barry-180

I have read a major review of this film where the reviewer was mystified how MGM did not give this film masterpiece a cinema release. ? As an analogy one might say that a film such as 1917 could of been sent to streaming straight away because of woke Hollywood.

I wouldn't care , in Thirteen Lives a lot of Thai actors took major roles .. I am afraid Hollywood in certain true stories the stars have to have something in common with the real people they are playing.

I have given this film 10 stars because it is in the same class as Ron Howards other 13 film. Apollo 13.

The film is a masterpiece , in all aspects. And nothing more needs to be said. Other than MGM you are going to miss a horde of Academy Awards .

More fool you.

I suppose that if you have empathy for Holocaust survivors.

And have an opinion that Ben Foster could well win the Academy award for his performance as Harry Heft. You may give this film a 10 Or at least a 7 or 8.

If you are not of this persuasion or for other reasons give it a one. Well I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

The Kaddish scene affected me as much as the ending of Kapo when 60 years I saw a dieing Susan Strasberg recite the Shema. And this is from a Jewish Atheist.

Ok -We may well of seen similar scenes of action in much earlier action films . Such as the opening , when we see Maverick attempting to beat the elements as we saw by Chuck Yeager in "The Right Stuff" in 1983. I believe that the The Right Stuff won a number of Academy Awards .This Tom Cruise production may well pick up one or two as well.

Yes ,we are back to Top Gun territory ,right left and centre. But that Tom cruise smile is always infectious.

See this great entertainment on as big a screen , with the noisiest sound affects you can. It's terrific entertainment. And this old codger clapped at the end !!

I watched this on Amazon Prime last night. And after around 21/4 hours in, some of our grand-children drove round for a surprise visit. We stopped the film. When they left around 40 minutes later . We couldn't be bothered to watch the end of the film.

It looked like James Bond had joined the woke club. Anyway we in the UK have the new Dr Who to look forward to. I thought that amongst all the rubbish I was watching. The performance of Freddy Mercury was the biggest garbage.

I expect most of those giving 1* to this film are those who walk .

Along in beauty spots just looking into their phones. I was stunned by the intensity of the Mads Mikkelsen character fighting the elements for him and his very badly injured women companion., for whom he is doing everything possible to save her life. How I was praying for redemption as everything was against them.

Ok it wasn't Len Dighton's Ipcress File. But we still had Harry Palmer and Colonel Stok. And I bet that Michael Caine enjoyed it.

John Hodge the writer might of introduced or been influenced by certain aspects of Richard Condon's " Manchurian Candidate" or Mark Shaw's " Denial of Justice" his conspiracy theories about the murders of JFK and Dorothy Killgallen. BUT my word this was great period espionage on ITV. In fact in my opinion one of the best thrillers I have seen on TV.

Joe Cole in his Michael Caine deep rimmed glasses underplayed his role very well. And Tom Hollander is as good as he was in John Le Carre's " Night Manager. " All round a brilliant production.

We have had Netflix for quite awhile now. But I seldom watch it. For nearly two hours myself and my wife were taken away from this terrible pandemic and watched a terrific film about an archaeological discovery made on the eve of the Second World War at Suffolk in eastern England. Maybe some of the children or grand-children of some of the thousands of American servicemen stationed at the airfields in this neck of the woods will have been told what beautiful countryside this is. And the film shot on location will show you that not much has changed to the beauty. The cast is magnificent. Yes this is a slow burner. But it will set your hearts alight.Ralph Fiennes is the "excavator" Basil Brown who discovers the remains of an early Anglo Saxon boat from the sixth century , on the land of Edith Pretty a vey sick widow with a Carey Mulligan like Fiennes giving Academy Award performances. But it is not only the main characters who are superb .Archie Barnes as Edith Pretty's young son and Lily James who discovers the first treasure also put in first rate performances.

I just watched this masterpiece on You Tube. The problem for this film was that it was made 50 years too early . In 1953 William Holden won the Academy Award for Stalag 17 and I see that this prisoner of war film is still rated ast 8.00 on imdb. Decision at the Dawn is a very much better film. I reiterate it's possible that Anatole Litvak the director , Peter Viertel the screenwriter and Oscar Werner, Richard Basehart , Hans Christian Blech, Gary Merril and Hildegard Knef the actors were just not what the audiences of 1951 expected to see . Showing wonderful characterization of their roles. With it's amazing genuine sets . We see the actual state of bombed out Germany. This film is as good as 1917 , if not better!!!

