Reviews

An excellent and very watchable overview of the saxophone angel known as John Coltrane. From his early beginnings as a musician while serving in the Armed Forces, through his apprenticeship with the genius that was Dizzy Gillespie, and then on to his work with Miles Davies before his recording of his 'spiritual' album 'Love Supreme', this film interweaves the man, his music and his family life in an entertaining and thoughtful way. The feelings of those musicians he worked with (or who were simply influenced in some way by him) are palpable and evidence his genius and force of personality. For a man who died at 40 (I'd known he died young but not that young), Trane packed a lot in and left us with a fabulous catalogue of music. This film is well-worth watching whether or not you are familiar with Coltrane's music. Highly recommended.

The other reviews say all there is to say about this magnificent, magical movie. Otway remains as naively and optimistically crazy as the first time I saw him and Wild Willy Barrett on the Old Grey Whistle Test and then when i caught them live shortly after. A genuine eccentric who must be both heavenly and hellish to work with. This film has moved into my top 5 all-time music docos/films alongside The Last Waltz, Monterey Pop and The Blues Brothers. A must see!

This is a film of great beauty, joy and sorrow. It echoes the tradition of the Greek tragedy where the end is sown in the beginning and all that is required to reach that end is for people to follow the logic built into their parts in the play that life really is.

At times I couldn't watch. At other times I couldn't look away. Its beautifully scripted, acted and directed. It is not gory, but at times is hard to watch. Its almost Hitchcockian in terms of its treatment of cruelty. If you get the chance, my strong recommendation is to watch this.

I can;t believe they filmed this is colour back in 1949. Something for everyone. Women and men clothed in pretend and relatively scanty animal skins. Dialogue comprising one or two gutteral words (like 'Kala') uttered from time to time with a very sub-Attenborough commentary. Oh ... and did I mentioned the cave paintings? What more could the discerning seeker after tripe hope for? Nothing. If you can imagine early Tarzan crossed with The Hobbit made of an budget of about $200 you'll be on the right track. Best watched under the influence of something intoxicating PLUS a sense of humour. One to savour!!

'One way pendulum' is a 1964-5 film I saw only once on the TV in (I think) way back in the early 70s. I've been looking for it ever since and found and watched it on Youtube last night. Its as good/better than I remember and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

We start with some nice footage of early 60s London but what could morph into either a standard kitchen-sink drama or the opening episode of a soap opera gradually sucks you into an increasingly absurdist world that sits very comfortably between early Spike Milligan and Monty Python. Its heritage includes Alice in Wonderland, challenging as it does that great book for flights of logic that will bemuse and amuse.

The acting is excellent and contains many of the regulars from the period's British movie scene. One of them, Eric Sykes, gets to play one of his greatest roles.

The characters are both believable and absurd at the same time. A young man who dresses in black and teaches 'I speak your weight' machines to sing songs in harmony in the attic. A husband who's recreating the Old Baily (London's Central Criminal Court) in his living room. A wife who pays a woman come in each week to eat any uneaten food in the house. A daughter who worries about the length of her arms.

A great film. I'd put it in the top 20 I've ever seen. I wonder if you will?

This is one of the best zombie apocalypse movies ever made. The plot is covered in many of the other reviews but is simple, well-scripted, and missing the incongruities and leaps of logic that plague (excuse the pun) most movies in this genre.

Vincent Price is magnificent as the lone survivor and the setting in Rome (although not acknowledged in the movie) is absolutely perfect for the bleakness of the setting.

If you are a fan of apocalypse films, this is one that you have to see. A masterpiece!

Buckle in and get your your popcorn, this is a movie for the serious movie-goer. A cast to die for, a writer/director with an imagination unparalleled in contemporary cinema and a story with multiple levels of complexity make this an experience fit for an acid trip.

You need to be ready with an open mind and no distractions to make the most of this film. Multiple viewings would probably help but nothing is likely to match the first rush through Dr Parnassus' Imaginarium.

