Film Reviews by PV

I think this series is well-filmed and acted, but, to be honest, I preferred The Pacific, made years later by the same team. Why? Well, perhaps because the Pacific war was largely Americans fighting; whereas, the fighting in Europe was not - though Band or Brothers and all other American films try to make out that WWII as Germany V the USA! I understand that the whole focus has to be on a few men, but, nevertheless, I think it's wrong and somewhat offensive to do that - especially since the USA didn't even enter the war until over 2 years after Britain had been fighting! There are a couple of moments in this where things that go wrong are blamed on 'limeys' - despite the massive sacrifice of the British and Canadians at Arnhem and elsewhere. As always, the Brits are ONLY ever portrayed as upper class twit officers, except for one mockney private! I think that those who are not very educated about WWII will be misinformed by this TV mini-series really, and that's a shame and wrong. I did however like the well-filmed scenes and also the muddy morals of it all: US soldiers looting, and casually killing Germans who surrendered, for example, and drunken yanks crashing cars after the war's end. But I still preferred The Pacific as a drama. I thought the ending was great though - not the usual American saccharine sentimentalism.

This is the kind of TV drama series that TV critics rave over: it's oh so post modern and ironic, and says so much about our bumb zombie culture. Even more ironic that it's made by the makers of Big Brother - shamelessly cashing in on their TV reality show, now that everyone's lost interest (a common reason for postmodern trickery). This is also TV made especially for the FaceSpace generation - all those teens and infantile 20-somethings who usually have an online, bitesize, goldfish-like attention span. For anyone who left school before the 90s, this drama will be rather dull and predicatble - attemtping to ape the gore-fest of teen movies with the (yawn) zombie attack plot. There are massive plot holes and nonsensical sequences. However, this is saved by a decent script by Charlie Brooker and by a superb performance by Andy Newman as the monstrous Big Brother director/producer: he clearly played this as ridiculous comedy and it works on that level. It is slightly spoilt by what is becoming a cliche on TV adverts and drama: all men are portrayed as useless idiots or perverts or monsters, while all women are portrayed as sorted, confident and much better than the men in every way! Imagine if it were the other way round! Would it be sexist? Yes, and so is this new TV tradition. (Of course, the only males allowed to be worthy and noble are always black or Asian, as they are here, which is blatant racism too). But then, people who work in TV really are as awful as portrayed here - even worse actually - with their 12 year old mentalities and hunger for ratings! That's why TV is so dumbed down and awful these days. But TV execs are SO desperate and hungry to get a share of the online generation, so love stuff like this which is fast,young and diverse and gets the FaceSpace generation watching episodes online. That means they can get advertising revenues! That means TV Producerette - she happy baby!

Three stars for the comedy and Andy Newman's performance; take those out and it gets 1 star.

This film gets 3 and a half stars (rounded up to four).

It would have been higher but there are three things that really annoyed me about this film: 1) the sound was awful - and I would advise anyone to use subtitles with it! All that naturalistic acting and mumbling and fast talking meant many good lines wre missed by all those who watched it at my house! 2) It is just too theatrical and stagy - like so much British drama, it started in the theatre, I think, and it SMELLS of the stage really, like mostradio drama too; 30 the plot twist was no surprise to me - perhaps because I have seen the same character reversal in the theatre a thousand times! I had guessed the ending well in the first act, so the twist in the third that was meant to shock and delight had me yawning instead!

ON THE PLUS SIDE: it's a great little low budget Brit flick which maintains the audience's interest throughout. The characters, though stagy, so bounce off each other with some nice verbal sparring and character arcs. The scenery is lovely (meant to be Suffolk but is in fact in Kent - possibly Sheppey) and I certainly have never seen a film set in a birdwatching hut before! And the flocks of birds look lovely too!

This is an intelligent film well worth watching. Just a shame that it didn't lose some of the stage dialogue before going into production.

I loved this film - I thought it was funny, witty, full dark ironies and great characters - and actually quite true to life too sometimes. This is amazing for me, because I usually HATE Woody Allen movies - and I mean REALLY hate them. His other movies leave me cold and I find them totally unfunny, but this is a wonderful characters comedy. Of course, the usual suspects will complain that it's not realistic and doesn't show a true picture of London - of course it doesn't, it's not a documentary of social issues set on a sink estate! But this film just really made me laugh: I know people just like the ones portrayed in the film - I particularly liked the gold-digging female characters, and also the failed writer character. Tony Hopkins also shows he can do comedy! This is the best Woody Allen film - ever! And the only one that made me laugh!

