Film Reviews by PV

Well this is certainly an interesting film - the sort of slow state-funded lottery-funded sort of thing we have come to expect - and it ticks the pc diversity boxes re the gay storyline and also the Romanian immigrant who is also a gypsy thereby ticking those important ethnic boxes which state/lottery funding demands...

But is it any good?

Well, that depends what sort of film you're into. There have been loads of gay films now so this stuff is not shocking or even unusual - and the scenes are less explicit than in other movies. Brokeback Mountain is the immediate reference, of course, whether the writer/director of this likes it or not.

One criticism would be the lazy stereotype of all white Brits being racist.

And that Romanian farm gypsy speaks better English than English university professors too which is all somewhat unrealistic as he'd be doing a better job with that idiomatic and proficient English!

But it's certainly an unusual film and worth a watch.

I am in 2 minds about this reboot - it's sort of Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels + King Arthur, a baddie king, some monsters, snakes etc, some fit birds, and some blood and guts, and loads of multiculti Cockney geezers. Oh and loads of CGI.

It starts terribly - for me (teenage boys probably love the start!) - and is all a bit too Lord of the Rings at times (and those movies bore me rigid).

But then it does pick up with a simple revenge and betrayal plot JUST as in Gladiator and SO many other movies. Though to be honest I preferred The Sword in the Stone or other King Arthur movies.

This follows the fashion for casting black actors in historical drama - but really, were black Africans leading armies in 7th century Britain? It's absurd as casting white or Chinese actors as Zulus, when you think about it.

One niggle: using the word 'England' is WRONG as England itself did not exist until Alfred the Great (died 900AD) and his son who united England from various kingdoms.

The word they should have used is BRITAIN - the name of this island (which they always refer too).

This is especially true as King Arthur and Merlin are thought be many to come from the west, or Wales (which in the 7th century was a place of warring princedoms too) which is next to the west of England Glastonbury/Stonehenge region. The Welsh town Carmarthen even means 'Merlin's Town'!

They use the word ENGLAND for American audiences, I think, but it irritates and it factually wrong BUT THEN I don't mind so much fantasy dramas like this based on myths clouded in time taking liberties - I do mind when supposed factual historical dramas do the same (as with The Crown, or U571 or Argo or MANY other movies).

2 stars.

This film reminds me so much of 1970s sex comedies - which were breaking boundaries regarding nudity and talking about sex. Blake Edwards' movies ring a bell here.

Of course, these days, the focus is all on exposing men not women - we never see female genitals, but plenty of prosthetic males ones. No doubt teenage girls will giggle a lot at this.

Me, well I thought it all got too much really and became rather boring - it's a typically self-indulgent Californian story.

Maybe 3 stars, just.

I didn't expect much of this movie but really enjoyed it.

Many things remain unexplained - and the ending of this (no spoilers) annoyed me, as I like resolution!

But it's a great little film, imaginative and well-made. In a way Britain cannot make them.

4 stars

So long as you accept this is a low-budget B-movies - one of many churned out in a matter of weeks (2 or 3) by the director, then you'll enjoy it more. This one is not written by the director - maybe why it has more dramatic tension that other films of his.

If you start thinking too hard about the plot holes, the sometimes wooden acting, the misjudged scenes (all black and white flashbacks here), the fluffed lines (the son says "they're both gonna x us" instead of "they're gonna x both of us" in one scene!); the limp ending; the cheap feel of it all - then you'll enjoy it more. It is what it is.

The accents are not too bad considering the actors are all British/Welsh not American and it's all filmed in Wales (and looked like Wales, frankly!)

The best thing about this is the soundtrack to be honest.

This is the sort of comedy the British film industry just cannot make - a nice simple comedy based on a fantasy conceit which has a moral core and a resolution at the end.

I have always hated Emma Thompson - she always plays Emma Thompson and I cannot get past that! She is also SO what the Americans thinks is a typically British or English person WHICH SHE IS NOT - she is an American version of a Brit woman, and that irritates me.

Dustin Hoffman adds class to everything he's in though.

The start of this film is very funny - and maybe it is a tad overlong with some unnecessary subplots.

Also, my suspension of disbelief was sorely challenged at times, but it's far worse in other fantasy films from Hollywood. So this is not at all bad - although postmodern fantasies are not my thing.

