Film Reviews by PV

I loved this short little film, I suppose a Britflick B-movies in 1954. Nice and short too. Not the false endings and 2 and a half hours' running time of modern movies, This come sin at just over an hour and 10 minutes.

I suppose it may have been influenced by the 1951 A-Movie The Lavender Hill Mob.

But there is much to enjoy here, the deception of a man on the run, and irony of other guest's comments at the Eastbourne guesthouse - back in the days when people lived in such places, British people not asylum seekers as is the case often now in such places.

Yes, it's old and so old-fashioned and creaky BUT stuff made now will seem the same in 65 years!

The main actor Charles Victor played supporting roles for decades so this is a rare starring role for him. Perfectly cast.

No spoilers but a rather shocking ending, one which would be seen as perhaps too shocking for TV now.

I enjoyed it. 4 stars. Always fun to see empty carless roads of the 1950s too.

Personally I found the 2 parallel narratives in this film confusing - I know it's the filmic fashion to do this, but WHAT IS WRONG with signposting? Stating a year date on scenes which one finds out later are a decade apart? Being deliberately obtuse and confusing is not a plus.

Some great scenes in this and the main actor playing Bull is brilliant, One word; AUTHENTIC. Unlike the Asian actor playing a police officer which was really stretching credibility for me. The diversity police must've checked the script...

Fantastic to see MADE ON LOCATION IN DARTFORD at the end - the Working Men's Club which I know (near Spital St in the centre of that town) and St Vincent's Church up on Temple Hill which is not an area I ever knew well. REALLY authentic accents which was great.

The funfair filmed in Wales, Barry Island.

I think the Long Good Friday may have been an influence here....

NO SPOILERS but I did not enjoy the reveal ending or any metaphysical aspects. Some may like that sort of thing...

Gruesome scenes too in this, which is fine as it is justified not gratuitous - they are amoral gangsters after all. Lots of chopping is all I shall say.

SO a flawed film BUT very authentic and I have seen much worse.

4 stars

This film has been compared to both the Exorcist and the famous 'found footage' movie The Blair Witch Project. I liked this better than either of those.

I thought it was all SO effective and believable, also scary - I found myself peeping round corners on the screen.

The actors are great. The plots does get a tad woolly later on, to be honest. Enough horror here without that.

maybe watch together with PHILOMENA.

So the ending is a tad disappointing for me (NO SPOILERS) but the first two acts are 5 star.

Overall, 4 stars.

I loved this. Great to see Yul Brynner and Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard together. The lack of wokery and tickbox diversity casting is SO refreshing.

Spans the world from Japan to India to Britain. I am not usual a fan of Brando but like him here - his character is interestingly ambiguous.

An unusual film which some may think lacks pace - I liked it though. Interesting and complex characters. It's basically a spy movie, I suppose.

This is an excellent film for those interested in WWII.

In colour originally but colour looked colorised sometimes - no idea why! A bit gaudy.

Anyway, see Christopher Lee JUST before he hit the big time in Dracula - he plays an SS officer here.

I was unaware of the Polish involvement in giving the Brits V1 footage and secrets. From Poland itself, camps and spies there.

No mention of Albert Speer who dodged the noose at Nuremburg 1946 BUT was in charge of slave labour for V1 and V2 'revenge weapon' building sites underground - in Belgium, Holland and France, and Poland.

I loved seeing the authentic WWII footage of V1s.

A bit dated and overlong but, if WWII is your interest, watch it, 4 stars

This is a pet project by son of Martin Sheen and brother of Charlie, Emilio Estevez who stars, produces, directs, maybe even calls out for pizza. Who knows?

It starts very well. Michael K Williams is brilliant as ever - he died of a mixed drug overdone in 2021.

Also Jeffrey Williams from Westworld is here. So many stars otherwise, thanks to the Emilio's connections, no doubt.

It all gets VERY silly and unbelievable, and is sometimes so slushy it';s a wonder the actors do not slip over on the script...

AND one details missed which is SO absurd, for a film with a decent budget as this: despite the claimed sub-zero temperature, when people speak outside, you cannot see their breath - there is NO condensation. The air in your lungs is warm, but the air outside is very cold, so there will be condensation UNLESS the air is not cold, as here. I thought that was very sloppy and amateurish, from such a big budget starry movie. It was quite possibly filmed in the summer.

But despite that sentimental saccharine layer of schmaltz trowelled on, it still works - and it is not the only Hollywood movie to OD on schmaltz.

Would have been 4 stars but from the mid-way point, the sentimentality and coincidences are just too much, so 3 stars.