As it usual with Chinese films such as Red Cliff, this film os full of CGI battle scenes and clan warfare. So far, so good. For a Western audience the melodrama is overplayed to comic levels, of course, and the history may well be a bit confusing. But this is not my main criticism. It is clear from the subtitles given on the actual film at the end especially that the purpose of this film is to make the claim that Confusius is the greatest thinker ever - of all time - which is actually written on screen at the end! Not Socrates, Plato or Aristotle then; not Shakespeare or Newton or Einstein; no, because you see, they are not Chinese! Watching this is like watching one of those nazi propaganda films from the 30s - claiming that the master race is German, or Chinese in this case, and the trying to build a foundation for that 'truth' by trawling through ancient history and myths to prop up bigoted nationalism. The Chinese olympic ceremony was like the Berlin 1936 olympics too. As such, this film is very offensive and dangerous. It is also rather a boring movie, but no doubt Chinese nationalists will agree with its sentiment that ' a love of country comes before anything else'. This is film making as propaganda for a claim to Chinese superiority and that all other races are inferior. Backwards and old fashioned film making. Avoid.

I watched this movie expected a lame comedy of the type Hugh Grant has done a great deal in recent years; however, I was pleased to find myself laughing at this larger than life satire of reality TV. It's a good fun movie, and manages to get in the president of the USA, white trash wannabee singers for Pop Idol type shows, Lot sof Jewish humour and slapstick, the middle east peace process and Islamic terrorists all in one movie! Tightly written and fund, this is one of the best comedies to come out of Hollywood in the last decade. Hugh Grant is good as the Simon Cowell tyep Brit in America, but other actors are excellent too. This type of movie never wins prizes (Oscars are of course reserved for boring films about Jews, Nazis, diabled people, and Britflicks about royalty) - but this movie is way more enjoyable to watch than most worthy po-faced Oscar nominees. I could watch this movie again right now! It is FUNNY!

Of course, we should never forget that the first of these Pop Idol and Popstars type shows started in the UK and the US bought the format!

It's good to see a film in Welsh - partly - and which shows the wonderful scenery of Wales. Unfortunately, this is a typical state-funded film that looks like it's been created by committee. All the social issues are ticked. Moreover, it is achingly predictable and very slow too. And the ending - (won't spoil it) - is just ridicuolus - can screenwriters not learn some law? There are more holes in this that Swiss cheese - the biggest being that the old woman could havem through her young pretty teenboy neighbour, have found out all about Wales using the internet without ever leaving Argentina! And Duffy in this is really Duff - and I hadn't realised until the close-ups lingering on her face just how ugly she is. What a pug!

Two stars for the fact it's an unusual film and the scenery. The story would have been better left unwritten though - but then, this is the type of rubbish state-funded projects often spew out. Slow, dull, unrealistic and, frankly, amateur.

Boring stupid useless film. Probably only of interest to those who live like this, or those obsessed with ethnic issues (Guardian readers, BBC munchkins, those with white guilt).

I thought this film badly made and shot - and quite frankly boring as hell. It is NOT a quality filmn just because it has black people in it, has a black director and is about black issues! That's a racist opinion, actually.

I enjoyed this series but it's not as good as series 2. The writers were trying too hard sometimes - too many predictable vomit gags and crude sequences: that's always a good way to tell that a series should end. I really hope they don't make series 4 and 'jump the shark'...

Some laugh out loud moments here though, and Greg Davies is the best comedy teacher in any drama or comedy for years! So true to life! It's all a bit racist against Swansea in the final episode, of course - would the same gag have been made about any ethnic area like Southall or Handsworth? - but I can forgive the weak points and silliness of all this because some parts are genuinely funny! Feels a bit strained and desperate at times, so best that The Inbetweeners ends at series 3, I think. My favourite line from Will when he's being driven by mad roadhog speeding driver jay: 'He made us feel like royalty; sadly, it was Princess Diana'!!!

This film is so sentimental, twee and old-fashioned (Victorian even) that it makes Enid Blyton look like Harold Pinter................. It is what's known as a 'feelgood' film - in other words, it gives a positive (hence completely unrealistic) view of Africa - a place where the vast majority of people are friendly and helpful, according to this, except for a few bad apples, half of whom are white. Yeah right...........

There has always been a certain type of well-off white person who has a rather patronising love of Africa - with all those smiley little black faces - and I think this film is made by such people. It's also very religious and churchy, especially the ending. It even argues that so long as you've got 'god and the goodies [AIDS medicine]' than all will be well. WHAT UTTER TRIPE! The 1 million people killed in Rwanda in 1994 were killed for religious reasons, and AIDS has spread like wildfire in Africa because of religious teaching to a gullible population! Sorry - didn't like this 'feelgood' movie at all - but it sure does tick all dem PC boxes, so that's why it got all our BBC money and lottery money to get made...........................

