Reviews

This beautiful animated film, by Czech director Michaela Pavlátová , provides a striking portrait of family life in Afghanistan before the 2021 Taliban takeover. The central character, Herra, is a Czech student who falls in love with an Afghan student, marries and joins his extended family in Kabul. She is shocked and saddened by the restrictions imposed on women and girls. Even though her husband, Nazir, is more liberal than other family members (apart from the wise, tolerant grandfather), Herra has to conform to the family's religious and social norms. Unable to produce a child, she and Nazir adopt a strange-looking foundling, little Maad, who becomes an increase influence on the family's life as the film progresses.

The animation is beautifully drawn, with clear-cut characters and dramatic views of Kabul street life. There is a gorgeous fantasy scene where Herra's rebellious niece, races through Kabul with other girls, hair flowing freed from the ubiquitous headscarf. And Maad, who despite the film's title, looks desperately sad throughout except when, hidden in a burkha, he dashes about shouting "I'm invisible!" Nazir and Herra find work with the American forces and a medical NGO respectively and the film shows the culture clash between those providing Western "support" and the Afghan cultural norms. Herra tries hard to live within those norms but the film shows a depressing picture of the indignities created by those norms, with young girls forced into early marriage and wives told that they are owned by their husbands - and this in Kabul before the American withdrawal and Taliban takeover in 2021.

Thanks to BFI for releasing and streaming this important film. It makes an interesting comparison with the 2017 animation, also Afghanistan-based, The Breadwinner.

Summer in the Forest takes us into the L'Arche community outside Paris and the life of its founder, the Canadian Jean Vanier. An ex-British naval officer, Vanier founded the community to provide a home for those whose disabilities had forced them into grim institutions.

In particular, the film involves us in the lives of some of L'Arche's residents, both in France and in one of its offshoots in Bethlehem. Their humanity, their foibles and their endearing friendship are all demonstrated powerfully throughout the documentary. Vanier's philosophy that love, peace and friendship will drive out fear pervades the whole film.

By its end we not only understand better the challenges faced by those branded as 'not normal' but we also take with us the serenity that pervades a summer in the forest. And that heart-warming feeling captured by director Randall Wright, along with the superb photography and spot-on musical score by John Harle merits the 10 rating.

After watching the Swedish television series starring Krister Henriksson as Wallander, it takes some considerable adjustment to believe that the bear-like Rolf Lassgard is really playing the same detective. Similar adjustments are needed as the familiar characters from Mankell's great novel and the Swedish TV series appear with different faces.

However, the overall sense of gloom and angst that characterises the Wallander series is maintained throughout this 2003 two-hour adaptation for television (now shown on UK television for the first time). The twists and turns of Mankell's plot contrast the gentle Skane countryside with the violent bombs, mines and shootings.

The plot, familiar not only through Mankell's novel but a recent UK TV adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh is bleak, verging on the gruesome - details omitted to avoid spoilers. But the storyline has been simplified, so that the reasons for Wallander's depression and drinking are omitted and his complicated personal life streamlined to an affair with colleague Maja (excellent acting by Marie Richardson)and a clumsy one-night stand in Stockholm. The result is an absorbing two-hour tale, but lacking some of the intensity of the later and shorter adaptations for television.

As a long-time fan of the Wallander novels I was delighted when I found that BBC was going to show the original Swedish television series, with sub-titles.

I wasn't disappointed. This was the ninth story and, seen on a weekly basis, while some have been better than others, the quality has remained consistently high. Indeed, I am very surprised at the low ratings given to these episodes, presumably by the initial Swedish TV audience. But this was the best yet, with a complex storyline with unexpected twists (unusually for IMDb, the 2 plot summaries give too much away and I am glad I read them only after seeing the programme. The characterisation of and relations between Wallander, Linda and Stefan gets ever more complex and the ending is a real tear-jerker.

Yes, I hope that Kenneth Branagh will make more Wallander programmes for BBC, but this Swedish TV series sets a very high standard indeed, and this is the most powerful and moving episode of the nine seen so far,

This is a superb drama, combining a well-presented scientific and historical explication of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity alongside a gripping portrait of the moral dilemmas that scientists have to struggle with as they try to reconcile the demands of country and conscience.

