Film Reviews by PV

This film made me angry? Why? Well because it's based on a true story - though I blame the author of the novel, rather than the film-makers. The novelist simply took a true story, and sort-of fictionalised it (so basically stole everything, no imagination needed), poshed up the story thereby making it into a feminist hero tale too - it is so easy and lazy and wrong. Just like that awful film/novel 'Room' - just steal a news story and write it up. Tss.

The TRUE story is far better - the lady who was NOT a 1st class Cambridge physics graduate but a mere secretary who was a KGB agent and then esposed in 1999 in the London boring-bungalow suburb of Bexleyheath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melita_Norwood

BUT of course, making her a proto-feminist pioneer and a 1st class physics graduate at Cambridge (where the lawyer authoress went) ticks all the pc boxes and as per usual in modern movies, all women shown are 'strong' and WAY too modern in looks, behaviour, speech and attitudes for the time. IN REALITY hardly ANY studying physics at university are women - due to innate reasons, it seems, not sexist barriers.

It's all so-so and Dench phones it in as per usual - the emotional love affair stuff is ALL fictional; in real life the woman was happily married. All to satisfy the author's female readership base, I expect. In real life, the spy's dad was a leftwing Latvian immigrant and her husband a Russian immigrant, and she was suspected in 1965 but M15 did not want to show their hand, then exposed in 1999 after a Russian defector came here in the early 90s and published a book naming her in 1999. That is the truth. NO head of M15 spy nonsense in real life. Pure fiction.

SO, a very irritating movie indeed, despite being a so-so story, and the actor (Hughes) who plays Leo is excellent at least.

BUT I'd be MUCH more interested in a TRUE film or a documentary about Melita Norwood, the woman on whose life this pc box-ticking movie is based.

2 stars.

Whether you like this film or not probably depends on your age. I am no prude, but find the adolescent humour and sex gags just unfunny - no doubt teens shocked at such things for the first time will find them 'cool'. No need for it though - take that stuff out, cut half an hour off this 2 hour movie, and you'd have a better film.

A basic plot, fish out of water type thing, 2 different worlds collide blah blah, love conquers all. Didn't believe it though for a minute, esp the ending - and this supposed journalist's journalism was AWFUL - no way would ANY paper employ someone who just ranted away like that. So couldn't suspend disbelief.

Also, I never think Seth Rogen is really acting, he's just playing himself. All mildly amusing; I laughed out loud once. Some nice silly visuals and costumes. I liked the Republican/racism routine at the end.

I dislike Charlize Theron as an actress not to mention her recent decision to bring her 8 year old son up a girl because he said he wanted to be one (if he'd said he was a dog would you have put a lead on him and taken him down the park to chase squirrels?)

Anyway, I dislike the pc virtue-signalling going on. We GET that lots in Hollywood hate Trump - but that sort of political stuff just does not work in a movie and shouldn't be there (aimed at any party) - it also dates REALLY badly (cf Monty Python early 70s UK politics references).

Not DREADFUL but nowhere near as good as all the 4 out of 5 star reviews this got from most critics. Maybe their brains have rotted eh watching too much gross-out teen comedy movies?

2 stars.

I hated this movie, the first half hour I saw of it before I could not take any more.

I am wondering why I hated it so much. Was it the obvious product placement - of eBay and most online companies EXCEPT GOOGLE, noted? Basically this is ONE big advert pushing online companies and computer games at kids.

Or was it the awfully pc 'woke' casting - hardly any white males at all; Lots of girly racing drivers behaving like boys though. And the usually large ethnic percentage of Hollywood dross these days. Nothing against diverse casting BUT WHEN white males are UNDER-REPRESENTED deliberately to a massive extent, then yes, I CALL OUT that as the racism and sexism it is.

Or was it the violence and crudeness? In a kids' film I do not expect characters to push and shove and hit each other, or be so crude in behaviour - just disgusting.

Or maybe it was the poor 2-D animation and stupid unfunny 'jokes' and uninteresting characters.

One star, if that. AWFUL.