If you've ever been to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Garden of Unearthly Delights will have prepared you in part but you'll also have to imagine an undeveloped, semi-derelict 60s dockland, and the inside of Terry Gilliam's brain. Not easy ... but worth trying.

Watch this and decide whether its genius or puerile drivel. Your choice! If you'v

Reasonable premise. Daughter disappears. Father wants her back. Goes after the folk who've kidnapped her. Finds they're an unsavory bunch. Film falls apart in a cataclysmic cacophony of hokum. I was even willing to forgive the first 20 minutes of fairly mundane Hollywood cliches to see where it went. Boy, did it go!!! Right down the Seine!!

I don't like movies with gratuitous violence or sex but, despite having lots of both and in particular the former, this is an excellent film that should be watched. It shows the unpleasant side of violent crime and psychopathy without glamourising it, and shows the brutality in the system that tried to control him. Very good acting from an excellent cast and good cinematography combine to give us a gripping story. I remember reading about Mesrine in the papers and watching his exploits on the TV news at the time when he was operating and had no idea of the back story and how the system treat him. Do yourself a favour and watch this if you get the chance.

I first saw this film in the early 70s and have been waiting keenly to re-watch it. I remember it being gripping political drama, a reminder of the reach of US election and regime interference and a corrective to the Commie bad guy/US good guy dichotomy that was Cold War rhetoric. This film coloured my response to the US-backed involvement in Chile and my understanding of other elements of US foreign policy.

I keep seeking it out but to date with no success. If you spot it, watch it, you not get another chance and you will be sorry!

A good workmanlike film with good acting and a decent script. Chadwick Boseman plays Marshall well and Josh Gad as Sam Friedman is the other standout. Little extraneous material and a tightly controlled story make this a good film to settle into. The only thing I disliked was the way the era is portrayed (as it is in many movies) in a semi-cartoonish fashion with everything clean and tidy and not at all like real life at the time. This is a general complaint of mine about films portraying the 1930-60 period so I wouldn't get too hung up about it!

Overall, worth the popcorn!

Tried hard to watch this on the basis that many times I have watched a film with some very bad reviews and found them pleasing. Alas, this movie did not fall into that category. If you like random realities upon which you have to impose meaning, then this is a film for you. If not, if you like a good plot and good dialog, if you like good character development, then this one is not for you.

One additional star for some nice Parisian settings otherwise a disappointment.

Forget the negative comparisons with Forest Gump. The main protagonist in this great movie is not slow-witted and the movie itself is a black comedy par excellence. Its starts exactly as the title says it does and moves on from there through accidents, coincidences, bikers, policemen, kindly passers by, accidents of history and, it should be said, an elephant.

The movie had me laughing throughout. Nice acting (although I do hope I'll be as spritely should I reach my century), a good script, nice timing and very decent cinematography make this a film to savour.

if you get a chance to catch it, grab it!

This little movie shows it origins as a filler for the Boulting Brothers who found themselves with 17 days of studio time on their hands (thanks Kevinolzak's earlier review for that snippet!). I watched it for the cast. Spike Milligan in a very strange role as the janitor/security man and Sam Kydd in a less unusual role as a police/MI5 operative. Think kitchen sink drama meets black and white John Le Carre adaptations meets scientific dilemma. Thorley Walters is the stand-out here as the slightly eccentric MI5 investigator piecing the puzzle together. Oh, and the movie also helps explain why there are fewer women than men in the STEM scientific fields. A period piece but worth an hour and a half of your time. To prepare for it, get in a pot of tea or a couple of bottles of warm and weak beer, some cigarettes or a pipe, and make sure to you wear a cardigan and/or a tweed jacket. Lots of fun if watched in the correct way!

Hard to say much about this without giving away too much, suffice to say the central conceit revolves around a dog's life. Great acting and a beautifully understated script. The filmcraft is excellent and the settings glorious, reminiscent of the Barchester brought to life in Anthony Trollope's novels.

If you want a serious comedy drama with more than a touch of whimsy, this film's for you. Watch it with a glass of fine wine or whisky or, dare I suggest it, Hungarian Imperial Tokay and you'll be in a treat.