It is overlong so that last act can be cut down. oh well...

Worth a watch if you're in the mood though. A worthy cause. 3 stars.

I was amused the USA still has such big libraries open all day. many small ones in the UK have closed or are part-time. And, that US library has 5 or 6 permanent secuirty staff! I think in the UK, we have a part-time cleaner with a mop to defendour libraries!

This bloated overlong silly movie is evidence that 'authentic casting' etc does not guarantee quality - it does not matter how many Icelandic and Scandinavian actors/writers and crew you hire, if the script is dire and messy, then the movie will be too.

Watch the TV Drama Series VIKINGS instead - a Canadian-Ireland coproduction. That is class.

This is just silly, with absurd magical tableaux and interludes, which add nothing but yawn time. Mystical silliness abounds.

More like a graphic novel cartoon than a proper Viking movie. Tbh, I have forgotten it already and I watched it 12 hours ago!

2 stars. JUST - because it starts well. But the last half? I'd be tempted to give that a minus number.

OK so all series of Better Call Saul have been a great watch, better than UK TV crime drama which is so lame and pc woke (Happy Valley Line of DUty, The Bodyguard, Broadchurch - all dull for me, . Each series declined as it went on though SO I was glad when they ended.

This is good in parts THOUGH one issue with Better Call Saul is that there are so many flashbacks and flashforwards, you have to keep your wits about you regarding what happened when. The writers must have one huge character arc wall so as not to forget what has happened, who is dead and alive at any given point etc.

It had been a while wince I watched series 5 so I was a bit lost at the start; In fact, a rented series 5 again. That is fine - I could watch all Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul series again over and over, they are so sublimely watchable and thrilling, with great characters and stories.

The worst episode ever of Better Call Saul is the last one - NO SPOILERS. Why? I just did not believe it, did not believe the characters - Jimmy/Saul or Kim - would have done what they did.

But anyway, 4 stars for the last series of a superb TV drama. . I am, however, now glad it is all over.

I had no expectations of this movie and the title is not a great one, to be honest. However, I was transfixed by this tale of drug addiction, crack/heroin, and more especially the hugely profitable therapy industry racket.

That industry has literally made billions from taxpayer-funded recovery schemes - in the USA but the UK is the same. As the movie points out, the 12-step AA and NA programs are FREE. And work a lot. Whereas expensive drug therapy has a 90% failure rate.

I really appreciated the voiceovers and graphics showing the numbers and stated - narrated by 'body broker' Wood played by the great Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar from The Wire) in his last film (to be released before he ironically died of a drugs overdose age 54).

The main actor Jack Kilmer is superb and a future star and Oscar winner, I am sure.

The best film on drug addiction is probably OSLO 31st August from Norway, but Body Brokers focuses on the recovery/therapy industry and its profits far more.

US TV series such as The Wire, Breaking Bad etc are excellent portrayals of drug addiction in the USA which, this movie tells us, has cost 900,000 lives there in the last 20 years. More than the American dead of all 20th and 21st century wars put together.

5 stars. Just brilliant, WATCH IT!

My advice, watch the biopic STARDUST 92020) instead.

This is a trippy 'immersive multimedia experience' (YAWN!) and so only for hardcore fans.

It is interesting in bits. Nowhere NEAR enough about Bowie's parents, brother, childhood which was only spent in then white working class Brixton until he was 6 when the Jones family left (many working class white families moved at the time due to an influx of Jamaicans, which is never mentioned). From 1953 Bowie moved with his family to Bickley and then Bromley Common, before settling in Sundridge Park in 1955 where he attended Burnt Ash Junior School. In his early 20s the by-then Bowie lived in the London suburb of Beckenham for 5 years. BUT Brixton sounds cooler so...

I am glad I watched it but would say over half the film is tedious and a waste of time.

I liked the bit in Berlin. I wanted more of that!

3 stars. JUST. Watch STARDUST instead.

This film starts OK, and interesting to see a young Evan Bird who later acted so well in MAPS TO THE STARS - the only Cronenberg film I rate. His acting is fine here (he has vanished since 2014 though).

However, I started to wonder what exactly was the point of this movie. IF a man had written and directed it, no doubt critics would complain about its lingering on the grusome rapes and murders of young women.

But no, it was directed by the rich, posh, well-connected daughter of David Lynch.

The ending is preposterous. It's all clearly influenced by ROOM and similar films,. but the main word I think when considering this film is WHY? the world would not be a poorer place without it,. Maybe the female director is just trying to shock. I doubt anyone else could have got it made.