The dialogue is also sometimes clunky and 'on the nose', and the acting (from the adults) so wooden as to be made of ebony! Direction is workmanlike, and there are some animation sequences that REALLY do not work at all - but they are part of the churchy, 'let's all pray and get to heaven', ethos of this twee little children's film. I don't think even that many kids will really like it that much though - but there are some nice scenes, some nice pics of animals (which the director shamelessly gets into shot and sequences, despite their having no relevance to the plot!), and some football sequences that boys will love. Two stars at most though.

There is nothing good about this film. It's the kind of sub-Ken Loach and sub-Mike Leigh poverty porn realism much loved by critics - but really, it is patronising, dishonest, self-indulgent pap.

I come from the same homw town as the dirctor and I can tell you that is is mostly middle-class suburbia too! So the portrayal of it as some kind of awful sink estate in dishonest.

What we need are good stories well told - that is what we need in the British film industry; not this awful tedious pity party - this film is typical of all that is wrong with British film-making.

NO STARS.

This is a genuinely funny lightweight movie - essentially a road trip with a straight guy and a mad guy being forced to travel to LA - tghey're thrown together and go through the usual ups and downs a la Planes, Trains and Automobiles. But it is really funny in parts - of course, there's a silly sentimental ending, as per usual in Hollywood. But, unlike most Hollow-wood 'comedies', this is actually occasionally funny! Some great set ups and some great lines allow the actors to milk every situation and ham it up wonderfully. One of the better comedies of recent years. A nice, easy, funny film to destress to. And the scene on the plane is hilarious!

More comic capers from the boys - or should I say men? Here are four 21, 22 and 23 year olds, playing schoolboys of 17, who behave like schoolboys aged 13/14.

But it works. Why? Because there are some genuinely funny moments are funny lines; also, the characters are clearly differentiated - the usual way of doing this on TV is to add black, female or Scottish characters, so well done for the writers for sticking to the 4 white guys: the parent character (Will) and the three children Jay, Si, and Neil.

I laughed out loud at the boating episode and also the London nightclub one. Some others are less funny and can be overly farcical and cartoonish. However, compared to the usual girly soapy dross on TV like Waterloo Road and practically all other drama, this is actually entertaining and funny! Masturbatory and scatalogical language abound - but actually there is far less swearing on here than on many other shows approved for a younger audience. No F wortds. The 18 certificate is absurd really.

This is better than series 1 too - and the habit of laughing at poor people has been dropped, thankfully (that was probably desperation for laughs in series 1). Every episode is essentially the same: the boys have a plan to get girls that goes horribly wrong. But hey, every episode of Sherlock Holmes follows the same format too, so why not?

I LOVED the episode about Si in trainers being refused entry to a nightclub... Ah the memories...

This is a wonderful comedy series - which, sadly, has become of a victim of the BBC's notorious PC Stalinist censorship and has effectively been banned from ever being shown on TV again. Why? The BBC commandants have declared it 'racist'. Well, actually, no - the characters are all caricatures - that's all. And the joke is always on the white British too! It does not mock or demean or incite racism against the Asians! The BBC really are full of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was written by two men who had served in the army in India during the war and the characters are types - the white Brits and the Indians. Not racist at all. The main Indian is played by a white Brit - but one who grew up in India so spoke fluent Urdu! I challenge anyone to say his performance is somehow inauthentic!............

Windsor Davies, Don Estelle et al are great character actors and this is a great comedy. Why? Because it is FUNNY - with a serious side too - and it always makes me laugh. This is FAR better than any so-called 'comedy' on the BBC today too.

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One could never ever imagine the Germans or the Indians making a TV series half as funny: other nations just won't mock themselves as the British do here...............................

A superb Britich comedy from before the BBC went mental and unfunny! Five stars +!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This film, funded by the Irish film board, is more like a TV drama really - everything takes place in an old folks' home. It is based on a short story by Maeve Binchy, and like everything else by that writer of women's fiction, it is very sentimental and full of characters who each have a sob story. When I saw that this was based on a story by her, I knew what to expect, and I was right. It is all utterly unbelievable, sentimental women's wish-fulfillment fiction really............................................However, this movie (or stay-still-ie) is rescued by the sheer acting talent on display: Redgrave, Staunton, Ackland et al). Some bum notes are sounded by drugs references - as though dope is harmless - and a silly plotline with a health inspector. Who, exactly, works on 26th December Boxing Day where you live? Anyway, 3.5 stars, and one to rent at Christmas.