Film Reviews by Pete W

Nowadays, you are unlikely to see a 13 part series on the TV analysing the fall of the great European dynasties. But although this series of plays covers a lot of ground, it provides a good historical examination of Europe between 1848 and 1918. Occasionally, it bites off more than it can chew with the episode about Lenin's (Patrick Stewart - excellent) takeover of the Marxist opposition to the Tsar being rather impenetrable. A vast cast of 1970s stalwarts with some surprising appearances by Captain Peacock as Prince Albert and by most of the cast of Last of the Summer Wine as various characters such as Rasputin, von Luddendorf and assorted Russian politicians. The main characters are well cast with Charles Kay and Gayle Honeycutt as the Tsar and Tsarina - indecisive in the case of Nicholas and increasingly deranged in the case of the Tsarina. Barry Foster is particularly good as the Kaiser. At many points you start to feel sympathetic towards Wilhelm only to have that sympathy dashed by another piece of arrogance or insensitivity. You really do feel that the fall of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires was unavoidable given who was at the head of each dynasty.

Engaging presenters look at the art and cuisine of Sicily with more general observations on the culture, history and agriculture of the island. Good introduction to the region which doesn't gloss over the more shady recent past.

One character in this film speaks only in Mandarin, two are bilingual in Mandarin and English and the rest speak only English. So be prepared for lots of subtitles and translations. The film itself is quite static with long takes in which the camera acts as an observer - which works well when you have an actor of the stature of Ben Whishaw in front of you. But the story itself is not particularly strong - what to do with the non-English speaking mother of your dead boyfriend when she doesn't know that he was gay - or resolved. Whishaw is very moving as the mourning boyfriend though.

The picture and sound quality on this DVD were so poor that I didn't watch more than 10 minutes. Impossible to either see or hear what was going on.

The Signalman is a classic ghost story which belongs with the MR James stories in the previous collections. Very convincing performance by Denholm Elliot. However the two modern ghost stories are weak with no sense of suspense or terror.

You might think the subject matter of suicide bombers is far from a suitable subject for comedy but this film is very funny, just not in a laugh out loud way. Chris Morris and the cast actually achieve the difficult task of making the potential bombers sympathetic characters.

Five stories of the supernatural or inexplicable told by the occupants of a country house. The stories range from the comic through some standard ghost stories to the two most disturbing tales, one involving a mirror and the one which everyone remembers about a ventriloquist. This last tale is a tour de force by Michael Redgrave as the ventriloquist who is either deranged or under the control of his dummy Hugo - we never really find out which. The black and white film is showing its age a bit but well worth seeing.

Somewhere there's a good film to be made of Anna Karenina but this isn't it. The settings are so mannered, based around a theatre, as to be off-putting. Nor did I think that the lead characters carried enough weight. Disappointing.

I didn't realise that Hammer Films were still in business but they have produced a good old-fashioned scary horror film here. Not a gory slash movie but a suspenseful, chilling ghost story in the MR James tradition. You will jump out of your seat at regular intervals. Daniel Radcliffe does, I think, do a good job as the lead despite the disadvantage of being obviously much too young to have been married, lost his wife in childbirth and acquired a seven year old son within the first five minutes of the film.

Of epic length at nearly 4 hours, this film feels that it needs a good edit to get an hour at least off the running time. Taking its lead from one of main characters - Wagner - it fails to sustain the viewers interest throughout. Which is a shame because it is an interesting historical story with a good performances from a number of actors - Helmut Berger has to carry the film. But it is obvious that the actors are all speaking different languages which have then been dubbed into Italian. Visconti also skirts round the sexual confusion which afflicts Ludwig.

Black Beauty meets Blackadder Goes Forth - in fact the storyline is very little more than an updating of Black Beauty to the early part of the twentieth century. This was really too soppy and sentimental for my taste. Hardly a proper memorial for the millions of horses killed in the Great War and I'm afraid I didn't shed anything like a tear at any part of the film. It was just too unbelievable.

The two Alice books are classics but this film has little to do with Lewis Carroll. Alice is a teenager; the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen somehow get merged into one character (with a massive head) and the Jabberwock is a first cousin to the Nazgul from the Lord of the Rings. Pointless. The psychology of Alice and Wonderland have been examined in much more illuminating detail by films which stuck to the original story.

The principal problem with this film is that any attempt to portray the film star Marilyn Monroe is doomed to failure - only the real Marilyn could do that. The real Marilyn comes across in this film as manipulative and insecure - and who knows, she may have been. Branagh is good as Olivier - sometimes you have to look twice to check that it isn't Sir Larry himself - but more could have been made of the Vivien Leigh side of the story. Judi Dench does another of her little cameos as a socialist and sympathetic Dame Sybil Thorndike. Eddie Redmayne is OK - he has exactly the right background to play Colin Clark - but his eyes have only one expression - that of a halibut on a slab. As result any attempt at a smile just looks psychopathic.

A solid antidote for anyone who struggled through Shakespeare at school. When you see the plays presented and acted like this, they make perfect sense and are really entertaining. Merry Wives has the advantage of being a bit of a slapstick comedy as well. Special mention to Christopher Benjamin as a fine, artful Falstaff.

An interesting and entertaining story if you can get past the fact that the whole storyline is rather risible. Not only are we meant to believe that Shakespeare didn't write all those plays (which might be arguable), he also is portrayed as an illiterate yobbo. In addition, a number of illegitimate royal offspring appear with potentially hilarious incestuous consequences. But it is a good story, well presented and pacey.