Reviews

An excellent thriller which features unexpected friendships and alliances.

The cast is excellent from Peter Fonda's corrupted record company man through his dodgy "Security Consultant" Barry Newman (surely the creepiest part he's ever played) to the witty street thugs Newman's character hires.

Wilson's relationships with his daughter's acting teacher (Warren) and one of her students (Guzman) stand out as highlighting Wilson's ability to influence people.

Bizarrely people complained about Stamp's cockney accent - the guy was born in Stepney and sounds exactly the same in Poor Cow (scenes of which feature in the film).

I guess I must have missed a meeting. I fail to see how a boring, badly edited mess that goes on way too long and has a centre more boggy than the pitch at Turf Moor has been lauded with praise.

Sure - Quentin has great technical control and the film features some fine acting in places but it's no excuse for a total lack of narrative drive.

In old Hollywood, he would have been told to cut the film by an hour and get on with the story but sadly length and spectacle now appear to be equated with great films.

On the whole I would rather have been watching "Who Dares Wins" for a laugh.

Despite the glamorous trappings, Miami Vice is a very solid policier made at a time when the Cali cartel was making the route from Colombia to Florida their own. If you want to know how bad things really were you only have to read about how corrupted the government of The Bahamas became in the mid-80s when Normans Key became the Cali cartel's private drug-trafficking airstrip.

What I particularly like about Miami Vice is that it shares themes with The Sweeney - the ambiguity of right and wrong, the importance of personal loyalty during times of endemic corruption and that sometimes surviving to fight another day is more important than the big score. A big step forward for the female cops as well - as tough and resilient as their male counterparts.

Shiny suits above, grit below.

Well it's a movie of two halves Brian. The first half is a meticulously recreation of a vision of pre-Colonial Central America, which gives us some absolutely stunning visuals, adequate characterisation and introduces us to the protagonists and our hero. The abduction of our hero is stunningly realised, as is the city where he is taken to be sacrificed.

However, after that it all goes a bit wrong and the whole thing descends into a scarcely believable chase movie clearly influenced by Richard Donner and other pupils of the mindless, flashy action genre.

Overall, a massive disappointment. I can live with the gore (having seen army videos of real amputations) but having gone to all of that trouble Mel Gibson has failed to deliver any real meaning.

Cheri Lunghi excels in a custom-written part as the first woman in Britain to ever become manager (head coach) of a professional soccer team. The part makes excellent use of Lunghi's own part-Italian heritage and she gives a classy, 100% committed performance on the field and off.

The plot covers all aspects of the life of a football club from corruption, professional sleaze,personal sleaze, cover-ups and more but there are some excellent moments of humour. Many of these aspects are still very much with us now.

There are also great supporting performances from Warren Clarke as the wheeler-dealer chairman of the club and the ever-reliable Tom Georgeson as the coach denied his shot at big-time management by the arrival of the unprecedented newcomer.

No one above the age of about five in 1997 will forget the week that Princess Diana died. Never outside war time has Britain been in such an obvious state of collective shock. Whether you feel that this event was absurd (as some including myself do) or not you can't deny it happened.

Stephen Frears has chosen to dramatize that week to question the role of the monarchy and it proves to make a brilliant film. I personally think that the most impressive portrayal is of Tony Blair - the youngest Prime Minister of the 20th Century at the peak of his political grasp and influence. The film does not hesitate to underline that this was a rare occasion when a politician really understood the public mood and was rightly commended for his leadership.

The other major portrayal - of our Captain General Queen Elizabeth is very good but I don't think Helen Mirren is really stiff enough! She's just a bit too twinkly eyed to successfully play a woman who has been guarded in public for 50 years. Anyone doubting this should watch the footage of Rolf Harris painting her portrait - vanilla ice cream is less frosty.

Very few TV dramas really ever convey the mess of real peoples' love lives but this certainly tries very hard and was worth watching.

I have to admit I originally only watched it because it was filmed in the "new town" of Telford, England - a bizarre mix of the old industrial towns that were the origins of our modern world and a newly built centre of advanced corporate blandness.