The twin leads –British scientist Arthur Eddington (David Tennant) and Einstein (Andy Serkis) – lead very different lives but face not only similar scientific opposition and derision but also similar pressures to back their country's efforts to win the First World War. Tennant shakes off the Dr Who expectations in pointing up the problems of a gay pacifist Quaker who tries to prove the new-fangled theories of 'enemy' scientist Einstein – a theory especially dangerous because it undermines the ordered view of the universe created by English scientist Isaac Newton. Einstein's complicated private life is compounded by his revulsion at fellow scientists' work in developing poison gas. Both Tennant and Serkis get right into the skin of their characters - two brilliant actors on top form.

The drama brings over very effectively the transition from the comfortable life of the scientists in pre-war Cambridge and Switzerland to the tragedies of war. Jim Broadbent as Sir Oliver Lodge and Donald Sumpter as Max Planck lead the scientific establishments in Cambridge and Berlin as they pervert their scientific beliefs to condone mass killing on a scale never before seen. The main female roles have rather less to do, but Rebecca Hall as Eddington's sister, Lucy Cohu as Einstein's abandoned wife and Jodhi May as his mistress all add an extra warmth to the production and help to avoid the danger of focusing only on clever men using symbols and formulae to bemuse their colleagues (and the audience).

The settings – Cambridge, Berlin and West Africa, where Eddington photographed a total eclipse of the sun to prove the Einstein's theory was right – provide a powerful backdrop to the human drama, making it all the more believable. All in all, a very successful and informative BBC and HBO drama that maintains tension and excitement throughout.

This is one of Britain's forgotten films (only 4 IMDb reviews at the time of writing these comments, nearly 30 years after it was made). The first film by the then film critic Chris Petit, made in 1979, it conveys accurately the bleakness - and the depressing music - of the late 1970s.

The plot is minimal. A morose, alienated man learns of his brother's death and travels from London to Bristol to find out more. The 'quest' is half-hearted and his encounters on the road and in Bristol are unsatisfactory and unfulfilled. Nothing seems worthwhile following through. whether it is his investigation into his brother's life and death, his encounter with a German woman or even his relationship with his antique Rover car.

The B/W photography is splendid, matching perfectly the mood of alienation and the bleak picture of a part of England in the winter of 1979. The influence of Wim Wenders (the producer) is clear but it is very distinctively an English film, worth seeing and listening to if only to remind us of the dismal '70s - but having seen it, that's enough. Interesting, but not a classic.

Tony Palmer has expanded his 2-part film, made in 1978 for the "South Bank Show", into a remarkable warts-and-all portrait of the composer Malcolm Arnold. The mixture of archive materials and more recent film and interviews starts by celebrating the composer's early successes and phenomenal musical output. Gradually we realise that this was at a price - alcoholism, bipolar disorder and disintegrating relationships with his family.

His appetite for life seemed enormous, involving not only the traditional 'serious music' activities and his massive film music output but his collaborations with the likes of Gerard Hoffnung, Deep Purple and the Padstow lifeboatmen! But the film is unflinching in its portrayal of the restless, suicidal and ill-tempered aspects of that life, descending into institutionalisation, followed by a disturbing dependence on strangers. It is hard to appreciate that the large, bouncy, generous person shown in so much of the archive material was also the furious, "deeply unpleasant" (in the words of one interviewee)and almost inarticulate old man we also see.

But above all, the film reminds us that Arnold was a great and much under-rated composer, with extended extracts from a wide range of his enormous output. He is the most recorded modern English composer - and the film shows us why.

This four-part mini-series grips you from the outset. Yigal Naor's portrayal of the young Saddam is brilliant, seizing power brutally but always with a purpose behind his brutality. This contrasts with the mindless, purposeless brutality of his elder son Uday (Philip Arditti), which comes through in the 2nd and 3rd episodes.

The mini-series' structure, taking four key years in Saddam's life over 24 years, is managed extremely effectively, although one consequence is that some of the best-known incidents of his reign of terror have to be omitted.

The character of each family member develops across the episodes and the overall sense of an all-pervading reign of terror comes over very powerfully.

My main criticism is of the final episode, almost elegiac with a mellow Saddam on the run with a consequent loss of tension and momentum. Although I suppose that, as we all know what happened to him right from the start, this is probably inevitable. But well worth watching and superbly acted by everyone.

This five-part mini-series started superbly. A dramatic first episode, full of incident, laid out the main themes and built up the tension. The next two episodes maintained the tension, developing the near-future main storyline about a surveillance society and its impact on citizens. Robert Carlyle appeared (and disappeared), as threatening as only he can be and kept the excitement level high.

