amazed it was dated 1995.

It's like a Poundland or B-Movie Stepford Wives (and do watch the sublime 1970s version of Ira Levin's novella not the later remake!), but without the charged meaning or surreal conclusions.

Watch Norwegian classic film SICK OF MYSELF to see other health fad cures and where they lead (this is MUCH better than the over-rated The Substance).

An interesting but forgettablly LONG watch which ultimately is as pointless as any of these health fads and cod spirituality at compounds like the one depicted here.

2 stars

OK so the most positive thing to say here is: IT COULD'VE BEEN A LOT WORSE.

The classic THE OMEN from 1976 is one of the best, most brilliant and original films ever made - and not just in the horror category. So many scenes are seared into the memory.

This prequel, by contrast, is as forgettable and it is predictable, and I think the film-makers know it - why several horrific death scenes from the class original film and mirrored here. The third act of this reboot sags badly - I just wanted it to end asap and to stop trying to tie up loose ends, explain things, because if you have watched The Omen (1976) - and if you have not, do! - things here contradict things there. But hey, no matter, they had to link in the original 1976 film somehow.

This is set in that year or 1975 - you can tell from the cars and the nuns smoking, puffing away through the orange- brown film filter to get that fag-stained 1970s brown shade often referred to as 'pub ceiling' - though some parts seem influenced by present-day news events, such as street protests (NO spoilers).

Predictably, this film is female-focused. Nothing wrong with that, per se. Yet anyone who thinks they're being radically progressive in rebooting old films with female casts needs to get real and grow up - it's been done, a lot. Loads of female-focused films in all decades. The habit now of rebooting films with a female or BAME focus - even inventing new characters not in the original novels or true stories (as in Operation Mincement, and The Name of the Rose TV drama series version) is a tiresome new trope of eye-rollingly predictable levels. It's a boring cliché now. Stop it. Looking at you Toy Story 5 (and most BBC/ITV drama). It's patronising for as start and quite possibly sexist and racist to - to make all 'white' males bumbling buffoons of 2-D baddies.

I'd say this ties with the third Omen movie (with Sam Neil). The original 1976 film cannot be bettered, with superb writing, acting, direction and that music! Little Damian, the antichrist kid, in The Omen (1976) played by an amateur child actor who ended up working as an estate agent. I'm saying nothing...

2 stars. The first 2 acts get 3 stars.

Thing is, a day after watching, I have forgotten it... SO it is what it is. But please, watch The Omen (1976) a film SO original and well-written, it's amazing it was an original screenplay, not from a novel, and the terrifyingly demonic music was written for the film too. One of the best films of the 1970s or of any time,. This prequel reboot isn't.

I have to be honest, I did not enjoy this BUT it is a film from 1934, and interesting to see a 25 year old Bette Davis, though ear-splitting to hear her mangled Cockney accent which is so utterly atrocious it should win some sort of award (the Dick Van Dyke Cockney Accent Oscars?).

I have not read the 1915 novel OF HUMAN BONDAGE originally called BEAUTY FROM ASHES. The upper class and predominantly homosexual Somerset Maugham’s autobiographical novel is a profound exploration of personal struggle, emotional complexity, and the pursuit of fulfillment. The later title is from SPINOZA and is all about whether reason or emotion are in charge of man's actions - that man is slave to his passions/emotions so should master them and his life via reason and logic.

The novel is semi- autobiographical, esp re the bits in France though the novel also has sections in Germany. Maugham had a stammer (instead of a club foot), lost his parents early in life, was sent to live with his aunt/uncle. He studied medicine and his tastes in literature coincide with those of the main character in this book. Although Maugham was never an artist, he was interested in painting and owned some works by Picasso, Renoir and Monet to boot. The novel and film are full of references to art.

It is rather extreme for 1934, with its themes and the paintings of nude women on display - and the cautionary tale of the doomed Bette Davis character is milked for all its worth. The audience root for the rather hapless Leslie Howard character, who jus cannot help himself, even if he is in effect eating crumbs from the floor. Some may think the morality misogynist and old-fashioned; I'd say the characters exist now, and are just human, in any age.

