Film Reviews by LA

Danny Kaye always delightful, but the film history and ballet background is also fascinating ( Zizi Jeanmaire & Roland Petit) with some incredible performances, and a wonderful undersea ballet that puts the Little Mermaid to shame.

Marilyn as she would have been known by friends and fellow actresses, a much more sympathetic portrait than she got from the hustling media.

An update on the Burton Taylor relationship, or the seedy philandering college professor story where the women have some agency and make use of their situation and form a friendship instead of enmity. Not apparently very biographically accurate about Shirley Jackson, but a literary interpretation that was very satisfactory and beautifully and atmospherically filmed.

Just heavenly...watched it twice in a row to absorb all the lovely details of landscape, costume, setting on Sussex coast with sea, performances - the little girl from the new Secret Garden, Gemma Arterton finally getting a non sexist part and proving she has character. OK, read reviews below about relationships and plot, but still allow yourself a brief holiday from the drear daily disasters.

I like Juliette Binoche which was why I chose this film, but she was made to appear absurdly unappealing which was sad - are older actresses meant to be less attractive simply because of their age? The whole online fake persona premise was also absurd, and would never have convinced anyone, so the relationship it purported to explore never could have worked.

Wonderful performances, Meryl as a rather flawed therapist is a revelation, and Uma Thurman stands up to her in every way. Good stuff.

Dire - Finding Joy review by RB

21/08/2020

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE!!!! BEYOND DIRE....HAVE COPIED REVIEW BELOW AS IT IS EXACTLY RIGHT, EVEN DOWN TO PARTNER'S COMMENTS...DROSS INDEED

I got this DVD, first of all because I'm Irish and secondly because I thought it was a film, but it turns out to be a series. I was watching the film, about 25 minutes in the titles came up and then another episode came on, of course this continues.

However, it's so awful that when I said 'Right, that's it I can't watch anymore', he said 'Thank god, it was like slow torture'.

I was so disappointed. Please advertise it as a series not a film. YES

I thought to myself after watching some of it, how amazed some people actually succeed in producing such dross and have a career.

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

Immaculate acting, tremendous cast, quietly presented, almost Chekovian script sensitive but with passionate moments, very Russian, but showing real life of the first great international celebrity - Tolstoy - and his wife and other important figures of the time, taken from their own writings. Also excellent documentary material interviews with cast/writer director on the disc

A wonderful cast wasted, and one of the film's themes, the creation of a garden was a huge disappointment - could they not actually have created a beautiful Shakespearean garden instead of showing endless pointless shots of him digging?

This hasn't aged well, may have been daring at the time, but now just seems posturing and ends abruptly without establishing a reason.

"By a little bay near Marseilles lies a picturesque villa" - so they say...stop right there. If you thought this would be an idyllic Mediterranean pastoral forget it. It's a bleak rocky port full of anti immigrant army vehicles, with a noisy railway viaduct right overhead and death or creepy octopi in the waters... plus one of the worst scripts ever encountered, and dreary unloving characters who literally poison themselves to escape from the story. No.

Agree with Waste of Time review above, tediously slow, appalling acting, set in Northern Ireland when it should have been Suffolk. The occasional nice view, ridiculous costumes, unbearably whimsical...

The usual mix of spirit and worldliness. Had forgotten i had seen it already, even the twist at the end. Beautifully made and acted, but an odd and uneasy combination of rom-com and terror, homely and thriller.

'Nature' film director Nicolas Vanier has re-created French rural life from the nineteenth/early twentieth century and shows animal and human life in absolutely loving detail. Incredible footage, some utterly sympathetic performances without too much unnecessary drama, and great understanding of the intelligent interaction of country people and the creatures they live with and depend on. A masterpiece.

Very individual film made by its two co-stars, classic French Burlesque in the style of Buster Keaton or other silent comedians, but in glorious technicolour.