As so many series (incl Breaking Bad, Peaky Blinders), the early series are WAY superior - series 1 and maybe 2 too are great, edge-of-seat experiences, very violent, some sex scenes, but really imaginative. Filmed in the UK in South Wales - Margam Park, I know. Series 1 has a documentary re THE MAKING OF on the final DVD.

GREAT sets and fantasy inventions. ALL total hokum and tosh of course - Leo Da Vinci was nothing like this and nor was Florence/Firenze in Italy, a city I know well.

The main characters of Leo, Zo. Niko are great and well-cast. When they are on screen, or Vlad, it's riveting stuff. The stuff in the New World is a bit weak as is series 3. I find you can always sense a series is coming to the end of its natural when they start using flashbacks or silly fantasies, OR casting more women in roles and discussing family matters and starting families. Breaking Bad was just like that - brilliant to begin with, then too much domestic stuff. Ditto Peaky Blinders, first 3 series the best.

Woefully miscast is a black actor in the role of Claudio Medici though - and also too many lookalikey young women in unbelievable macho leadership roles - easy to mix em up too.

I hated some modern references and language - eg reference in on character's speech to 'down the rabbit hole' (from 19th C Alice in Wonderland) and much other stuff.

BUT so long as you are prepared to go along for a fantasy ride, it's a good fun watch - utter nonsense historically and it actually reminds me of cliffhanger TV shows like Dr Who from the 1970s or Flash Gordon, but with WAY more violence and some sex. The blood-splattering gut-spilling grand guignol seems quite the thing these days, as well as nakedness - and as these TV series are made by Amazon Prime or Netflix, they can do that. Maybe not for the kids though.

Series 1 and 2 are 4 stars - except series 3 which is 3 stars

The problem with this is the same as affected the dire LOST TV series - it eventually got so philosophical and ponderous, it slithered up its own fundament and disappeared in a puff of indifference. There's no getting away from it - these 10 episodes can be excruciatingly padded and stretched out and, frankly, boring. Clock-watching stuff, esp as some parts are 50 minutes and some up to and hour and 15 minutes!

I was also getting increasingly annoyed at the 'woke' diversity casting - same with all movies these days, the heroes just have to be women or 'people of colour'. And yet there is NO colourblind approach when casting red indians or Japanses samurai - I didn't notice a single white ginger bloke amongst the monocultural one-skin-toneness idealised ethnic communities. Such hypocrisy. AND a real issue when there are 3 young photofit-attractive women 'of colour' who look almost identical! The same used to happen in Hollywood movies when they cast 3 white blonde actresses who looked alike. ANY producer should know that characters must LOOK different in a visual medium and sound different too. Far too much ONE NOTE stuff going on here, with 2D 'representative' characters.

Anyone who's read Jospeh Campbell's Hero with 1000 Faces know a hero much be male or act in a male way. These women heroines are basically men, they act as men (and there are NO female snipers at all in the British army of M15/6. Not one. 97% soldiers male too).

The plot is nonsense of course - reminds me of a Quatermass movie that ended at Stone Henge (maybe early 70s). All very postmodern and silly, like an expensive Dr Who (though nowhere near as awful and pc too).

Watchable though, for the wonderful scenery (Ohio and California) which reminds me of the truly great old Western movies.

But watch the original movie: WESTWORLD (1973) to see how you do not need CGI or constant extreme and gruesome violence to make a truly great film. You need 1) a great script, which tells a simple story well (not with multiple confusing flashbacks and tricksy plots as here); 2) a great script; 3) a great script. The rest is detail.

I could easily rewrite this as a 4 part series, but it pads out to 10 parts - the most interesting are with the red indians and the samurai in Japan (absurdly led by a woman - more woke #metoo nonsense). The costumes and sets are wonderful, I have to say, and the Ghost Nation's facepaint!

Anthony Hopkins is always worth watching - but he must have done this for the big fat cheque, I think - he'd know the script had 'jumped the shark'. Time to put this series out of its misery.

