Film Reviews by PV

OK so this is not a patch on THE AMERICANS which set the bar re spy thrillers with all its twists and deceits.

But it is watchable enough. Believable? No. some stuff tests the willing suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy fiction - an unlikely coincidence here, an unlikely top level letter there, a miraculous escape or three everywhere.

Obviously good enough to commission further series.

I liked the Berlin locations and the use of German language a lot, and sometimes other languages. Perhaps too many characters - hard to keep up really, and by the end I was scratching my head trying to remember who was who and shat had happened.

But let if wash over you like rendition waterboarding and you'll be fine. 4 stars

This is very much Cat Blanchett's movie as she more or less reprises the deranged woman role which won her an Oscar from the excellent BLUE JASMINE (2013) by Woody Allen. However, where that film had a clear laserbeam focus on that one character piece and a single story, this one juggles various character and plot strands, meaning it's all a bit of a muddle and falls between two stools. Some great scenes and yes, the music is sublime, but...

There is too much here, 2 stories or more - do we really need the child (who does not look like either lesbian parent) and that plot strand. Maybe just say the manly Lydia Tar can call herself father and show herself a bully, even of a child? The neighbour plot strand with the old lady and carer? The end is surprising - I liked the prelude to that, the origin story. Because classical music is all about socio-economic class which is the barrier for entry, not gender. Most conductors are male as are most composers, and 85% PRS songwriter members in the UK are male, so guess what, maybe males are better at that stuff? Like 80% maths/physics/IT graduates are male - because of innate aptitude reasons I am sure, not because of The Patriarchy or any sexist barriers. In fact these days with female and BAME-only schemes galore, it's a disadvantage being a white male, as you'll get rejected and see less good women/BAME leapfrog over you in many careers.

What is this film? A fake biopic? Or just an excuse to make it a movie which is female-centred in the #metoo age? I winced when the conductor went off the rails (no spoilers, but that Blue Jasmine cosplay again) - I did not believe it. Is the film saying that because this woman is manly, lesbian, domineering etc then she has been abusive to musicians in her orchestra? So, by extension, all over women and girls and innocent sweetness and light, and only manlike women are abusers? Hmmm.

There need to be films about people who get cancelled - mostly males - as this conductor's mentor says, 'these days, an accusation proves you guilty'. It does, and MOST accusers are women and girls, making accusations to get revenge on men often (and for attention, sympathy, compo), whose lives are then destroyed - and not a few commit suicide. Now THAT would be a good movie to make. I never believe ANY accusation I hear - but most incl the media do. SO men lose jobs, careers, get cancelled, It is Nazi-like in its destruction of men's lives after they have been denounced. Just wrong. This New Puritan Age of woke and #metoo did that.

So anyway, worth a watch - the great music is one star; otherwise it'd be 2 as the film was overlong, overcomplex, muddles and annoying in parts. I just do not believe the Julliard lecture when Lydia Tar the conductor singles out a 'bipoc bigender' student, grilling him/her/it and their opinion that they cannot listen to dead white cis-male Bach. She says this student learnt that nonsense from social media, and she is right - but these days, such a teaching session would never ever happen as teachers and lecturers are terrified of students reporting them for racism/sexism etc - it can lead to suspension, getting ostracised by colleagues, sacking, poverty, misery and death - there have been SO many suicides. SO that was fiction. It'd never happen.

You cannot go wrong with Elgar's Cello Concerto or Bach or a Mahler symphony, and there are lots of wordless scenes here JUST with music. 3 stars

This is a Slovak-made movie which weaves drama with documentary - real footage from 1930s and 1940s, various stages of WWII of which much, but not all, is familiar to me.

The bar was set high with DOWNFALL (2004) - a classic German film which should have won the Best Foreign language Oscar. That is a must-watch. 5 stars all day long.

This is a decent addition, especially with the archive footage of the time.

Especially interesting is the focus on German public opinion - anti-war at fist which PR pioneer Goebbels (a failed playwright as Hitler was a failed artist) managed to bring round with very clever use of radio and film. After the German defeat at Stalingrad early 1943, Adolf H hardly ever spoke to his people again - it was Goebbels who became the voice of the Third Reich.

A great scene here with Hitler and Magda Goebbels having lunch - and Adolf nagging her about her smoking and meat-eating, Teetotal vegetarian Adolf Hitler was virtue-signalling before the word was invented. Nice to hear Magda's older son mentioned - her first marriage was to owner of BMA Herr Quandt. Most German industry tainted with Nazi connections, all the big brands, and US car company Ford - Henry decided in 1930s to base his European Ford factories in Germany NOT the UK and, almost unbelievably, in the late 60s Ford got millions in compensation for Allied bombing in WWII.

So, despite some flaws I enjoyed and appreciated this addition to the Nazi/WWII film club. The movie may be of less interest to those not much interested in WWII.