2 stars

OK so watching this takes stamina. Made in 1971 though, pre Star Wars, pre CGI, pre all the modern doom scenario movies. It is VERY slow, esp for today's audiences. As is usual in films of the time (Planet of the Apes) there is some male nudity which no doubt would get banned now. We are more prudish now than in the 1970s! References to drugs and drinking moonshine would no doubt get cut for squeamish audiences now too.

I am glad I stayed with it, if only to watch all the banks of fake flashing lights computers complete with reel-to-reel tape - TAPE! And the hairstyles are simply dandy too! However, it does drag. The jeopardy is there, for sure. But it's mostly filmed inside, so feels a tad stagey, and talky. It's all about fear and what to do if a virus appears suddenly in a town.

Contagion (2011) is a modern pandemic/viral movie, and then 28 Days Later etc. Meteor (1979) is maybe an influence too. The Thing, both versions 1951 and 1982, and the wonderful The Blob (1958) which is surely an influence on Crichton here?

Michael Crichton often did THINGS GONE WRONG novels and movies. His novels were criticised for TELLING too much, with pages dedicated to scientific theories complete with diagrams and having read Jurassic Park, I agree, because loads of guff about chaos theory in there. Loads of guff about viruses, life, crystalline forms etc here. Btw Jurassic Park is basically a remake of Westworld the early 1970s film he wrote/directed (remade as a TV drama by HBO of course with Tony Hopkins) - a theme park gone wrong! Westworld won the first ever special effects Oscar.

So one for the dedicated fan really but I enjoyed it, despite the almost painfully slow pace at times.

3 sold stars in outer space

I am a bit wary of prison dramas, especially modern ones. So many seem race-fixated, apeing US TV/movie prison dramas (though THE WIRE was exceptional).

The British TV drama WAITING FOR THE OUT typically goes for a fish out of water teaching in a prison, and the prisoners with abusive, traumatic pasts and druggy addicted presents - much like here, because frankly most men and boys in prison have suffered abuse, so are perhaps mad and sad, not bad. The media focus is as per usual on the woman-as-victim trope and some feminists demand no women should be in prison. Gosh. Not even Myra Hindley or Rose West...

For fun in prison watch Porridge of classic Peter Sellers film TWO WAS STRETCH, For misery and the great Ben Wishaw watch the superb British film CRIMINAL JUSTICE (2008) and the US remake is THE NIGHT OF (2016), or the classic SCUM (1979) in which teenage Ray Winstone made his name (as banned TV drama then reshot feature film). There are many MANY more...

For a nifty plot that matches character to action and does not shy away from the druggy chaotic overcrowded violent misery of our abusive prison system, watch this. The only bit I disliked was maybe too much reliance on smartphone footage - though some was fine. I am certain the portrayal of a drug-riddles understaffed prison system breaking down, with mobile phones easily available and a culture of abuse and bullying is true to like - I can find no information about director and co-writer Cal McCau but I'm sure he writes from his lived experience, hence the awful authenticity shown in this story.

For me, the plot saves this from wallowing in a puddle of violence and misery as a few movies tend to. The story is carried by David Jonsson who plays Taylor and has the whole audience rooting for him, as he faces obstacle after obstacle, in a masterclass in how to up the ante with jeopardy. I liked the plot a lot! And the satisfying ending (no spoilers).

4 stars

I enjoyed this, but it's most notable now maybe as the big screen debut of Matthew Rhys who shone in THE AMERICANS (2013 first series on) and has just won two Golden Globes for 2 separate TV shows in the USA, hitting the big time after the age of 50!

Here he plays Boyo, Welsh valleys lad, up to escapades with his brother (and excellent Steven MacKintosh) trying to cope with a mad mam (the legendary actress Sian Phillips) and an absent dad. The wonderful Brian Hibbard makes an appearance too (Flying Pickets ONLY YOU singer and actor, eg in the great TWIN TOWN).

It's not a major film and is the first by director Marc Evans whose latest was Mr Burton.

Tbh this mines stereotypes of Wales esp the industrial valleys in the south, here with an open-cast coal mine (there are now NO coal mines AT ALL yet the villages/towns built for those who work in them remain, so these places have the usual social issues, with drugs and alcohol). DREAM HORSE the movie and feature-length documentary show this too and TWIN TOWN. But so be it.