2.5 stars rounded up. Please no series 3 if it's more of the same!

This is just a little extra feature, just 20 minutes long, no a movie - I was expecting a sequel to the excellent TROLLS movie.

It's all phoned in, really - lots of colour and noise and well-known songs, but I found it boring. Small kids with no attention spans will probably love it.

I gave the TROLLS movie 4 stars; I give his just 2. Not great.

I seriously enjoyed this series. The early 70s movie is great too - written and directed by the late Michael Crichton, all about a theme park gone wrong (he used the same plot for his Jurassic Park novel). Crichton was a scientist and always focused on future technology and what it might do. The early 70s movie is great - better than this for a succinct story and with Yul Brynner - and it was the first winner of the special effects Oscar, though the green-screen effects look dated now and the synthy music is dated too. Nothing dates so fast as a vision of the future.

This series is more of an epic - and maybe too drawn out (I am sure 10 episodes could have been made into 6 or 7). It takes the same Wild West setting of the original movie and takes it to the max.

You really do have to suspend your disbelief with this, which I usually did. Clever complex plotting too.

The actors are superb, and many Brits amongst them. Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins phones it in and steals every scene he is in, of course. He must be almost 80 here.

But I loved it. Some plot holes here and there, and very violent, with just too much existential pondering which reminds me of LOST, the series I abandoned half-way through the first series, thank goodness!

The music is great, esp the self-playing piano (watch the short doc on the final DVD about that). Great the way they took modern songs, by Radiohead (Fake Plastic Trees, No Surprises and another); Black Hole Sun by Sound Garden; Back to Black by Amy Winehouse; The Cure's A Forest - all played on a Wild West pub piano with that slightly out of tune feel. So clever - real attention to detail.

I now want to rewatch the early 70s movie and rent series 2 of this. US drama series like this are just SO much better than the dross drama on UK TV, esp the BBC - which are all aimed at getting older female viewers, so are soaps really. This is REAL drama. Enjoy.

4 stars. If not overlong and drawn out, then 5.

I yawned through this movie. Not just because of the length. Not just because it keeps playing with flashbacks in a vain attempt to keep the audience's attention. Not just because it is all so awfully old-fashioned and trite (think On Golden Pond or Ordinary People).

No, this movie felt so long coz it is mediocre in all respects. The script is obvious and derivative - yet won Best original screenplay Oscar (!!!); Casey Affleck's a good actor but here he isn't at all, just predictable, and I am stunned he won Best Actor Oscar for this.

I can only assume this is the sort of movie stupid people think is deep, meaningful and profound.

It isn't. It's trite, obvious, derivative and the opposite of entertainment. The sort of social realism one sees all the time in US Indie films which think this sort of thing makes them intelligent and deep. It doesn't.

I am sure Americans who tend to enjoy their psychobabble therapy pity parties will enjoy the family melodrama here. But it is all so utterly forgettable and meaningLESS. Maybe the Irish Catholic contingent nabbed it the Oscars eh? I can offer no other explanation. Bad films winning awards today because of ethnic-loyalty voting too, I suppose. This is just as awful as them. Looking at you,. Spike Lee and Black Panther.

I want to give it one star. Because BOY did it feel long and bore me. But it's competently made and acted and the rest - though the obvious classical music jars. I suppose Americans who adore Marlon Brando misery mumbling love movies like this. They are free to watch them. For me, it's over 2 hours of my life I'm never getting back.

But hey, show it to stupid people to make them feel intelligent, if you want. Me, I'd rather pay folding money never to see a minute of it again!

1.5 stars rounded up.

I watched this solely to see how music had been used, and did not expect to enjoy the animation or story. But I did. And here is why:

I LOVED the way this story does not sweep death or bad things under the carpet (like so many pc children's books these days) - a wonderful jungle sequence in the first quarter, with the usual man-eating plants etc, had me laughing wt the dog eat dog jokes. WONDERFUL animation too - calculated by a corporate team, yes, but highly imaginative.