It is in German, but with English writing on screen before and after the film. It is actually a prefect educational aid - to show to students Year 9 and up, or older. Kids will experience subttitles for the first time maybe too so that;d be a good learning curve to conquer.

4 stars

I loved this, especially acts 1 and 2 - the farce then takes over for the pile-on ending and epilogue. Maybe in a location they wanted to end the Lavender Hill Mob 1951 film in...

I smelt the whiff of influence of Some Like it Hot (1959) too incl the same song...

Anyway, just go with it. The easily-offended wokie-dokies of Gen Z may well be as traumatised by some of the jokes of this as in many comedies of the time, THAT IS WHY THER ARE FUNNY, snowflakes!

Sellers steals the show, but the frustrated copper Lionel Jeffries is cartoon character stuff but deeply satisfying to watch. Nanette Newman (she of Fairy Liquid ads) is the posh totty. Bernard Cribbins is paired with Michael Caine, which is fun.

4 stars

I watched this transfixed - I was not expecting much because of so many mediocre reviews, but I thought it a brilliant film, almost 5 stars.

The characters are strong, three dimensional, including the minor ones from the family etc. The acting superb - especially Finn Cole (from Peaky Blinders). Yet again a Brit actor playing a US character with a bang-on American accent and nailing it. If I were an actor in the USA, I'd be worried...

OK so people say it is a Bonnie and Clyde story - but not really. Any story with a male and female robbers will get that lazy comparison, like any dinosaur story will get compared to Jurassic Park. Wrong and lazy tbh. This story is its own creation.

I could not guess the ending; it could have gone either way or many ways. I like that.

Cinematography of the devastating 1930s dustbowl which ruined farmers (see the Wizard of Oz) is great, though this is filmed in New Mexico.

The jangling music really adds to it all too. I was surprised to see the girl wearing headphones which could pick up the radio, in 1936, but I presume this was accurate. Just like the remote control TV (with a cord) in 1960 film The Apartment, and a helicopter in the 1949 Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico. Tech is older then we think...

Interesting fact - one of the associate producers (these do nothing usually but provide the funding) if from the Mandela family. Maybe why a rare black farming family is briefly featured.

Anyway 4.5 stars, rounded down.

I have tried to watch and like Wes Anderson films, I really have. I have NO idea how he gets funding and attracts all-star casts for his unfunny pointless movies - whatever sense of humour is allegedly here is definitely not mine.

Great cast. Pointless absurd surreal non-story. It LOOKS good, the composition of shots like still life paintings, with balance of figures, buildings, colours etc. THAT is why it has 2 stars not one.

Remember, I hate Wes Anderson films more than those of any other director working now. I hated Tenenbaums & Life Aquatic & Isle of Dogs & Asteroid City - I did not finish watching any of them, turned off after half an hour or more (I always wait till the first plot point). Just awful. Not my cup of tea. AN issue of taste. What baffles me is why others love them so, including the excellent actors and stars WA always gets to act in his movies. I just do not get it, any of it,.

I endured it rather than enjoyed it, right till the end where, bizarrely, some old paintings are shown over the credit. I liked the paintings.

2 stars. JUST.

The grand guignol here and waiting for the inevitable sequence of gory deaths reminds me of Final Destination, or British film Severance (2006) one of the best comedy horrors ever made.

But it has older roots or the King short story does - stories like The Monkey's Paw and more. It is like those old portmanteau Hammer Horror films where an object is haunted or evil and brings bad things on those who buy/find it. From Beyond the Grave (1974) with Peter Cushing as the knowing shop owner is one. And then there is the absolute classic Night of the Demon (1957) ('it's in the trees, it's coming' sampled by Kate Bush from it on Hounds of Love title track 1985)

It jumps the shark a bit in the third act imho. The start is more interesting tbh.

Clever casting with the same actor Theo James playing the chalk and cheese twin brothers, and Christian Convery playing them well as boys too. So good I thought they were played by different actors. Elijah Wood hams it up as a new-age inspirational speaker/author. Other cartoon characters here too. The monkey toy is a great design and suitably spooky too.

So almost 4 stars, as it starts well, but 3 stars with the sagging absurd OTT final act. Subtle it ain't!

A Friday night with friends film! Nothing serious here. So roll with it and enjoy the blood and gore...and laughs...

This is a watchable documentary though it could have done with dates or years put on the screen, to give it more structure.

Home movie footage is wonderful. I especially liked the interviews with Anita's children Marlon Richards and also Angela Richards, who lived with Keith's mother in a small flat in Dartford and went to state schools - her dad gave her a stables worth millions to run. Lucky her! A shame there is no interview available with Keith's very down-to-earth working class mu, Dot, though.

it really does help to be a rich pop star when you have a bad drugs or alcohol habit - ordinary people lose their homes and end up on the streets, not in expensive rehab facilities as Anita Pallenberg did.

