Film Reviews by PV

When creating a film about sport, a writer has to make decisions. What is the genre? Sometimes as with WIMBLEDON it's romance; sometimes as with the watchable ESCAPE TO VICTORY (1981) it's a WWII-set thriller. Here's it's REDEMPTION, 1 of 7 story themes cited by Aristotle in his POETICS (c 300 BC). Just that.

Frank Boyce the writer started on soaps, Brookside/Corrie, and it shows, as does his far light views (he once wrote for Living Marxism). One does not have to be of that political mindset, however, to support the Homeless World Cup - though perhaps the UK letting in 10-12 million immigrants in the last 30 years has been a or the major factor in our housing crisis & spirally costs of rent/property (also, over half homeless on the streets have homes - in Eastern Europe often). He also lays on the schmaltz with a trowel in his books and adaptations - watch MILLIONS if you can stand it! Beyond sentimental. Thick gloopy schmaltz.

All that said, this is a watchable if achingly pc/woke tickbox drama - you can tick off the issues on a list as you go, to enhance the viewing experience.

Some fun stuff, esp with Japan, which is underdeveloped and way too much focus on South Africa, a romantacised view of that crime-ridden nation with all its racial issues. This is common in leftwing writers, I find. I';d say romantacising a culture is as racist as demonising it actually.

This is overlong for sure, too much pondering on Vinny, too much South Africa dancing and a cheery Sister Act nun. But I won';t be too harsh. It's better than the awful AFRICA UNITED (2010). Rose-tinted spectacle cuddly views of AFrica may work for some, not me.

Some issues are dealt with well - each player has an issue, you see, stealing, gambling, drugs etc. A STREETCAT NAMED BOB mines the same seam. The writer shoehorns in some Syrian beef, which is resolved with hugs as are all issues in the world, in Frank-fantasy-land. You have to be in the right mood to watch this!

It's never explained by a young man with a Welsh accent, like his mum, are living in London of why he is playing for England - though of course Hal Robson-Kanu who scored the magic goal for Wales in the glorious 2016 Euros had played football for England under 21s before that.

But this is Vinny's film, his story as the central character dominates - perhaps too much. The actor plays him very well indeed, no idea if he is that skilled at football but it's fun to watch and not just for football fans.

I had no idea they let female teams play male teams in football either. According to wiki, there are no male v female teams as the 2001-founded homeless world cup has a women's section since 2008 . So WHY the fake news and lies by the writer? I put it to the accused, M'lord, that as football is irredeemably male (at the top pro levels and boys all play it on streets worldwide; girls tend not to), this was quite deliberate to increase the % of female characters on screens (ditto the wives, mums, nun, Italian host). I dislike such social engineering tbh - now many films/TV series INVENT female characters when remaking old shows (eg Name of the Rose), as I dislike colourblind casting parachuting black/brown characters into the 16th century in period drama. SO one star lost for that.

No idea why others rate this movie. I doubt it would have been made had it not been based on a Stephen King 1966 unpublished novel.

It's an old theme, was then. Think the original DEATH RACE 2000, or indeed BRAVE NEW WORLD; or THE RUNNING MAN (watch the original Arnie version not the remade rubbish). Then there's the Hunger Games, made for teens like this is too - it's like a YA read - and the director of this directed the Hunger Games. Then the hit TV series SQUID GAME and plenty of novels, like the excellent 2016 RASMUS - A TELEVISION TALE - the 3rd part of that is like SQUID GAME before SQUID GAME with a Death Hunt reality TV Game Show in the streets of London.

I doubt King's novel had the tickbox black and Asian and native American faces/characters and that is rubbed in a tad too much imho. The USA is 12-13% black (UK just 4%, up from 3% a decade ago) but here it is 40%. I dislike preaching woke sermonising issue movies massively.

On the plus side, the film-makers do what so many movies do now and replace male characters in the original novel with female ones. They even discussed doing that with the TV adaptation of the classic novel LORD OFR THE FLIES recently. It seems male-only or mostly-male is problematic now, just as all-white is. so we get absurd colourblind casting with black/brown faces parachuted into historical drama. It is absurd. I am fine with black-only movies (MOONLIGHT) or female-only ones for female-themed ones - which is most movies now as it is most novels. BUT let's have more of the equal and opposite then!

The expected back story of main characters, the types, the tropes, the archetypes so no surprise for me how it all pans out. In a word, this is BORING.