I am 74 years old and 1917 is one of the best films I have ever seen. May I suggest that you see it at an IMAX cinema. it will take you back to the trenches of World War 1 in 1917. In particular the cinematography is the best I have ever seen. And that includes the first half an hour of "Saving Private Ryan." So we have similarity to the best parts of the latter film and the best bits of " War Horse" But for compelling viewing this has even more than both of these films.

This was a good performance by Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland. And we know that the Judy Garland on stage or in film wasn't the Garland in real life-obviously. BUT I knew I was watching Renee Zellwegger acting at being Judy. Should this be the case? Maybe. I will watch it again to see if I am wrong.

First of all in my opinion Elton John with his lyricist Bernie Taupin have composed some great songs. and on stage Elton John is a great showman. But you know what, I am not that interested in his lifestyle and towards the end of Rocketman I was getting bored and looking at my watch. I know that "kareoke" muscicals and films are great money earners. We all like to hear songs we know. But you can find them on You Tube for nothing. Taren Egerton was pretty good in this fantasy about the early life of of Elton John. But to be honest after awhile i got rather fed up with his dysfunctional family. One is I guess supposed to feel sorry for Reg Dwight. I reiterate I like his songs.

As the six of us left the cinema after about an hour. watching Aquaman I said to people I was disturbing " please excuse me , I am from a different planet." I can watch the most fantastic of films. Fantasies can give you great pleasure. From " It's a wonderful life. To space fantasies such as the Start Trek

" The Voyage Home. " Where you could have empathy with Spock's inter action with Gracie the whale.. Then there is the fantastic " Galaxy Quest. OK I may not be the little boy who saw that the king was not wearing any clothes. But what was I supposed to believe in and have empathy with here? The goodies charging on sea horses and the baddies being carried by sharks? Do me a favour. Ok I am in my seventies but my grandsons aged 14 +13 who were sitting next to me were the first to say "let's go.. To be honest I had half fallen asleep. It was only two of the folk on their phones in front of me and others munching popcorn which kept me awake. I gave the one star for the scene in the aquarium when the young super hero is being bullied and the sharks come his rescue!

I went to see Murder on the Orient Express last night and afterwards thought what was the point? Did Kenneth Branagh do it for self indulgence. In 1974 it was great to see Albert Finney, Laureen Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connerry etc playing the parts. There was a still a certain mystique about film stars, especially the ones from yesteryear. Now on the Graham Norton show we can see how vacuous so many of them are. Yes the scenery was spectacular. The costumes were great. But honestly, really honestly other than having several A Listers or B+ Listers who hardly open their mouths and a Hercules Poirot in Branagh not in the same class as Finney or David Suchet I would say that TV does these thrillers much much better these days. The opening scene in Jerusalem was like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Poirot is no Indiana Jones. The ending which tells us that we can prepare ourselves for a remake of Death on the Nile. No thank you, even if Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks are in it!

I love a good thriller. However I wouldn't go to see The Snowman one of my favourite detective psychological thrillers because of the way it had been truncated. The Vue cinema in which I saw The Killing of a Sacred Deer last night puts you in the mood to see such a film. It's like being at the dentist for half an hour before the film starts. There is a crescendo of drill sounding vibrations advertising how lucky you are to be in their cinema. Then after a final explosion of noise the film starts. There is blackness around thirty seconds of silence and we are taken into a heart operation. Having a by-pass operation myself I found this interesting. Let me say that the acting was mostly very good especially that of Barry Keoghan. If you have masochist trends I am sure you will like this film. If you don't give the film around 30 minutes before deciding if you are going to walk out. Let me say that if you watch it to the end and afterwards you say you enjoyed it. May I suggest that you go and see a psychiatrist.