This film challenges many of the stereotypes of Aboriginal life that we see portrayed both in movies and in the media. It also provides a much more nuanced view of the historical Aboriginal-European relationship than is frequently portrayed.

Basically its about the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir, a choir gathered together from the remnants of what used to be a thriving choral tradition centred on the Lutheran churches of remote Central Australia. The choirs sang traditional German hymns which had been translated into the local languages by the Lutheran missionaries. This film shows the development of the Women's Choir (despite its name, it does have two male singers), its preparations for a tour of Germany, and then the tour itself where German audiences (largely in churches) were introduced to hymns, the music of which was very familiar to them, but with very unfamiliar Aboriginal words. They were taking the music home.

As the film progresses, we hear the stories of the Choir's members' lives, and also the story of the ensemble's musical director, Morris Stuart. We also hear some very good singing.

A film to enjoy that will make you smile and which will also challenge some of the things you may believe about Australia and its Aboriginal peoples.

This is a film deserving of your attention. You'll be rewarded with a great trip through twists, turns, double backs and leaps forward as you slowly come to grin at the understanding that's gradually forming in your mind.

As I said, a man walked into a bar and the result is a movie that grabs your attention and gives you more than your moneys worth. A cracking plot from a Heinlein short story about time. Not a wasted scene and some great acting.

A great way to spend a couple of hours.

Oh, yes. A man walked into a bar. Ouch!!

Overall, this is a remarkably good film. It is a brutal film, but its violence is never gratuitous. This is an ugly film, but the ugliness is in the human characters not the geography which is beautiful. This is a film about vengeance, fear, hate, jealousy but also about how these things are tempered by experience. Ultimately, it is about redemption, but the viewer has to wait until the end to find out what it is.

Like Greek tragedies, this film has its end and the logic by which this is arrived at but into its origins. There is nothing in the film which should come as a surprise, no matter how shocking the viewer might might events. It is about life on the edge, life in an era of pioneers, and about conflict between those pioneers and outsides - both the indigenous population (which is shown not to be a homogenous group) and the bushrangers). It is a film about relationships and the way they pull on us and about responses to them.

This is a gripping film in which the tension never drops. A great movie, but a challenging one: one that I'd recommend you watch.

I started to watch this in hope of a good, thoughtful thriller focused on an important issue in the contemporary world, the international drug trade. I gave up half way through the second episode. I'd seen the opening scene three times (either twice or all as flashbacks), and unreal chases and ambushes. Its the intellectual equivalent of the Hollywood blockbuster - image over substance, and style over substance. This could have been a good series if it had been scripted and crafted by a John Le Carre. Instead we got something that a committee of corporate focus-group gurus have knocked together.

I'm afraid you'd be better off picking up a good book the drug trade instead.

This is a true black comedy that fits firmly into the movie family tree that includes The Loved One, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, and Delicatessen but with the added shiver factor that the characters being portrayed were once real people doing the things they are portrayed doing in this film.

The idiocy of the over-weaning bureaucratic state are displayed as is the potential disfunction of the use of fear to govern. (It is downplayed a little in the film but Stalin was left lying on the floor for many hours because those around him were too afraid to enter his room to find out what had happened for fear of extreme punishment.)

The characterisations are very good with excellent acting. The accents may jar a little initially and at times the language may be too much for your great-aunt Matilda but they reflect the fact that the Soviet leadership comprised a mixture of people from a variety of backgrounds and regions of the vast country and not all were 'cultured'.

The storyline has been adjusted to meet the needs of a clean plot (especially concerning the timing of the trial and execution of Beria), although not to the extent that it distorts history too much. I'd recommend reading the 'bloopers' section of the IMDB page on the movie to clear up any possible misunderstandings.

My only real quibble? Khrushchev (played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi) was actually quite a short man - 5 ft 2 inches. In the film, he's portrayed as lot taller. Not much of a quibble!!

My advice? Settle yourself down, get out the popcorn and a drink of your choice and prepare for a rattling good movie.