But then it faded away. The plots became too convoluted, with too many themes and unresolved or unnecessary twists – notably a scene where Carlyle creeps into a house and downloads a laptop. What was that about? And the final episode was so disappointing – it was as though the writer (Peter Berry) had only enough material for half an episode. So the pace slowed down, the increasingly unconvincing love story took over, with long, lingering and time-wasting glances, and the main surveillance theme sank under the weight of biological, genetic and political extra plots that led nowhere. It could have been a gripping thriller if it had been stripped down to a feature-length film but in the end it only left the feeling that five hours had been wasted. And this is despite excellent performances, particularly by Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Carlyle and Geraldine James - the script could not match their talents.

A great film, offering a slice of life in present-day Leeds that most of us would rather not know about. The plot is almost incidental. The film's success lies in the portraits of the two families, one native white, the other second-generation Pakistani and their complex love-hate relationships. Kelly Hollis is superb as the gutsy single mother with three kids by different fathers, coping on her own with the racial antagonisms that have blown up in Leeds since her own childhood.

The flimsy storyline follows the youngest lad as he and his mates prepare for Mischief Night, when children (or at least white children in Yorkshire) are allowed to create havoc by playing tricks on adults. The more subtle interactions are in the Pakistani community, where the older daughter is resisting an arranged marriage, the older son cannot communicate with his Pakistani wife except by meeting her incessant demands for sex, and the local drug dealer is hired to sort out the Jihadi extremists.

The characters are for the most part grotesque, but with enough humour - the dialogue is particularly strong in every sense - to make them both watchable and believable. The acting is splendid, especially by the youngsters, and the visual portraits of the streets and houses of the two communities are vibrant. A bleak but absorbing, funny and eventually heart-warming film.

This wonderful Georgian film emerged from the last years of the Soviet regime, but seems to have disappeared without trace. The final film of a trilogy by the veteran film-maker Tengiz Abuladze, it portrays a composite monster, Varlam (Hitler moustache, Mussolini shirt & braces, Stalin boots, Beria pince-nez) and his equally grotesque son Abel, both played by the same actor.

The film has a surrealist, dreamlike quality about it, framed by initial and final scenes in a cake-shop and with police almost comic in medieval armour. The main actions which initiate the plot are surrealist with the repeated exhumation of Varlam's corpse. The two monstrous central characters are no more than mayors of a small Georgian town - but there is nothing comic about their actions and the reign of terror they bring to the community. The elements of tyranny are revealed economically, with hints of atrocities and disappearances but only one brief torture scene. The overall message is that of personal responsibility. The tyrannical regime is not an anonymous bureaucracy but the deliberate creation of evil men. And the final repentance is a horrific recognition of those responsibilities. An unmissable film, beautifully made and superbly acted - if you can find it.

This interesting, if rather boring, piece of nostalgia was rescued by the two central performances. Julia Davis, as the awful Fanny Craddock and her much put-upon sidekick Johnny (Mike Gatiss) provided astonishingly accurate portraits of the first TV chef and partner - reviving memories of those terrible TV programmes with their disgusting concoctions. After her triumphs in 'Nighty Night', Julia Davis now shows us a very different virago.

The private life of the two central characters was less interesting. Apart from allusions to Fanny's rather more adventurous past and her seriously unpleasant tantrums and manipulations, there wasn't much to make a full-length drama from. The other members of the odd household paled into insignificance alongside Fanny. So much so that the later part of the drama was enlivened only by a cameo from the Benny Hill Show! But there really wasn't enough meat to justify this bio-pic of an unpleasant and rather disturbed woman.

Having heard so much about the 1990s Cracker series without seeing any of them, I looked forward to this eagerly. Surely the combination of Jimmie McGovern and Robbie Coltrane could not go wrong. How wrong I was!

The polemics, backed by frequent, repetitive and violent flashbacks, were overpowering. The production tried to be super-modern, but the flashing boxes and even the childish font irritated. Robbie Coltrane sleep-walked through the two hours, coming up with unexplained and unlikely "insights", and the police were portrayed as one-dimensional bumbling idiots. As a result, the tension never built up and the next-to-final scene (no details for fear of spoilers) was as laughably bad a piece of TV drama as I have seen for a long time.

No, I don't want to see any more of these, but I will go back to the DVDs of the 1990s series to see if they match their reputation.