I found the latter half of the film sagged a bit and then the writer seemed to think they needed a full stop so... (NO SPOILERS). And I did not really buy the arty USA absent dad dream scenes really. NO SPOILERS there neither. Just watch it and tbh one would not pick out Matthew Rhys as a future star more than other actors here. Way it is.

3 for the film and 0.5 for the superb music (provided by John Cale ex-Velvet Underground and the Manic Street Preachers).

3.5 stars rounded up.

I must admit I watched this while also reading - it's that kind of movie. Very predictable, and true to the 1977 look, for anyone who loved TV series like Starsky and Hutch when a kid as I did! The smoking, the colours (orange and brown!), the basic technology - all bang-on 1970s.

Watch to the end to find out what happened in text on-screen AND footage of the actual siege in 1977.

I just found it predictable, ho-hum, so award it 2.5 stars rounded down. NOTHING wrong with it, as such. It's just unexciting for me, like background music or noise, hence my reading whilst watching, which was fine - I missed nothing! Others may like it more.

I read recently that MGM+ have a TV drama series called AMERICAN HOSTAGE about the exact same real-life story, which compares it to 1975 Al Pacino film DOG DAY AFTERNOON which this is like too HENCE the casting of Al P here. Neat! No idea why studios do this, copying each other (as with A BUG'S LIFE and ANTZ out in the same year in mid 1990s.) They must spy on each other, I suppose.

I really liked this but had no idea what to expect. The third act does drag and the quasi-religious bits are too obvious and not as clever as the writers/director thinks but...

All in all a pleasing watch about peer pressure via impressionable teens desperate to belong and consequent eating disorders and fads, especially the socalled Breatharian movement which is a real thing. The focus on cod-science and New Age nonsense is bang on, as are the fake claims for health and 'saving the planet'.

The actress playing Miss Nowak very much as Swedish Greta T (complete with hairdo!) does a great job in showing a very female type of manipulation, last ween played as well in The Beach with Leonardo diC. It's all always about CONTROL.

I would seriously advise all who liked this film to watch Fog in August (Nebel im August) is a 2016 German drama film directed by Kai Wessel about a school on an island where difficult/disabled kids - troublemakers and rebels usually - were sent in WWII. Based on truth, shockingly.

The sort of pc liberal child-centred 'progressive' school is based on real establishments I think, such as AS Neil's SUMMERHILL school and several others.

A shame about the final act, and not sure I buy some relationships stuff but the progressive parents are horribly true-to-life, even if some acting is rather wooden. Also, in private schools there's more than one black student - there are loads of BAME pupils at top public schools, 25% of enrolments, many south Asian kids and none was shown here which is a misrepresentation really.

But 4 stars. A surprisingly enjoyable and intelligent watch.

Firstly, I'd say I did not hate this film. However, it just did not grab me - I felt it was too meandering and baggy - a good edit would have cut half an hour with no loss to the meaning. It is of course the sort of long meandering ride that Cannes loves, hence all the awards. That made me expect something more maybe.

I must admit I had trouble keeping up sometimes with scenes set in 1977, 1974, modern day and more, and a large cast of characters, intertwined in a complex web. It's nowhere near of the same class as the superb 2009 Spanish Argentinian film THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES.

This writer/director seems to set all his films in Recife on Brazil's northern coast, no doubt his home town. I have never paid visit but once knew an Italian who loved going on holiday there - the slightly seedy sex scenes here may be the reason why!

Udo Kier, veteran German gay actor, appears in what is I think the his final performance.

Wagner Moura is a brilliant actor BUT I must admit I preferred him in the superb drugs cartel Colombia-set TV series NARCOS, perfectly cast as Pablo Escobar.

3 stars

I only saw this in 2026, when shown on TALKING PICTURES TV - it sounded interesting and it is! Even if you're not a believer, a Christian, or religious/spiritual, it works - in a way some dramas with pagan stuff and angels/demons do not. BECAUSE the characters are strong and the main character's confusion is real and authentic. The sexuality theme is daring for the time, 1973 TV play, remember.