This is a very good film. It deals with a period in German history in which the children of the generation who fought the war were seeking answers to the silence of their parents about the Nazi period and about the apparent lack of resistance to the police state that was Hitler's Germany. They wanted to ensure that there was no future repressive state and they were prepared to resort to violence to challenge the violence the German police were happy to use against them at that time.

The film shows the interplay between violence, ideology, and personal conflict played out against a backdrop which includes Vietnam, the Middle East conflict, hijackings and (although they are not brought into it in the film) the troubles in Ulster. US intervention in South America and student and black urban unrest in the US.

Some very good acting (including Bruno Ganz who plays an excellent and thoughful Head of German Intelligence who seems at times to be the only one who understands what's going on) aided and abetted by good film-making.

While the film is quite long, it doesn't drag and while many will know the story and the ending, it is no less powerful for that. I can recommend both for those into the history of the radical 70s, and for those wanting a to watch a well-told story and crucial part of the history of post-war Germany.

If you watch this hoping for something related to the the early 1970-90s series of the same name or the books of Nicolas Freeling on which the setting is based, think again. Having watched this first episode, I'm unlikely to watch any more. We have a wise-cracking team of the most unlike-police officers I've seen in a long time. Team meetings are held largely while walking the mean (admittedly photogenic) streets of Amsterdam, or in a bar, or almost anywhere except in the police station. Superiors are treat as mates or as irritants to be ignored. The plot is convoluted and to be honest, none of the characters is believable.

If this had been scripted as an off-the-wall private eye series, it would have been more realistic. As it is, it just doesn't work as a police procedural/standard police series.

If you have nothing else to do for the evening, there's some nice shots of Amsterdam, a lot of posing, and lots of wise-cracks. But you'll be easily distracted.

Awesome film, directed by the son of a British Prime Minister, and acted by theatrical and movie royalty. Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Dorothy Tutin, Joan Greenwood, Margaret Rutherford. Oh, and a script to die for by Oscar Wilde.

One of the funniest sequences in film when Lady Bracknell is interrogating a potential son-in-law.

Do yourself a favour and seek this film out.

An accidental coming together of a new entrant to crime and a family with a newly built greenhouse. Doesn't sound promising? Oh, but it is. Minimal background music, but when it comes in you notice it. Good acting, good plot, no pretense that violence is easy but not over the top either. Overall, a good watch with little fat in the script so you never get bored. I'd recommend it if it comes to a screen near you.

There are some trolls operating in their reviews of this program. This program should scare you if you believe in the idea of free heath care at the point of delivery paid for out of general taxation.

Pilger sets out the case that the NHS is being sold off and prepared for further selling off very well. He points out that under the current levels of privatisation/marketisation the proportion of the NHS budget that's spent on administration has risen from 4-5% in the early-mid 1970s to 20% today. Further privatisation would only increase that proportion.

The section on the US system is good and is highly relevant because of a political desire on the part of the Right to introduce a 'US-type' mixed system dominated by insurance companies and because the US health care providers are eying up the NHS as a source of profit, as something into which to expand it operations. The NHS, of course, is probably the most inefficient and ineffective and most expensive health care system in the world. Not a good model to aspire to, as Pilger points out.

Social care is the third area that's pointed to, something that's suffered as a direct result of the political ideology of 'Austerity' and the cuts both the the NHS and also (something Pilger failed to point out) local authority budgets.

The policy to privatise the NHS has its roots in the Institute for Economic Affairs, a right-wing think tank much beloved by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher which promoted the belief that all thing wrong with the world could be solved by allowing the free market to run rampant, something that has been disproved time and again over many years.

The program is and excellent example of the documentary. I can vouch for its veracity because I taught public policy and the welfare state (including the NHS) at degree level during the period in which the privatisation agenda was being rolled out. Its power can be judged from the fact that it was banned in the UK in the run-up to the 2019 general election.

I'd encourage you to watch it and to show it to anyone else who cares for the idea that people matter more than profit.