Almost a 1 star. 1.5 stars rounded up.

if you like caper movies populated by cartoon characters then this is for you.

I found the tone very odd. Very violent at times then comedy, allegedly. Almost slapstick at times.

The sort of big money plot used countless times in films from Shallow Grave to Breaking Bad and more movies than I can say. It motivates, big money, makes people do bad stuff. Cue loads of twisting in the plot and caper chases. It could be a cartoon.

I liked the Hassidic Jewish gangsters - reminds me of the great Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders... but doesn't. This is 2-D cartoon character stuff, if you like that sort of thing.

Matt Smith plays a cartoon character punk. I did like the cat though so that gets an extra star, so 3 star not 2.

Austin Butler carries this film, to be honest, and maybe he should have won the Oscar for Elvis. of course, as per usual in movieland, serious alcoholics are always pretty, slim and healthy - as in The Wolf of Wall Street. The reality is so different...

Hmmm, what to make of this. well, if you wait till the credits at the end you'll see it's funded to the hilt by state-funded bodies, including BFI and the UK film fund, because this is an Ireland -UK-Belgian productions (the producers have Flemish names). So if you're in the UK, your taxes went into funding this (as well as the odious Kneecap movie).

For me, the most interesting this about this film is the multiple points of view, You have to concentrate! It's not signposted with captions and dates etc. This has been done before in movies - and loads of times in novels.

But some of it is unclear and should be spelt out a tad more - for example that one man's girlfriend because his enemy's wife. Though why she'd bother with ether is beyond me.

Not sure I believe the plot or what happens (NO SPOILERS) - just to add that most here have a backstory in horror movies. it shows,. Or screams.

No, this is not about that made-up modern manhating concept 'toxic masculinity' at all. It's about a family/neighbourly dispute getting out of hand. The location looks blealy beautiful but this ain't an ad for the Irish Tourist Board, for sure!

The actors do well wallowing in perpetual misery. Knowing how speech coaches can train actors and singers to speak/sing in a foreign language, I'm not as amazed by actors speaking the Irish language here as some - both Elvis and the Beatles recorded songs in German and other languages, just parroting the sounds phonetically without knowing the languages.

Note that as with the awful Kneecap film, if you make a movie using it you are more or less guaranteed state funding from the Irish government schemes AND bizarrely from BFI and the UK FilmFundx. HY? Because they are diversity-worshipping bureaucrats obsessed with such stuff.

Not awful, Not great. But very VERy miserabilist and depressing, so I'm sure the same writer/director will get oodles of state funding (from Ireland and the UK tax payer) for his next pet project.

3 stars.

I hated this. True, this film will appeal mostly to those not in possession of a penis, but even as a piece of film-making I thought it was mediocre, by the (female BAME) director of the awful NOMAD (I turned that off after 30 minutes).

How the main actress won the Oscar and more plaudits for her overacting, her sobbing, her weeping, her predictable childbirth screaming, I do not know. Oh I do, it's because voting panels are now stuffed with EDI hires to make the female/BAME % high.

What some call a heart-rending ending I call an overblown emoporn money shot of perpetual pity party sob-fest schmaltz. I HATED it - the awful unrealistic way the Globe crowd behaves, not sure if that was in the novel. Having studied Hamlet for A-level and read all Shakespeare's plays with my degree in English lit from a top uni, I know my stuff.

Not sure if the cod-spiritual, ghostie, folk magic, woman from the woods nonsense is from the book but either way, it's silly and daft, a total distraction and all fake news, total invention, AND Will married Anne Hathaway, not Agnes. I hate most films with that cod-spiritual stuff, like GHOST or any movie featuring characters walking through a door to heaven etc. Maybe religious types like it. No idea. Thank God, I am not one of them!

Some details niggled. Back then, most wore dull clothes, brown colours, green, yellow off-white because dye was SO expensive - why royals and the church wear purple (most expensive) and red (2nd most). That did not change until teenage British genius chemist William Perkin invented/discovered synthetic dye (purple) as a byproduct of carbolic in the 1850s. WHY THEN is Anne (called Agnes here on a technicality according to the novel';s author, sigh...) mooching around the woods playing an Ophelia-type mad magic woman in a red dress? Such a dress would have been eyewateringly expensive! She mooches about at home in it too, doing the cooking and cleaning. No woman of the time would have worn such expensive red-dyed clothes in such contexts! For special occasions, sure, and the average man at the Tudor court had to bankrupt himself paying for bling, one tunic would cost tens of thousands of pounds in today's money! My old figure from 1990s is £30,000 a tunic. probably twice that now.