People who claim the story is ridiculous clearly don't read tabloid newspapers enough - our culture is full of older men having unplanned affairs with younger women. This is one of those stories and details the destruction that it causes.

Robert Ludlum's first Bourne novel is translated into a post-Soviet world to dazzling effect. Ludlum himself helped the translation to the screen just before he died and is on record as throughly approving the result. And why on earth shouldn't he? Despite a clearly limited budget, Doug Liman delivers an excellently paced , gripping espionage thriller which makes recent Bond films look like the flacid tripe they have often been.

Matt Damon is truly a revelation and proves that an articulate, intelligent actor can do an action movie with great conviction. His screen relationship with his co-star Franke Potente is a joy to watch and one of the strengths of the film.

What do you say about a female character who is utterly selfish and has absolutely no redeeming features? The Guardian newspaper described her as a "t*rd in leather trousers" which is along the right lines.

Julia Davis both as a writer and an actress has gone where many men would fear to tread and has brought us a comedy so black it's positively shiny. A hilariously politically incorrect comedy this series examines the winners and losers in life and suggests that those out for themselves can succeed over the decent and altruistic.

This series is definitely NOT for those of a nervous disposition or who do not wish to enter the belly of the beast that is modern society.

The rest of the cast are excellent and special mention must go to Angus Deayton for playing a doctor with a private life far less interesting than his own and to Ruth Jones for enthusiastically playing a character who is constantly humiliated.

There is nothing at all unusual about this thriller about corrupt coppers. However, what raises it above its plot and clearly small budget is a tight script, great direction and editing.

Mos Def makes a challenging lead - he does a good job of gaining your respect and sympathy as a man who you want to see dead in the first 30 minutes - even if it's just due to his voice.

Bruce Willis plays the version of Bruce Willis that you would get if Mr Bruce Willis chose to become a rambling alcoholic. I still can't quite see how he manages to shoot straight though...

Recommend as above average for the quality of production, even if not for the originality.

This film is a very well made extension of the type of comedy seen in the TV series Men Behaving Badly, albeit with a much better romance.

Martin Clunes does a fine job directing and acting. Why he's never done more directing is a mystery. Anna Chancellor is also great. Sadly Michael Praed demonstrates the talents that have kept him off the TV for the best part of a decade - he's as stiff as a tailor's dummy.

The film is very funny with an adequate (though not brilliant) plot to hold together the increasingly bizarre episodes that happen to Neil as he finds his way back through the weirdness of modern Britain.

Recommended to anyone who likes adult comedy and who wants a different level of entertainment than American Pie and its like.

About one every two minutes judging by this star-studded utter mess of a movie. I personally have nothing against a complex narrative structure but I do have a big problem with 2-dimensional characters presented like Kubuki theatre as some kind of in-depth exploration of modern racial relations.

Given that this is supposed to be an "adult" film then a lack of anything approaching subtlety is unforgivable - everything is signposted like a freeway exit In modern life, overt racism is not the most pressing issue - it very rarely comes straight out and introduces itself. The kind of racism we have now is more sinister - it's what goes unsaid that matters. This film kind-of misses the point.

What on earth has happened to Spike Lee? He livened up the 1980s and 1990s with sharp, sassy films on a wide variety of subjects. Now he's just beginning to look like a bitter has-been with a wide variety of prejudices which he likes to spread to a wider audience.

As a film, there are many enjoyable moments from a stellar cast including the ever-watchable Clive Owen and Denzel Washington. (In my opinion no film with Denzel is ever an entire waste of your hard-earned as the man has such presence and charisma).

However, beyond that the plot start out implausible and descends into the totally unbelievable. It's like a cardboard box left out in the rain - it starts out looking like it's got a structure but after a while it's just a sodden mess. Key protagonists (particularly Owen's character) have no background or apparent motivation.

Overall, a superficially well-made film is let down by flimsy material and lazy direction.

One of the other comments asked "How do films like this get made?" The simple answer is that large sums of money spent by poor punters of the UK lottery has been given to the British Film Institute to spend on making total rubbish. It appears that the money of British TV licence fee payers has also been squandered (via the BBC).