The main actor Spencer talked for 10 minutes before that showing, revealed he was 19 at the time, that the writer was at the read-throughs and that Alan Clarke the director, known for gritty working class plays/films, decided to film this script because it was so odd and challenging, not his usual fare. Alan Clarke also gave Ray Winston his first break in SCUM (TV play 1977, not shown as too violent, then a 1979 film entirely reshot).

The Times review the next day quoth: "We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth"

It's the sort of television drama that will NEVER be made again. For one, it takes risks and is utterly bizarre and at times baffling. Secondly, its theme is not race or gender, the only 2 themes allowed in TV drama now, complete with BAME faces parachuted into the English countryside (looking at you Midsomer Murders) and 'strong independent women' in charge.

The writer Rudkin is still alive, born 1936, born in London and went to top public school and Oxford with strict Irish evangelical Christian parents - that all seeps through into this Manichaean battle within and without your Stephen.

Elgar's music and his theme works well - I'd advise watching this with the TV film ELGAR (1962) by Ken Russell, a very special drama-documentary. Some guff about adoption was confusing for me, and a few bits did not work, so 1 star taken off 5.

Pinvin is a REAL village in Worcestershire too! Elgar country. Watch the Ken Russell 1962 film ELGAR too.

4 stars

The tone of this film is more Finnish than Russian, and all the better for it, though it is a co-production.

I had to seriously suspend disbelief here as what happens in the first act (no spoilers) would make most if not all Western women screaming and demanding police action. SO it could not be a film set in Britain then BUT things get wilder and laxer out east...

I have shared a trains sleeper carriage, Amsterdam to Berlin, 4 in a carriage, no security, which surprised me at the time (1990s). Now, with anti-Western Russian feeling, I doubt this 2021 level of friendliness would be possible, sadly. Russia as USSR has always hated independent travellers, does not hate foreigners but distrusts them, esp from the West (I have personal experience here, from childhood, having met real live USSR Russians visiting us from the age of 8).

I enjoyed the ride which is all a metaphor or allegory for the futility of existence really, and the journey being the point, not the destination. Nice and gloomy and typical Russian to be honest.

It's set now, but of course Russian trains are not at Western 21st C levels and the towns/cities visited are the sort of hellholes I am always thankful were not my home. THIS I though when a child I went to the USS for a week 3 days Leningrad which I liked (now Petersburg) and 3 or 4 in Moscow (didn't like it). So I DID the exact train journey this young woman does, Moscow to St Petersburg but the other way. It was 7 hours when I did it, with wooden seats (yes, really) and I seem to remember lunch given to us where we sat was a lump of rye bread and cheese of a sort... Very basic indeed. BUT it was USSR pre-Gorbachev. The landscape for 7 hours were entirely flat between Leningrad and Moscow, all snowy, and my young eyes looked at people trudging wearily through the snow, babishkas galore, as I thought: "Thank God I wasn't born here'. Tbh I have had similar feelings passing through parts of England and Wales, though I would never want to insult Norwich or Neath by naming them. LOL

Does it work as a film? Yes, for adults. Anyone wanting fast action or plots with lots of happenings, this is not the film for you. I really REALLY liked the use of extras and amateur actors - makes it all so authentic, that very generous but slightly scary of often drunk-on-vodka stoical fateful brave accepting Russian character.

I particularly liked the old lady the young Russian for some reason visits. An extra for sure, not a pro actress. I was amazed when she referred to her 15 year old self as being 43 years ago, which would make her 58. Only 58!!! She looked 78! That's what Russia does to you... the harshness, the poverty, the cold, the diet, the vodka...

Anyhoo, it's original and 'inspired' by a novel, it says, so not sure how closely it sticks to that source.

Surprisingly enjoyable to watch so 4 stars.

OK so British short story writer M.R. James does not get a credit here BUT his WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU (1904) is surely the source. I've read his many ghost stories and many still work. The classic NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957) - which Kate Bush sampled for the Hounds of Love ("It's in the trees! It's coming!") - is based on his story CASTING THE RUNES. M.R. James was and is the master.

Always great to see Nick Frost in anything. He's not in the half-hour EXTRAS film much but that's well worth watching to hear from the British director (who's filmed GANGS OF LONDON a lot) and Canadian writer of horror films. And this is a solid horror that satisfies.