A lot of the best drama is on TV these days. The proof of this is that anybody over 45 is driven mad for 15 minutes with "trailers" of robots blowing the heads off of other robots. Denial is similar to the best of TV drama we see on our screens in the UK. Although I knew of the outcome to the trial I found the film very watchable , as the rest of the cinema audience did where we saw the film. The test for this is that I did not see the light of one cell phone during the whole 100 minutes of the film. The outstanding performance was by Tom Wilkinson as the barrister defending Deborah Lipstadt. Holocaust Denier historian David Irving was suing Lipstadt over her books stating that his "history" was a pack of lies. The court case sticks to the actual court proceedings without any histrionics, which in my opinion is completely correct. The problem for this drama is that because it is factual Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt doesn't have much to do,but get in the way of her legal team.After a while you begin to find her acting " Queens" accent a little bit grating. Not because it is a Queens accent,but because she is trying a bit too hard to get it right. Maybe as a Brit I a not being fair. Timothy Spall as David Irving shows us what a dangerous charlaton he was and still is. Although since the trial shows up what a liar he is . I wonder if Deborah Lipstadt was found guilty the many people walking away from the cinema would of been saying " I don't remember that case" And that was in a cinema in North London where a fair proportion of the audience were Jewish.

We went to see Passengers last night in La Romana in the Domenican Republic. We are on vacation from London so myself my children, and grandchildren aged 13 and 11 were in a holiday mood and we all thoroughly enjoyed Passengers. Yes we have seen some of the same plots in other space films. Gravity, The Martian,Interstellar etc. Maybe by now the critics have had enough of these type of adventures but I and my family find them very enjoyable. I say to you "expert" film critics get a life.One of the great pleasures of my life has been going to the movies and seeing a love story with redemption.My wives favourite film is Somewhere in Time, isn't that corny? No it isn't!! Just to go to the movies for a couple of hours and be entertained with terrific special effects and a happy , sad, happy love story in space with good performances by Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt and Michael Sheen , is what I call entertainment.

We went to the cinema as we call it it in the UK last weekend to see a crash,bang , wallop movie, as nearly all films are these days. As the trailers were all for crash ,bang wallop movies as well. I It was a pleasure to see on TV an old fashioned type of film with a STORY line! I thought the characters played by the grand-father, father and son were moving and the drug addicted mother was shown empathy by her estranged family.I thought that Jon Travolta , Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan were very good. The scene where Travolta takes his son to the brothel ,was handled perfectly . The ending had a kind of Shawshank Redemption kind of quality about it. I like a film with a redemption! It makes me feel better and not miserable . And is it a bad thing to be entertained by a a film?

I watched this film last night on TV whilst the Olympic hockey final between GB and Holland was being played. As I became less and less interested in this mess of a film I finished up turning over to see what was happening in the hockey. Hockey is not my favourite sport but it was much more watchable than this "childish" film. I expect in the cinema the special effects were good , but we have seen them before in better films than this.The producers must of thought do the public really want to see another of these space "epics." Maybe not, so we will stuff the film with star celebs who don't say very much,but when they do at least anybody with an IQ over 60 will be able to understand what they are saying. Did anything happen at the end? I was watching the penalty shoot out in the hockey?

War& Peace finished on TV last night and in my opinion it was one of the finest programmes I have ever seen on TV!! The producers may of had the American market in mind as the six part series was all but a precis of Tolstoys monumental work. And to be honest I found the ending superior to the morbid epilogue of Tolstoy. Many intellectuals will say that you must not change the structure of the original for an adaptation. But as an analogy I believe Verdi and Boito's adaptation of Othello is better than the Shakespeare original. For me the finest scene was the pathos we saw was Pierre met the peasant Platon Karataev and his dog Sashenka. Here Pierre finally finds out what life is all about ,as he expects to be shot by the French or frozen to death. Paul Dano as Count Pierre Bezukhov underplays his part brilliantly. The whole ensemble cast including Stephen Rea as Prince Vassily Kuragin are terrific.

There are certain films that you can watch over and over again. For obvious reasons Groundhog Day is one and so is Walter Mitty. In my opinion this is Ben Stiller's best film role by far. He is terrific as Walter. All the way through the cast list there are memorable performances. The Sean Penn episode in the Himalayas is just about the most original film scene ever.That is if you don't include Walter's skateboard ride in Iceland. Or his helicopter trip ,piloted by the paralytic drunken pilot! This is a real feel good movie.You come out of the cinema holding the hand of your loved one,just as Walter clasped Cheryl's at the end of the film.