One plus point for not going OTT with colourblind casting - no main characters are black, thank crikey (looking at you WOLF HALL with the scene of Thomas More's execution having more black faces, crowd, executioners, nobles, than new series of Midsomer Murders, or perhaps 1964's Zulu. It is AS ABSURD as casting Ed Sheeran as Nelson Mandela!) A small number in the Globe audience are, which is possible, though perhaps not the Muslim headscarfed ones. Hamlet was written 1599-1601 when Shakespeare was 35+ and the pact between England and the Muslim world ended when the Spanish Armada was thrashed in 1588 - before then there may have been such Muslims in London, After, no. They were seen as infidels (Othello is a convert to Christianity from Islam, THE theme of that play, not his skin pigment - that is the race-fixated obsession of our age only).

It says something that the best lines here were written by Will Shakespeare himself, in the performed play at the end.

Very disappointing, I almost turned it off, but endured it till the vomit-inducing icky schmaltzy end.

FAR BETTER to watch THE HOLLOW CROWN TV drama series, let the wonderful words of Shakespeare wash over you. OR even watch 2008 TV drama THE TUDORS which I hated at first but came to love - the Ann Boleyn series the best ever depiction of her life.

Almost 1 star. 2, just.

I really enjoyed this. I had not expected much so was pleasantly surprised.

I am no sports of boxing fan, to the success of Prince Naseem Hamed passed me by rather back in the 1990s.

This though is REALLY a film about CHARACTER - the Irish trainer and his protégé that he spots age 7 and mentors to world championship success and riches.

It's a sad, touching and moving film in the end. Not sure about the technique at the end which may confuse some, but...watch to the end to see real-life footage and learn of other boxing champions the same trainer trained to world champion success. I know Sheffield well, used to live there, but in a student area not the one shown here (Wincobank is halfway to Rotherham!)

This biopic does not include the prison sentence for dangerous driving that Naz had to serve in 2006, and no reference to it in the interesting facts on screen at the end of the film, which is silly. It happened. Say it.

Anyway, a decent biopic about flawed men and fathers and sons. 4 solid stars.

Hmmm, this was watchable, but I thought the acting oscillated between wooden and over-wrought. Most dialogue is in English.

It's a film in a certain specific genre one could call TSUNAMI PORN, if one were to be cynical. The Impossible is the most famous of these.

This reminds me of later film set in South America The Green Inferno actually though that is more horrific; arguably this is not horrific enough, all very stagey actually,and best not start asking questions re logistics or indeed logic. Just let it all wash over you like a dark tsunami... David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979) starring Oliver Reed is worth a watch too.

It is what it is, 3 stars.

This is a quiet film, many scenes are wordless, but that does NOT mean it is slow of boring. I was transfixed actually, could not take my eyes off the screen.

I liked the multinational aspect of it with Arabic, French, German and occasionally English used. A film in the new genre of Middle East war and post-war movies maybe?

I liked the authenticity - the director has only done documentaries in the past, many in the Middle East, and it shows.

The co-writer of the excellent film LIE WITH ME co-wrote the screenplay here, because fiction is not non-fiction. That shows too in the structure.

This shows you do not need noisy yelling and loud music and quick edits to build jeopardy and dramatic tension. This film has both, and is often tense with dramatic tension, as the ex-prisoner stalked his prey. The ending is brilliant - no spoilers. The use of computer games as backstory is also very clever.

They say a group like this exists hunting former war criminals - so many have fled and claimed asylum in Europe incl Britain, and from all over the world. Mossad famously hunted down Nazis for decades worldwide, with many mysterious deaths from France to South America. So who knows?

If you like foreign films and have the patience to watch a quality cinematic drama which is often wordless, then you'll love this too.

5 stars. The best French film I've watched for ages.

Wow! This is probably the best Korean film I have seen, way preferable to Oscar-winner Parasite.

It maintains the real tension here - X-Files-style - about whether the husband has a sleep disorder or if there is a paranormal cause. It only slips a bit at the very end, where there are logistical issues with what happens or does not happen (no spoilers) - for that I take half a star off the 5 stars, but round it up.