Imaginative deaths are always great 'grand guignol' fun - as in Final Destination, or old-school The Omen, I suppose. A clever conceit at its heart even though lots of stuff is never explained. But in horror films, you can get away with that! I liked the setting in a steeltown too, could be Ohio or West Virginia or similar, smalltown rust belt.

Yes, it's all hokum and updated to tick a few boxes re LGBTQRST+ and race, which is fine. It does get a tad bogged down in family and relationship dynamics in the second half and that loses the film focus a bit, but not enough to spoil it.

This is what I call a Friday Night film, perfect to watch with mates and takeaway/drinks, or in a packed cinema - which may be noisier than a busy farmyard but with horror films like this, and all the scares and screaming, who cares? Shakespeare, it ain't.

One of the best neat little gruesome horror flicks I've watched for a while.

WATCH through the end credits to see the Epilogue, a coda which may or may not work.

4 stars. SOLID HORROR!

The first half an hour of this was great, 4 stars. It got the balance right wing singalong and performance, backstory, character, establishing shots.

Then it all turns into a TV soap with songs, a tear-jerking melodrama punctuated by Neil Diamond songs.

He's a great songwriter, born at the right time, from a Jewish family and diamond is his real name (or probably the one given to his Polish grandparents at Ellis Island). I think he's always been bigger as an act in the USA< esp in the 1970s. As a songwriter he was lucky to live at the (long-gone) time publishers hired youngsters to write songs on a salary. He wrote Daydream Believer by the Monkees and of course Red Red Wine (number 1 for UB40 in the UK in 1983 and in the USA 5 years later, bizarrely). It's a song on his second album in 1967. UB40 only heard the reggae cover version before recording it.

The soapy melodrama was too much for me. Yes it's based on a true story,. Based. But the schmaltz is layered on with a trowel, and lots of it. Sure, screenwriters all learn they should up the ante, create obstacles to the goal, remember jeopardy but... you can overdo it. Here, some stuff is true, but I do not think there';s a soap storyline not covered here (NO SPOILERS). And of course the final act is all timed to coincide (NO SPOILERS).

As for the singalong parts. Maybe too many and on for too long. Not sure. If I liked the song, fine; though repeated shots of stage school kids showing off in the crowd made me close my eyes for some sections!

NOT a bad film at all. It starts as a 4 star film, original and inspired by truth (which I have looked up - the real-life Mike died age 55 in 2006 after banging his head in a fall, heart issues). AND the 2 leads can sing and the musicians can play - probably better than the real-life couple and band (which often happens - looking at you Lisa Minelli in Cabaret who was way better than Sally Bowles ever was).

A solid biopic. Not perfect, too long, too soapy and melodramatic, but great songs so 3 stars.

Gosh, this was a slog.

I was very annoyed by the vague historical setting, though the Inclosure Act led to events like this from around 1600 for 300 years.

Yet again, colourblind casting nonsense raises its ugly head - in 1939 there were just 6000 black people in a UK of 44 million, so how is it appropriate to featured 4 black people in a tiny village from centuries ago? As absurd as Lady Macbeth and other British films which do this, no doubt to tick dem EDI diversity boxes to be eligible for a BAFTA. WOULD it be seen as good to cast 'white' actors or Chinese ones as African warriors of the past, Zulus maybe? Of course not - the moral compass swings to the polar opposite for ANY drama set in Asia/Africa EVEN on the radio and EVEN for fantasies like the Lion King and Black Panther - but then all actors must be of colour as AUTHENTIC CASTING is demanding. Be consistent - do authentic casting for British/European stories too. It's all actually racism and deeply silly, People need to grow up & get real.

I hate using this word ever, but what this film is - is BORING. Annoying too, in its amorphous vagueness of time and place. It sometimes resembles a preachy sermonising political lecture, which reveals the authors very leftwing leanings - which is fine. But so much of this film seems to be bullying the viewer into cheering for the poor oppressed folk (NB MOST people were oppressed in the past everywhere in the world, including 'white' males who had no privilege whatsoever in the main).

It's based on a novel by Jim Crace I have not read but it was shortlisted for the Booker prize; I did like his short 2nd novel The Gift of Stones, fascinating glimpse into the transition between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age.

2 stars. Just.