I have often wondered when I see young children being slaughtered in their classrooms in the USA by lunatics with semi automatic weapons how the gun lobby support their rights to carry a weapon. After seeing the amount of tens and nines coming from members of IMB mostly from certain states in the USA like Texas i am beginning to understand more about the psyche of far too many "folk." I am ashamed to say that some of the film was made not more than half a mile from where I live near Totteridge in the North London suburbs. The mansion that was used for certain scenes "Grovelands" is next to a very famous old pub by the name of "The Orange Tree" The Orange Tree was a stop made by Queen Elizabeth the first on her way back to London from Hatfield in 1558 to be crowned queen. All I can say is that Colin Firth, Michael Caine and Samuel Jackson must of got themselves drunk as skunks in the pub before having to deliver the garbage they recited in this absolute disgusting turkey.

In a way its difficult to write a review on this film about the life of Alan Turing, perhaps after Einstein the greatest scientist of the 20th century.The difficulty is the character of Turing which is given a portrayal by Benedict Cumberbatch which is one of the finest I have ever seen on screen. Turing invented the Turing machine which all modern digital computers have their foundation,but is Turing actually a machine himself? He is almost like DATA from Star Trek, in this very special performance. Alex Lawther as young Turing is also absolutely brilliant. This life story of Turing is shown in three parts, swinging backwards and forwards. The only weakness is when we get to the major "faction" part of the story concerning the Soviet spy John Cairncross. Anybody that knows the true story concerning Cairncross knows that this interaction with Turing is a load of fiction. The rest of the Enigma story is fair enough, although the way how the "cribs" such as Heil Hitler were discovered is treated in the film, with lets say a poetic license, which is OK by me.

Firstly let me say that " The Honourable Woman" is fiction, just as say a film like " A Few Good Men" was. Once you view it like this and NOT as it some reflection what is going on in Gaza and Israel right now. I am a Zionist but I watched this masterpiece and was able to have empathy with not only the Israeli characters but with the Palestinians also. The cast is magnificent and I expect that it will win all the major awards at the BAFTAS. I am not sure how our American cousins will take it, because you will have never had seen anything like it. I reiterate we see a tour de force of acting, with several major parts for the girls. However if I were to pick out for me who is numero uno it would be Stephen Rea as a John Le Carre, George Smiley kind of intelligence officer Hugh Hayden-Hoyle. Maggie Gyllenhaal with a perfect English accent plays the major part of Nessa Stein a newly ennobled Anglo-Israeli businesswoman. BUT is she the Honourable Woman? I will let you decide when you see it!

The British film critics have generally slated this film. May I suggest that most of them don't have children or don't have empathy with children for I found it a masterpiece for those aged between 9-15 and an enjoyable if sad film for other age groups.I took three of my three grandchildren aged 10, 11 and 14 to see it , and with everybody else in the cinema were using tissues to wipe the tears away by the end of the film.My 14 year old thought it was the best film she has ever seen and the other two have not stopped asking questions about the history of the time. This is NOT a holocaust story. I honestly believe that some of the film critics who reviewed this film did not even see it! Because they did not know what is about. An illiterate girl who wants to learn to read and overcomes all obstacles in terrible circumstances. The Book Thief should be put on all secondary school's syllabus. And I expect that this fable, because that what it is will finish up having , like another fable " Its a wonderful life" becoming a family favourite.

Being an aficionado on Verdi I watched this film with great pleasure and was only slightly disappointed.I was not concerned about the implausibilities of the plot where well to do ex opera singers are worried about the closure of their retirement home unless they can perform the quartet from Rigoletto before rigamortis sets in on all of them. Joe Green himself had spent a lot of his fortune building a rest home for old musicians in Milan and when he died at the same time as Queen Victoria it was the main news in newspapers all over the world even more than Vicky's was in Jan 2001. What was lacking in this film was a bit more humorous pathos. Maggie Smith as usual held it all together but I had a feeling that after a short while Dustin Hoffman had to tell Billy Connely that he was not doing a stand up show in Glasgow. It was a shame that Albert Finney was not well enough to play the part of the hunchback court jester. Nevertheless Connely was still very adequate as were the rest of the cast and it was great to see Tom Courtenay again. I am no scriptwriter as you can see from this effort, but there are so many great one liners one can bring into an operatic film.And if one does not find things like " Its not the Barber of Seville" with us any more,more like the "Bubba of Seville". Or not many people knew that Verdi was Jewish and that " A Masked Ball" was originally " A Matzoh Ball" . I reiterate I am a lousy writer, but maybe you get my point.