Someone at the BBC at the time clearly thought that Ray Burdis was a comic genius (he also had a couple of "comedy" series) and thought it would be great to make a improvisation-based gangster film with such acting heavyweights as Denise Van Outen.

Boy - how they were wrong! The film stinks in all senses apart from Johnny Lee Miller's excellent karaoke rendition of "Avenues and Alleyways".

Some of you will be pleased to here that Mr Burdis has been reduced to making car loan commercials.

No, they're not funny either.

Many people who grew up in Ireland in the 1920s and 30s have turned on Frank McCourt and suggested that his account of poverty in Ireland in those times is absurdly exaggerated. They are most probably correct.

Unfortunately, Alan Parker has taken McCourt's vision and turned it into a film so bleak and emotionally manipulative that Steven Spielberg himself would have been proud to make it.

I can commend Emily Watson's subtle, under-stated performance but Robert Carlyle's performance as the inadequate father makes Francis Begbie in Trainspotting look like an in-depth character study.

Don't be taken in.

There is much to enjoy in this adaptation of Austen but Keira Knightley is not one of them. A fine production with great colour, great music and some outstanding actors the heart of the story is let down by the lead performance and the MTV camera-work.

While Macfadyen gives a performance as Darcy which is within a shout as good as Colin Firth Keira is an over-hyped lightweight with so little gravitas that she just can't carry the film. It feels like Frank Lampard has been replaced in Chelsea's midfield by a youth trainee.

Save yourself the bother and buy the BBC series of the 1990s on DVD instead.

I've just seen this series again for about the third time, and its importance cannot be under-estimated. At a time when German diplomats have begun to accuse the British of being obsessed with the war, the BBC decided to record as many unrepentant old Nazis as could be found and persuaded to talk. As in Shoah, they are gladly given enough rope to hang themselves.

The importance of this isn't so much the story, because much of it is known, but the nuance that comes from the interviews and specific new information which has only come to light in the last decade. This proves, amongst other things that Adolf Hitler did not want war with Britain and he did know about the final solution.

The repression of the Nazi Party's organisation against the Germans themselves is also highlighted, and this is very rarely covered.

Highly commended.

Ian and Troy Kennedy-Martin were the brothers who revolutionised crime drama on British TV in the 1970s. While Troy was a far more political animal, Ian concentrated on commercial TV.

However, that doesn't make The Sweeney any less authentic. In fact, many ex-Flying Squad officers have commented on its authenticity, helped by the fact that the producers used to pay real policeman in used fivers as 'technical advisors'.

The Sweeney represents Scotland Yard's first proper attempt to stem the rise of violent robberies following the oil crisis and economic slump of the 1970s. It represents the time before the Police And Criminal Evidence Acts changed the face of policing for ever in Britain - a far more free-wheeling, corruption laden time.

Policing is shown as hard, tedious work where moral dilemmas must be confronted all the time and there are no sudden leaps in detection, just stress and danger.

Particularly impressive in the Sweeney are the number of times that firearms are used - this was really true in the Flying Squad - even back in the good old days...

A great film, if you can accept the limitations of it being based on a German novel set in the days before physical evidence became crucial in such murder cases.

Jack Nicholson is great, but the whole tone of the investigations look amateurish for such a modern setting.

Some excellent performances and a slick production make for a very entertaining movie.

I would say, though that it is a little too long and has a plot with some weaknesses, though the characterisation is very good generally.

Whatever Larry Clark's capabilities as a director, this is as exploitative as anything which has come out of The Valley or Milth Berton's empire.

I honestly don't know how Mr Clark can justify using and abusing a cast who are quite obviously as f***ed up as the characters they play. The effect is that of a voyeur.

Full of acting talent, Gosford Park only delivers in fits as Altman throws in every Cluedo, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie cliche known to human kind.

There are some decent twists, sure, but the lack of a decent central narrative ruins it.

Finally, the comedy policeman is just an insult and lets down the whole film. In the 1930s Scotland Yard was the world leader in murder investigation having pioneered fingerprinting and other forensic methods. Even all those years ago an Inspector would never have got away with such a sloppy investigation.