One of the greatest British comedies of the 1950s and one of Alec Guinness' most satisfying roles early in his long career. As Denry Machin, son of a washerwoman and the "card" of the title, Guiness brings to life one of the almost forgotten stories about the "five towns" (Stoke-on-Trent) of Arnold Bennett. The old-fashioned and very English word "card" had to be translated into the American title "the promoter", but that is a far less accurate description of Denry Machin's combination of charm and opportunism.

He is supported by four magical actresses, in sharply contrasted roles. Gold-digger Glynis Johns, her friend Petula Clark, aristocrat Valerie Hobson and mother Valerie Turleigh are all charmed in their different ways by Guiness' smiles as he "gives providence a helping hand". William Alwyn's music is perfect, with a jaunty theme-tune that has lingered in my memory for more years than I care to remember. Ronald Neame's direction, also at the start of an impressive directorial career, brings the best out of Guinness, although the setting is disappointingly 'comedy-Northern' rather than specifically Stoke-on-Trent.

Overall a delightful film, and the perfect pick-me-up after watching a depressing Hollywood block-buster (Million Dollar Baby). And watch out for one of the movies' great sign-off lines, from Valerie Hobson.

This is a totally pointless remake of the 40 year old TV series that launched Julie Christie. No such luck this time round. The film opens with a completely irrelevant rock-climbing scene and then deteriorates. There is just enough to hold some interest in the early scenes, set in an unrealistically empty government research laboratory, with just four scientists - evidence of BBC cost-cutting? All the cash seems to have gone on one special effect.

But when the military appear, the whole storyline collapses. Even the acting is wooden, with good actors such as Jane Asher and Tom Hardy unable to rise above the poor material they have to perform with. The risible debates - good scientist against wicked soldier, human against alien, risk-taking biologist against cautious computer scientist - are couched in the crude terms of a 1950s American B-movie. Before the end - no spoilers but utterly predictable - the only question I'm left with is "why am I wasting my time watching this rubbish?"

A great idea, using the familiar time travel plot to bring together two very contrasted cops. Philip Genister and John Simm have just the right chemistry to create a most successful combination of tension and humour. It was a brilliant idea to put together a politically correct 21st century police inspector and his counterpart from a rougher, cruder era, 30 years earlier. It was even better to sustain the tension and contrasts over an eight episode series.

Seven of the eight episodes in this first series have great plots, with some darker than others but all improved by the 'Quantum Leap'-like sub-plot of Simm trying to get back from 1973 to 2006.

The devices whereby Simm gets messages from his 2006 hospital bed add to the tension, with a particularly sinister little girl from the TV test card. I was gripped by the series from episode one - and was all the more disappointed by the final episode of this first series, when all the effort seemed to be in ensuring continuity to the promised second series. Humour and tension disappeared in a clumsy and contrived plot. But the rest was good enough for me to look forward to next year's Life on Mars.

This is as bleak a film as I have since for a long time. Seen mainly through the eyes of a 'holy fool', played by German Lars Rudolph, it may be allegorical, it may be a horror story or it might even be a distinctively Hungarian very black comedy.

Bela Tarr's direction is stunning. The lighting is brilliant throughout, but none more so than when the circus comes to town in the middle of the night. The care and patience with which scenes are built greatly enhances the intensity of the most violent moments. The scene, for example, when a mob march down a long street before attacking a hospital matches the greatest moments of black-&-white silent cinema.

The film retains a disturbing ambiguity throughout, right up to its powerful ending. What is the significance of the whale and its owners? And is Valuska (Lars Rudolph) as innocent as it seems on the surface? The result is a long (140 minutes), gripping and exciting film that leaves more questions than answers at the end.

The worst kind of sequel is the one that arrogantly assumes that you have seen and remembered the original. So the director arrogantly and lazily makes no attempt to explain what has happened previously. I saw The Bourne Identity a year or so ago, but it wasn't so memorable that I remembered the plot or the characters' backgrounds. The Bourne Supremacy starts with and is based on the assumption that I know more about Jason Bourne's background than he does himself. As a result, the film is confused and the confusion compounded by too many wobbly hand-held camera sequences. Matt Damon is as leaden as ever and the ending.... Well, without giving anything away, its sugary sweetness makes you appreciate even the most mediocre James Bond endings.