The Stones were in a way lucky, not only as they could seemingly avoid the law and live lives of ease in beautiful places - France,. Switzerland etc. However, at the end of the 60s they were in effect broke. Only after that did they rake in millions, and still do.

I have to say I find posh totty Anita Pallenberg - who could swan off to New York on a parental allowance no doubt after flunking her expensive private education and leaving school - a bit tiresome. A hanger-on like so many other women associated with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles too.

I do not buy the 'muse' theory. It was the band members who had talent, not their latest girlfriends who were almost all rich upper class types attracted by the famous rich pop stars they would not have looked at twice back on their home streets of Dartford and Liverpool.

Watch with one of the several documentaries on Brian Jones who was seemingly brought down by binge drinking of spirits which hospitalised him several times before his untimely death.

4 stars

This is worth watching esp for anyone interested in stories of WWII and the Holocaust. This has a specific focus on Jews living in Czechslovakia - now Slovakia. Indeed, it features the first Jews send to the new Birkenau camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

The local Jews hatch a plan to save their women and girls from being sent away by cattle truck - no spoilers.

The end of the film features the producer (who funded the film and a centre in New York) Emil A Fish whose parents/mother feature in the story, I think - a little documentary epilogue at the end explains things and what the town is like now. The film starts with a prologue documentary snippet too.

Not a major film, a minor one, and low budget but worth watching. 3 stars.

Lots of previews for low budget movies from the same film company before the film starts - 5 I think - but thankfully one can fast-forward through them.

This is based on a young adult novel called TSCHICK, I believe, and teenagers will probably like it therefore.

It features vignettes of the various odd people a pair of teens meet on a road trip in the summer holidays. It is what it is.

All a cartoon character caper really, saved by the main character who is interesting and played well; I thought his Russian friend was less believable and maybe a tad too old/big, though maybe not - some 14 year olds are six foot!

It's worth a watch, though as with many such road/journey movies, it's hard to believe some of the characters the pair coincidentally meet. There are some great road movies, and walking ones. 1989 TV movie FIRST AND LAST is a fave, as is TYPIST, ARTIST, PIRATE, KING (2023). So many more.

3 stars. Worth a watch and enjoyable enough.

One point - the mother bis portrayed as an alcoholic always glugging away at a bottle of vodka but, as in so many films (Wolf of Wall Street et al), these people are shown looking great with mild hangovers in the morning. They do not show shambling wrecks in bed for days with DTs and nightmares (watch The Lost Weekend for that or Leaving LAs Vegas maybe).

I watched this not knowing what to expect. What I saw was a really intelligent film that had me hooked from the start, real tension, utterly believable corruption and characters.

This sort of stuff is common in most Asian and African countries which are corrupt, and many have powerful religious figures too, Islamic states, so I can believe it all.

Reminded me of Great Expectations really, a boy leaves his simple seaside home and discovers the city is not the utopia he thought it would be.

Recommended.

I loved this - it is a fascinating story about Richard Burton, born 1935, died of a stroke brought on by drink probably in 1984 after his last performance in that movie (Eurythmics soundtrack). He was clearly one of the greatest actors of the 20th century who emerged from a mining village in South Wales. Born in 1925,. he'd remember the 3-day Blitz of Feb 1941 which destroyed much of nearby Swansea - the German plane hit the huge oil tanks and they could be seen burning many miles away.

The acting is great from Toby Jones and Harry Lawtrey, and especially Richard's drunkard dad, and the focus on the 'love story' between a student and his mentor was surprising but works - maybe the modern obsession with gender/sexual orientation is reflected here. A movie made a couple of decades ago would have left it out. And the actual acting and elocution lessons given to Richard and then the recitation of Shakespeare that Burton voice are superb. They are the pros.

The cons include the very CGI-looking scenes of industrial port Talbot, but I suppose a budget issue there. it is hard to recreate a grey, polluted, industrial landscape which has vanished now, though my mum remembered it and my grandfather was born into it. 80% of the world's copper used to be made in Swansea, and the South Wales coalfields powered that and the ironworks and steelworks and zinc works and more.

Also, it does drag a bit as it goes on. The text on screen is too small - fine for a cinema but had to squint to read that on a TV. For me, the actors playing Richard Jenkins and his 17/18 year old classmates look WAY too old, 25+. The later Stratford scenes set in 1951/2 when Burton was 27 are a better fit, with the actor looking that age.

Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely anyway. 4 stars

Most of all this film is BORING. Not offensive as I do not care about such things. The sexual references and swearwords did not and do not impress or shock me. Ever.

I am disgusted and repulsed by the constant anti-British racism (and in law a nationality is a race). This is expressed directly and via absurd cartoon character BADDIE Brit police or protestants at least. See, KNEECAP are Catholic so hate Brits and want Northern Ireland which is majority Protestant to join the south in a 'United Ireland' which never existed until Brits arrived 800+ years ago and deposed the oppressive, feudal, slavetrading kings.