This film could be seen as a study of mental illness, or an exploration of traditional Korean spiritual/folklore beliefs - or both, arguably. It could be seen as a ghost story therefore, and/or a study of mental/sleep disorder issues.

Having sleepwalked three times in my life, I can relate to some of this. It's a truly weird experience, when you are on autopilot, with your brain connected but not your mind/consciousness. The moment when your mind wakes up and reconnects with your brain is truly weird, and only then you can see where you are and what you may have done (are you naked standing on the street maybe? Have you peed somewhere you shouldn't). Night terrors are worse, with some sufferers actually throwing themselves out of windows, or even harming or killing other people while sleepwalking.

I watched a subtitled version as I hate dubbing.

The best Korean film I have ever seen, this is. 4.5 stars rounded up.

My advice is to rent the original RUNNING MAN with Arnie from 1987, directed by Paul Michel Glaser (Starsky from Starsky and Hutch). Or Death Race 2000, the original too.

I rarely turn off films before the end. They have to be REALLY bad for me to do that (I lasted half an hour with Wonder Woman, so to speak)

BUT I know by the 30 minute mark we'll have had plot point one and so entered the second act - so by then I knew it'd all be more of the same forgettable action-hero dross.

One star, if that. Awful.

The book H IS FOR HAWK became one of those surprise cult hits, selling millions mostly, it has to be said, to women (80% fiction readers are women anyway, and emotional memoirs mostly read by female readers too, as in THE SALT PATH, however fake). Maybe that is why this male viewer hated it.

I liked the hawk, and the scenes of it. However, my eyes rolled hard and often at the very self-pitying academic - who is so NO FILTER & rude to men in a way no male academic could be to women without getting suspended. She is an adult, around 30 years old. Her parents are in their 60s. No spoilers, but guess what? Older people die and most bury their parents, as have I.

So I felt the main character was rather wallowing in self-pity, and needed a good dose of Stoicism maybe. Having read this was a novel/film on grief I assumed it would be something unexpected and unbearably awful. Nope. These things happen.

There are lots of pity party misery memoirs about grief and bereavement (and illness and abuse etc). I dislike the genre to be honest.

Poetry is more suited to grief, collections such as THE LOVED ONES or fiction such as GRIEF IS A THING WITH FEATHERS. A SINGLE MAN (2009) is a wonderful film about grief and coping after someone dies, and mercifully free of the gushing self-pity on display here. GHOST and TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY rode a grief-wave in 1990. MANCHESTER BY SEA (2016) if often cited as the best movie about grief (for children, which I understand is devastating, especially these days, where deaths of parents and grandparents is not - that is just natural). If you want an original and spooky take, I loved MIDSOMMAR. THREE COLOURS: BLUE for the foreign language buffs is on the same grief theme.

Probably true to say this is a woman's genre and female viewers/readers will enjoy this in a way I cannot. One could call books/films like this 'emotional pornography' or emoporn - there's a need for it and TV drama/soaps satisfy that need mostly, and women's novels (romance, fantasy, memoir). Call me cynical and you'd be right!

2 stars. I found it deeply irritating actually.

I have to be honest, I really didn't get it. The film has a meandering plot. Arthur Miller adapted his own short story into the screenplay which is maybe why there is so much padding and flab. It's a short story stretched out to 2 hours.

I felt I had to watch it, as it's Clark Gable's last film I think - he died of a heart attack aged 59 in November 1960. And Marilyn Monroe's last completed film too. She died the next year. Maybe that is why it's talked of so much? The screenwriter Arthur Miller was married for Monroe at the time, and she got Eli Wallach the pilot role apparently - that actor lived to age 98!

The gay Montgomery Clift who was in a relationship with Roddy McDowall - he died in 1966 age 45, and was another big boozer like Clark Gable.

My notes say: "It was a commercial failure, but received critical acclaim for its script and performances. Its reputation has enhanced over the years, and many critics now consider it to be a masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1960s."

To be honest, if you want to watch the mastery of Marilyn Monroe at her best, watch SOME LIKE IT HOT. Not this. Clark Gable was always a cowboy/lumberjack with manners in romantic roles; Clift cast as a hunk with hypnotic eyes a lot.

But NOT BAD, just meandering, interesting more than entertaining. It actually surprised me with the horse stuff at the end, some great shots of the landscape and horses (which believe it or not are not native to the Americas, all there got there with Europeans post 1492).