Passable. 3 stars.

I despair about Hollywood movies sometimes. They create fiction from history, and then people just swallow it whole and believe it as fact. Happens all the time - with U571 and Argo and The Patriot and many other films. Often, Brits are portrayed as the bad guys, esp at the hands of some film directors.

Well let's look at the facts. BP is NOT a British company but a multi-national. British Petroleum merged with US giant Amoco in 1998, becoming BP Amoco plc, and acquired ARCO and Burmah Castrol in 2000. It is this a US company too.

The rig was misrun and mismanaged by Transocean, a US company - or based in Switzerland I believe.

The rig and drill were built in South Korea and laid down by Halliburton - yep, the company which Dick Cheney is so involved with.

Blaming a British company for this disaster was the saddest part of Obama's presidency as it showed him to be racist against the Brits and prepared to lie to create a scapegoat when it suited him for electoral gain.

SO that is why this movie deserves no stars.

But also it is VERY predictable. Wives waiting at home TICK, Diverse crew TICK. Slow built to disaster TICK. But frankly, it's boring.

If you want to watch a decent disaster movie then rent out THE TOWERING INFERNO or THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE. The CGI is not there but so what? The characterisation and story-telling are better.

I also disliked the Christian.praying agenda in this film, so no stars.

Warning to anyone under 30 who wants the usual CGI horror-fest or Japanese style horror movie scares. This film is contemplative and stylish - and some would call it slow (it's obviously influenced by that French director Michel Hahne or something, with several long still shots of a house or something for 20 seconds plus, which can be trying...)

At first it's laugh out loud silly - like the director fell into the dressing up box.

BUT if you are willing to suspend your disbelief, which I was for SOME of the time, it's actually rather fun and enjoyable.

Loads of flashbacks, and a supposed revelation at the end, and some stuff is never adequately explained.

But it's imaginative and different from the usual Hollywood scarefest drivel, and I liked it.

AND I absolutely loved the score and the music in this film.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I saw the first Kingsman movie and thought it was just SO absurd - but then I am not a teenager raised on video games.

This is all cartoon violence reminiscent of the Beano but with more blood and explosions.

People get zapped; surreal scenes show cartoony martial arts fighting done with CGI; a ludicrous plot develops with goodies and baddies. So far so good. All watchable - just. It is what it is.

The action takes place all over the world - even at the Glastonbury festival - and features some top actors (no doubt loving the 7 figure pay cheques) plus Elton John (looking all his 70 years) plays a cameo caricature of himself. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is moot.

The chav white-acting-black English of the main character is spot-on, sadly - I hate this modern ugly inner city multiculturalist speak, though it is confined to poorer whites on London council estates. And 'Oh my days' makes these people sound like old aunties!

One flaw in this is that the baddies actually have a point - surely wiping away drug dealers and users responsible for most violent crime would be a good thing?

Anyway, watch this and go along for the ride - just don't think too hard or try to make sense of anything, and it'll all be over in 2 hours.

This is one for those who like gross-out movies - but it does hang together with a warped plot. And yes, I did enjoy it.

Sacha Baron-Cohen is convincing as a Grimsby lad and there are some genuinely funny lines - the whole underclass chav culture is rarely shown in films, but this one is fearless.

It's also the first film I have ever seen that was shot in Grimsby or even mentions it!

Not great but no turkey. 3 stars.

When you see Asa 'pixie face' Butterfield in a movie, you KNOW for sure who it's aimed at - teenage girls! He has that young-looking rehular-featured, button-nosed small-mouthed, large-eyed look, like a Japanese Manga comic boy character - and his dark looks means he also appeals in the Asian/Chinese market.

However, anyone who is a not a teenage girl should avoid films like this at all costs.

It's based on a romantic novel written by a woman author, and focuses entirely on creating a melodramatic world that ticks ALL the teen girl boxes - no spoilers here, but just watch any soap to see the same plotlines.

I just didn't believe in the film or the characters - no way would some posh, rich ballerina be a partner of a loser dope dealer, for a start! And yet again, Hollywood portrays all English people as posh and clueless snobs.

I give this 2 stars and not 1 because it is at least watchable though very overlong, with a silly gay subplot too which just does not convince, and a possible hint and brother/sister relations which is just plain pervily odd.