When Eire became independent after civil war in 1922, it in effect became a dictatorship of the Catholic church and pervy paedo priests. Great eh? These days, the Irish has had piles of EU cash (from UK money paid to EU) to boost their economy.

Can you imagine if a similar film was made celebrating a rap group who despised Catholics and the people of Southern Ireland? It would never happen. WHY NOT? Bias. It is somehow OK to spew racist abuse at 'white' Brits, and protestants in northern Ireland. WHY?

BUT as this is cloaked in 'minority language' status', this film INCREDIBLY got UK taxpayer funding to the tune of £150,000 from BFI plus Lottery Funding.

SO there are over 5 million people in Eire and nearly 2 million in Northern Ireland. Only 80,000 speak Irish/Gaelic, a tiny % as with Gaelic in Scotland. Only 6000 speak it in Northern Ireland. I conclude, therefore, that most now jumping on the ProPal Israel-hating Kneecap bangwagon cannot understand their ranting raps - or only the swearwords in English anyway, the F and the C word a lot. All the childish boasting about sex and drugs, it is like entering a 13 year old teenage boy brain...

This is not music, and it is now even good rap - it is C-rap. I can appreciate rap like Eminem, it is clever and uses melodic samples for the chorus. This Kneecap stuff is like teenagers writing in schoolbooks, basic rhymes, lots of swearing and lewd sex references to try and sound big. It doesn't. It is infantile and BORING more than anything else.

The film is silly, boring, a cartoon character caper with an absurd plot tacked on. How it got made is a mystery. I'd rather pay not to watch this again or listen to the awful c-rap, the non-music which people now listen to as Kneecap is Jewhating flavour of the month. Only one PalFlag shown here and no Jewhating. That is in later concerts - why one if on bail for terrorist offences as I write.

No stars.

I was not sure if this film would be a huggy slush-fest as so many feel-good heart-warming movies are - i have literally turned off more than a few before the end as I detest that schmaltzy stuff. However, though the tweeness is here - with a rescued penguin - the main character's cynicism and the political backdrop of 1976 Argentina helps the story to avoid drowning in slush slurry as so many others do.

The word for feelgood books like this is 'UP-LIT' - often near-fantasy stories of a stranger entering a community and touching the lives of everyone in a positive way. Films like The Untouchables (French, 2011) and Amelie and Chocolat and more are like that, and all these novels about people going on long walks. It is a slim, simple, feelgood story, perfect for family viewing at Christmas or whatever.

I first heard of the Penguin Lessons memoir on which this fictional film is based ('inspired by a true story') on a radio programme, World Service, I think. The author himself, Tom Michell stated in interview that the film was not his story really as it is altered and embellished, but hey, that is film. In reality, the 23 year old Tom became a chemistry teacher in Cornwall.

Here Steve Coogan plays a cynical fifty-something with a sad backstory (no spoilers). All fiction. No idea if other stuff that happens is fact or fiction. I do know no school private or state would stand for a lot of what happens in the lessons here anyway, all a bit Dead Poets Society etc. Coogan gives his best performance since the great Philomena (2013) and Stan and Ollie (2018). I try to forget how irritating he and his views are in real life when I watch him on screen...

The backdrop of the fascist dictatorship in Argentina and how many people went missing (presumed dead) then helps steer this story away from twee oversentimentality, as does some snappy cynical dialogue (no idea if that is from the book or not).

And the penguin is great! Spanish for penguin is pinguino I learnt here! The word is actually from the Welsh language, meaning HEAD WHITE literally, used to describe the extinct Great Auk originally. But sailors usually referred to the bird as 'arse-foot' which makes sense LOL.

OK so, I was unsure what to expect from this film but sort-of liked it. It is good to see groups not usually represented on screen much, like gypsies. BIRD is another difficult British film like that. I am familiar with static caravans too so get that culture as shown in the film THE SCOUTING BOOK FOR BOYS.

BUT 1) the main character of Richard is played by an actor much too old, he looks 20, and anyway for a Romany of that generation, I doubt he's be called Richard anyway.

2) this is a character study, sure, but also sterotypes abound esp in the female characters (poshos) in 'the big house'.

3) it could all be a half-hour TV drama really, and it's based on a short story by Freddie Machin who plays the rich young scrapyard owner

Odd that the actor playing Richard has gone on to appear in and produce the BLOOD AND HONEY WINNIE THE POOH films and the NIGHTMARE NEVERLAND ones.

The director has gone on to direct MIDAS MAN a biopic about Brian Epstein.

I cannot help thinking the 2 glowing 5 star reviews from people who have only 2 reviews to their name each are SHILLS...

2 stars.