2 stars. Almost 1.

I had no expectations of this but really enjoyed it.

The various alternate futures explored are fun, tragic, moving too.

Watch with Looper and The Time Machine (1960) and all other time travel movies.

A decent attempt at updating the genre.

It can be a tad confusing at times, and as with all time-slip stories, it is all rather contrived and unbelievable. But...

Not quite sure re the endings. No spoilers.

As if corporate wage slavery of worker drones is the ideal to aspire to!

4 stars

I had no expectations from this film. I thought it's be the usual gross-out, crude, lewd American teen comedy.

Instead, what we have here is in effect a psychological dissection of male teenage life - unusual in this metoo age when all new movies focus on women, Happily, this squeezed in before that tedium took over.

The boy here has a father at home; many boys do not these days and that does often mean they seek father figures in older boys, the gang etc. Plenty of films about vthe black gang experience. The middle class white one ignored, but here it is.

I bet this is autobiographical from the director Jason Orley who also wrote the screenplay - it is SO authentic. Maybe more for men than women, BUt there are SO (too?) MANY metoo films now wallowing in the female experience, so watch them then!

I think Pete Davidson steals the show as the slacker. Great portrayal and some laugh-out loud lines.

Hollywood always loves actors who look very young - SO Michael J Fox and Le DiC ticked those boxes, short baby-faced actors who can play teen into their 20s. The new must-have teen face belongs to Griffin Gluck (from a privileged posh US family and one quarter Japanse which I say straight away when I first saw him aged 15 in WHY HIM?, a funny film too). he is very short and is 18 here but plays 16. he could play 14. It'll be interesting to see if he can progress as an actor beyond these sorts of roles.

This film has real depth. It is now just a teen gross-out crude lewd American Pie Friday Night picture. It perhaps reminds me most of DINER (1982).

We need more films like this about the male experience and this is a common one, esp for boys who have no fathers at home. Sadly, tthe way Hollywood and the Uk film industry has gone now, I doubt we shall get them - unless the BAME experience. I think all teenage boys should watch this.

The experience of an older boy who controls and seems cool but is in fact a loser is very common indeed. Some boys do not survive such influence well. Maybe get led into drugs, crime, a waster lifestyle. Many escape by the skin of their teeth.

I loved this. A comedy and a tragedy of sorts. I'd delete the bit re the main character and Holly (no spoilers). But apart from that, perfect and with interesting music (put subtitles on to see the lyrics).

4.5 stars rounded up.

Just awful like the massively over-rated last film. also a tedious turkey (Cosmopolis).

The earlier Maps to the Stars is a sublime satire on Hollywood, and one of his earliest films The Brood is nutty fun. All downhill since The Fly though, over 35 years ago.

Any writer trying to get this made would be laughed out of the rom. It is some adolescent scifi fantasy, daft, not coherent,. and just BORING and slow on top of that.

I could almost hear the actors cashing the cheques, which was certainly for them the best thing in this dreadful misfiring mess.

No stars. How it gets an average of 3 is beyond me. I think people award well-known directors stars they would not, say, give a new director/film.

2 hours of my life I shall never get back.

This series (4) smells of money - HUGE budget, interesting EXTRA features showing it here.

But the story? The characters? Very pretentious, unmemorable, confused, up itself in so many ways.

Series 1 was really excellent, 4 stars; series 2, 3 stars maybe; series 3 has good bits maybe 3 stars, but esp 4 are losing it, 2 stars or even 1.

The casting (series 4 esp) is predictably woke and female-centric like ALL new TV drama series and movies. NOTE: the criteria to decide if a TV drama is good is NOT what % of main actors are BAME or female. The ONLY criterion is whether it is a good story told well. and THAT IS IT. Tickbox obsession has ruined another show.

Why on earth they cast 4 BAME women who look very similar in main roles. SO confusing. Characters need to be differentiated - in looks too. Series 4.

Thandie Newton is brilliant, always (she is in series 1,2,3)

Anyway, I endured this (series 4). But compared to the first series, this is forgettable pretentious nonsense. Series 4 anyway.

I quite liked series 3, especially 'Warworld' and Aaron Paul's backstory (like a Christmas Carol, Scrooge looks back) and the rigged employment chances (like the Matrix then which I am no fan of). Maybe Matrix and scifi fans will enjoy the later series more than I do.

I was considering 3 stars for series 4 because some bits are good, and the sets and look and style is great and expensive. But style is not substance. Pity. I think they should end the series now. No more.