BUT the reason why this film works is NOT the animation - as always, it is the script. That is genuinely funny, arch and has some innuendo for adults too. This film is no way just for kids!

The character arcs work and are strong.

And the music is superb because it's hand-picked from the pop archive - from Sound of Silence by Paul Simon to I Feel Love by Donna Summer and even Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz. A GREAT new song by Max Martin in Can't Stop The Feeling which was deservedly nominated for an Oscar. True Colours used well - 80s song sung by Cyndi Lauper but written by 2 blokes. The final song, however, at the very end of the credits is DREADFUL - how on earth did that get in there? To appeal to rap fans and urban communities maybe? Hmmm.

BTW watch the credits as there is an ending of the story half way through!

IThe things I HATED: 1) the way every single Disney or animation movie these days has to have a female hero - and I do mean every single one. To make her look more 'strong woman' the male characters around her are shown to be weak, cowardly, stupid. To have this in every singlke movie is now a massive sexist cliche. Do people really want to do down boys of the next generation in entertainment? Sad if you do. That does not make you strong but weak and sexist actually. HAVING SAID THAT this movie is not to bad on that as the characters are so strong.

And 2) This film is spoilt by the central pc psychobabbly very American premise that personal happiness (with endless hugs) is the most important thing in the world and being happy all the time must be everyone;s goal. WHAT ROT! Happiness is part of life, as is sadness, disappointment, anger etc. All in the round. I do wonder what message this is giving children.

BUT nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised at ow much I enjoyed this. The movie is obviously designed to be ultra-colourful and happy throughout BUT it is well-written and with great music, and I loved it. If you're feeling a bit down, put this on and you annot fail to smile watching this mad technicolour troll-fest!

4 stars. Would be 5 were it not for the 2 points made above.

Really, this movie spreads it thin - it takes a tiny flimsy story and drags it out to 90 minutes by, so I am led to believe, inventing the jeopardy or a grilling of the pilot in an inquiry. So far, so film industry. This sort of 'inventing a baddie' for the goodie main character to overcome is standard stuff - films are full of fake news.

What I disliked so much about this movie - directed by uber-patriot Clint Eastwood - is that this talented pilot's efforts somehow are part of the great American story, about the USA being the 'best country in the world' etc. What rot! Offensive stupid daft rot too.

Far better planes in peril movies out there.

This is basically a B-movie - and really, a half hour documentary could have told this story better and more accurately.

But the plane scenes are good and CGI not intrusive, and it all hangs together on a B-movie 'the good main character wins through in the end' framework. But utterly forgettable. This is real film-making by numbers, a join-the-dots project, which most of the world has no interest in, though no doubt in the USA people waved flags at the premier and chanted USA like Homer Simpson. Yawn.

And the ending made me cringe - it's not Schindler's List, for goodness sake! It's a plane which had an emergency landing and was lucky!

Oh and the music is awful - JUST DREADFUL. The end theme tune is like some dirge from a 1970s disaster movie, which this sort of resembles too, though it's far more boring. Watch AIRPLANE! instead...

1.5 stars rounded up.

I am a fan of Nina Simone and loved the recent documentary about her - that was better than this and includes maybe the most interesting part of her lifestory, namely when she went to live in Africa in the early 70s with romantic ideas of 'going home', then returned to Europe in rags, living in a bedsit, before 2 white guy managers rescued her, make her take medication, booked her gigs etc. Not a young black man at all. That seems pure fantasy invented to create an all black major role cast. Shame. Racist even. As indeed Nina was in the early 70s, singing 'Kill White Peopl' in one concert.

This movie focuses weigh to much on race and civil rights, as that is the obsession of our age. A better biopic would have shown her early life more. NO mention here she was born Eunice Waymon, for example. No mention that she wrote hardly any of her songs - as one can see if one watches till the end of the end credits. Ironically, white men wrote most of her famous tunes, just like a young white Jewish boy wrote Strange Fruit.

My advice: watch the superior documentary before this. It's called WHAT HAPPENED MISS SIMONE? (2015). Better still, watch some of her concert clips on an online video platform.