For me the best parts were all about the political clearing of homeless people and squats in late 1980s New York - this film is set in 1987, I think. Also fun to see a kid plating ASTEROIDS on the TV via the ATARI in 1980 at the start - in 1981 I used to go to the arcade to play that!

As so often in films, the pop music strand of the plot just did not work. However, I did like looking at all the snow, and the movie does show what can happen to kids chasing kicks by taking drugs.

I had no idea what to expect watching this film.

Despite so many plot holes (has no-one heard of DNA testing?), this is a pitch black dark comedy which satirises crime and policing in London - the way so many are sick and tired of crime, and how ineffective and pc the police so often are. If you like your comedy dark and occasionally sick, then this is for you.

In such a climate, you get vigilantes. That theme is nicely explored here, in this happily short film.

Kevin Bishop is great in this - a revelation. Utterly believable, as is his odious mum - though some digs at 'right wing' politics seem tacked on (as if crime and violence is only done by the extreme right!)

It's all quite nasty if you actually think about it SO best to look at it as a cartoon and an allegory of our times.

The first half is brilliant - 5 stars. Then it sags a bit. So 4 stars overall.

This movie is not some sort of subtle and profound event, as some deluded critics have said as they praise it to the skies.

It is, in large part, a humans meets aliens contact story - based on a short sci-fi story - with a predictable (even clichéd) female lead (it worked in Alien because it was unusual then - these days it's unusual to see a man in the lead role in such movies LOL!)

Lots of flashbacks - which play with time - are intercut from the start, which is not profound at all either, as some claim.

The only interesting thing for me was the focus on language, which is my field - though a whole heap of hokum is spouted by the characters in this movie about language and communication. Yet more hokum about a non-linear language etc.

Then we have time-travel tacked on for good measure - and many movies have played with time recently, from Looper to Dr Who to thousands more. NOTHING original in this film at all. It's all rehashed plots of past sci-fi movies, with money thrown at the CGI.

And the aliens look silly too. Though even they copy the octopoid aliens of the War of the Worlds.

If you want to watch a great alien contact film then rent the 1950s version of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL or even CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Miles better both. Or an alien on earth movie: the weird and scary UNDER THE SKIN.

And yet again the British are portrayed as upper class white male idiots on the contact screen AND yet more lies about the British in India (fake news spread from Viceroy's House, I think). Maybe they should focus on abuse done by Americans to native Americans or the slavery that existed up until 1867 in the USA when Britain banned it in 1807. Hmmm.

1.5 stars rounded up

Movies like this one are made for teen audiences, so have to - these days - include loads of crude and lewd references, because teenagers find that kind of stuff 'naughty' and therefore funny because it's 'gross' as they would say.

Anyone more mature will tire of it pretty quickly.

The set-up and plot are simple but actually quite good. You can imagine a far better, cleaner version of this sort of comedy made by the great Ealing Studios who made classics like The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob.

Sadly, these days the UK film industry is incapable of making funny 90 minute comedies the way Touchstone used to - and now crude Steve Carroll movies seem to rule.

Progress?

Well, that's 2 and a half hours of my life I'm never getting back!

Just think, classic movies like Spartacus and Ben Hur was were as long or longer, and last long in the memory as classics because they told a good story well.

This is not a good story and what non-story there is does not get told well - it's all episodic with the massively over-rated working class/underclass (AKA chav) female director Andrea Arnold slipping in her trademark explicit (ie real) sex scenes.

Want to know where National Lottery funding goes? It goes on this tedious, pretentious drivel.

It would be rubbish if it were 90 minutes but at least you'd have another hour of your life to play with.

I hated all the characters - typically messed up, childish losers of the type one sees at music festivals. This lot though are more like white chavs in inner city Britain, so 'act black', calling each other the N word and listening to obscene rap and hip hop.

If you want to watch a road movie about selling door to door then watch PAPER MOON; if you want to watch a movie showing the snide exploitative dynamic of many supposedly idealistic hippy/crusty communities, watch THE BEACH (although it's flawed).

By the end of this, I was hoping the minibus carrying all the irritating crusties on their way would drive off a cliff or burst into flames - and the lead actress is SO annoying and miscast too.

It beggars belief how such tosh gets made.

One star, for the scenery.