How can the maker of superb films like Trainspotting and Shallow Grave make something as bad as this? I started with high hopes, based on good reviews, but it all began to fall apart within the first few minutes, with Cillian Murphy wandering through an empty London in silly green pyjamas, shouting "hello". And it went rapidly downhill after that. The earlier London scenes were splattered with inconsistencies, such as bodies and warning notices everywhere, although both had been conspicuously absent during Murphy's initial bewildered stroll through London.

The later scenes, with brutal squaddies in a stately home near Manchester, got even sillier, descending to the absurdities of the two females in ball gowns, while Murphy, bare-chested, turns super-hero. The final scene, echoing the early "hello", must be one of the most pathetic endings in British cinema - I'm just surprised I stayed with the movie long enough for this final disappointment.

I just never expected anything like the experience of watching "A Touch of Zen". I settled down to watch a quaint old film from 1960s' world cinema. Three hours later I was exhilarated after stumbling across of the greatest films made in the 20th century - and it wasn't a moment too long.

The film is carefully structured, in three contrasting sections. It is only when you look back that you realize just how cleverly King Hu has created those three sections. The same characters, for the most part, appear in each section, but each focuses on a different combination. The first section focuses on the artist Ku, slowly building a picture of a quiet life in a rural backwater. The second switches tempo, with amazing martial arts action focusing on the fugitive Ku and her friends. The final section calms down again, as the mysterious Buddhist monk comes into sharp focus, and the martial arts become more and more amazing.

All this takes place in the most beautiful Chinese countryside, sometimes bathed in light (the use of sunlight and the monk is particularly impressive) and sometimes in dramatic thunderstorms, making the film even more of a delight to watch. Don't be put off by the 'kung-fu' label, this is even better than "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger".

An interesting joint venture between BBC, Fox and TNT. The problems of international cooperation between security agencies loom large in the mini-series (shown in three parts by the BBC). But they also seem to have affected the production itself. The first two parts were exciting, despite having to keep tabs on fast-moving events across the globe and track a number of one-dimensional characters.

The final section tried to give some more flesh to these characters - and that's when the problems started. The two 'leads' (at least their names came up before the title) were pathetic, with wooden acting, embarrassing dialogue and trashy sentimentality. Who are Dylan McDermott and Juliana Marguelis and how did they get the leads? They are handicapped even further with silly names - Marin and Max Canary, though not as silly as Tom Skerritt's "Acton Sandman"!

The 'minor' actors, notably Bernard Hill - superb as a grizzled security chief showing Skerritt what real acting is all about - along with Piter Fattouche, who triumphs over the disadvantage of being cast as the "good Moslem" and Jemma Redgrave, who was absolutely brilliant as a troubled British security agent. But the final part had too much of the Americans, presumably to justify the Fox/TNT money, and it fell away sadly. So the high opinion I had of The Grid after Part two was drastically modified by the end of Part three, confirming my belief that I do not want to see IMDb reviews from reviewers who have only seen part of a series.

What is Soderbergh up to? A fine individual film-maker is now reduced to making inept remakes of good films - Oceans Eleven and now Solaris. Solaris isn't a bad film, just rather dull, with the two main characters incredibly wooden. George Clooney is unconvincing as the psychologist summoned to investigate the space station's mysteries, and Natascha McElhone looks beautiful, whether smiling, bewildered or distressed - but expresses only those three emotions and says little of consequence.

The visuals of space are as good as I have seen but by the (ambiguous) end of the film the impression is left that the director was more interested in the visuals than the plot, despite the legacy of Lem's novel and Tarkovsky's film - both superb. A big disappointment.

This is a quite amazing film. The director has persuaded Al Jazeera to allow her access to their control room in Dohar, Qatar throughout the Iraq War. She does not appear herself but uses the words of the Al Jazeera staff, the Americans and other journalists to present by far the most balanced picture of the war I have yet seen.

Al Jazeera is under attack from all sides - from reactionary Arab states and from the Americans - because they show the facts of war rather than the distorted picture that the protagonists want to portray. The Al Jazeera staff are Arabs and so are obviously pro-Arab - but they try desperately hard to be as objective as they can, despite condemnation from the meretricious Rumsfeld, contrasted very effectively with a young, decent American army press officer. The film is low key most of the time - and all the better for that. But there is real tragedy when the Al Jazeera Baghdad office is bombed by the Americans and you share with the staff their frustration when they can no longer report from the front line. The familiar highlights of the war are looked at with fresh eyes, and given a new twist, making the post-film events in Iraq seem far more likely than we in the West expected after the capture of Baghdad. An outstanding documentary.