3 stars

OK so, I did stay with this and did understand what the writers/director were trying to do. However, the tone is inconsistent, the actor bleeding from reality to dreams to stylised OTT dream reality in such a way that coagulates in terms of plot and character.

All totally unbelievable, in a Marvel or Kingsmen sort of way which I dislike. One of Danny Boyle's weakest movies BUT remember he does not write the scripts. Longterm writer (Trainspotting, the superb Shallow Grave) John Hodge is a co-writer. The other one comes from TV and fantasy, I think. Original screenplay not an adaptation. The Thomas Crown Affair is maybe the best art heist movie; AMERICAN ANIMALS (2018) is superb too.

NO SPOILERS BUT... would this be possible? Seriously? With guns, cars with things in them for weeks, all the rest?

AND let me tell you that police would and do arrest men mostly when women mostly report exes re emails/texts/unwanted contact - many of these are revenge arrests which UK police love to boost arrest stats. The 1997 Harassment Act - a bad law - makes it so. Meant to lead to 100-150 real stalkers getting convicted. Now 6000-6500 convicted a year under it because all it takes is 2 emails/texts etc and police will arrest. NO SPOILERS but when someone says 'the police aren't interested' one knows either 1) the writer has not done their homework so are ignorant; 2) they know this but do it anyway hoping no-one will notice,. Thing is, we do... and yes, it matters.

Watchable in a way to pass the time. Treat it as a fantasy heist movie really, but for me the tone was off, and the escalating action/plot and character development got tiresome, and actually more boring the more that happened. So...

2 stars

I hated this. Whether it's the middle or last film in the pitched trilogy matters not - this jumps the shark and then some.

The whole Jimmy thing thinks it's so funny and clever, but isn't. The backstory mining as as boring as it sounds.

Written by Alex Garland, posh former novelist & scifi screenwriter, who also wrote the awful MEN and other stuff.

Not as good as the first 28 YEARS LATER film, but thankfully fewer enormous prosthetic willies wiggling around.

I loved the first film 28 DAYS LATER which reminded me of 1970s TV series like SURIVORS & was equally scary. This is a sad sequel indeed.

All stylised and pretty, absurd bone temple which looked pure plastic - one gust of westerly wind in a winter storm and that'd come crashinjg down, unlike real ossuaries such as the bone church near Prague or the Capuchin skeletal tableaux in Rome. And I liked the Duran Duran and Iron Maiden but...

1.5 stars rounded up.

I see from reviews that this movie is Marmite. Me, I side with the 1 and 2 star reviewers.

I am not surprised this won so many Oscars as that awards and others were swallowed by the woke monster some tears ago, pandering to #metoo and BLM after #OscarsSoWhite blackmail. What a shame.

I suspect this got awards for its very American-lensed focus on Mexican immigration, and black power issues. The USA has always been fixated on race, something sadly imported to the UK, creating division and separation, even segregation, here. Oscars rigged their voting body and BAFTA demand films must have X% BAME actors/crew to be eligible for awards and X% female crew/actors too. Now THAT is racism and sexism.

Like the Oscar winner last year whose name I forget and whose films are American leftwingery personified, this is more a propaganda film than a story well told.

Supposedly inspired by a Thomas Pynchon novel VINELAND - I have not read that but did once try to read a novel by that author. I gave up. Tricky postmodern American literary fiction is not my thing.

I bet if I watched this in a north American movie theatre the audience would be rolling around laughing, as it has that certain near-farce knowing humour the Americans love, for some reason. It reminded me of Inglourious Basterds which I watched in Toronto when it came out - the packed audience was full of people laughing their heads off. I did not laugh once, or even smile. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but this is modern American comedy which I find totally unfunny.

The word I would use for this is HAMMY - and Sean Penn's cartoon character macho baddie is pure panto, not deserving of an Oscar BUT these days, that sort of thing wins - as this film is ALL ABOUT RACISM. Do you see, children? The cartoon character 2-D baddie white supremacist is where you boo,. DO YOU SEE? The black power and Mexican characters aiding illegal immigration is who you cheer. DO YOU SEE? It is all SO patronising, this preachy, woke sermonising.

I DID like the soundtrack from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. So 1 star for that. I'd rather not watch this overlong, bloated, smug, meandering film - so turn it off, turn off the lights and I'd happily listen to the whole pulsing score in the dark!

2 stars. 1 for film 1 for great soundtrack.