But it's not TOO bad. A shame they left out the incident in France a couple of years before her death when she started shooting at kids who were stealing apples from the garden with her revolver. Yes, she was like that. Not much mention of her daughter either or husband (a black cop). If they'd included some mention of her 1980s gigs at Ronnie Scott's in London, that would have been great too.

This is maybe half true and the rest total fiction BUT it hangs together OK, and the music is great. The main actress looks too young and fair-skinned though. Nina is meant to be in her mid 60s in the 1990s when this movie is mostly set (she was born 1933 died 2003).

It's all obsessively focused on racial politics (which our age demands) when it actually should have been focused on Nin's music and life first and foremost.

3 stars. Just.

This is the sequel to the lower budget Deutschland 83 which I actually preferred. That was set in Europe; this takes place a lot in South Africa and other African countries, which is very timely, but maybe less interesting for me.

However, this is still classy drama and better than most UK drama, for sure.

As usual, some neat twists and turns, confusion about how to trust and action scenes. Too much focus on romance this time though, which borders on treating the main actor as a sex object - feminists used to complain about when female actors were treated in the same way! Such double standards really.

4 stars

I enjoyed this movie for the simple reason that I knew NOTHING of this period of history in Japan, other than the Dutch (richest trading nation on earth in 17th C) were the only people allowed to trade in Japan in certain areas such as Nagasaki. I had never heard about Christian missionaries from places such as Portugal and the many who were persecuted and killed.

This is very timely too - Christians are being persecuted throughout Asia at the moment, and indeed killed. Not much reported though.

It is long - too long. And could have been pulled in under 2 hours, I am sure, without losing much.

The story is one of belief and betrayal, and fascinating.

Based on a 1966 Japanese novel - which is probably better than the film, as so often with epics with multi-dimensional stories and themes and a myriad of characters.

I suppose INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS from 1958 would be a good partner piece, this time about the persecution of Christians in China in the 1930s. That was filmed in Snowdonia, Wales, apparently and because not many Chinese lived in Britain in the 1950s, the kids in it were the posh offspring of diplomats etc!

An oddity for Scorsese maybe, and if you want hardcore action, then don;'t even bother. Glad I stayed with it though, after the slow start - this movie only really begins after at least half an hour, maybe 45 minutes.

Well this is a Tom Ford film, and seeing as he comes from the massively pretentious modern art world, it is no surprise to see one part of the movie take place there.

This is a story-within-a-story -no spoiler here as the blurb says the key character received a novel.

It's all quaintly old-fashioned ultimately, especially towards the end. Feels like I had to sit through an awful lot to get there. BUT the police chief steals the show (Bobby Andes character).

Ultimately, I disliked the main female character and the other spoilt and self-absorbed art-world types - seen it all before, so no desire to see the dreadful pretentious modern conceptual art again.

2 stars. If it had been JUST the story about the fictional novel in the film, probably 4 stars.

However, as this is all based on an actual novel, one cannot entirely blame the director. Only for the dedicated.

I see from the credits that this is based on an 'original idea' by the director/writer and producer. Well, now. In no way, shape or form is the idea of someone who hires an assassin to kill him, then changes his mind and is in a fix, is 'original'. I have seen and heard half a dozen such stories - from Bulworth with Warren Beatty to various others. And as for failed attempted at suicide - well A MAN CALLED OVE does that as does the Jim Broadbent film whose name I cannot remember.

Anyway, this comedy is passable, if very predictable, though oddly feels too long despite an 80 minute run time, The final act flags badly - and the relationship story is weak and not very credible. Cartoon character comedy really.

The old assassin and his wife are massive stereotypes - no-one lives like that any more, not even 70 year olds!

But it's fun in parts, as a cartoony drama - so if you don;t expect too much, it passes the time.

And some class acting talent here. So 3 stars - just - as some decent music here.

It says Stephen Fry produced it too (THE SF? Who knows?)

Watch A MAN CALLED OVE, LEAVING LAS VEGAS or KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS for real class.