johnmcc150

There are three good performances here (Jamie Dornan, Shalom Brune-Franklin and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. But there are many wooden portrayals of Australian caricatures. The plot, though often intruguing, stretches credibilty and introduces unnecessary complications eg the imagined brother of the Greek gangster. It is a strange mixture of the vicious brutality where several innocent people are killed on a whim, and misplaced comedy. If the script had just been tightened up and shortened, it might have been good.

If you want drama: bad luck, this has none. It started happily, the middle part was happy and it ended happily. For many people this is counts as wonderful escapism and I can understand why these people rated it highly. However, for the rest of us who might want some sort of plot, nothing much actually occurs of any interest. At least it could have rained. Even Mills & Boon would have had some tension in the story before the heroine inevitably got her man. The main risk in this film is rigor mortis in its audience.

I am 70 rather than 7 so I have a different perspective than the film's target market. I enjoyed it greatly, but I can see why it did not achieve its aim as a children's film. It tries to keep parents amused by its satire of royalty, lampooning of Trump and in-jokes about old films such as Fight Club and Rocky. The writers may have had fun, but they seemed to forget who else would be watching: children and Americans. Another reason for some poor reviews may be the different casts in the two versions: British and American. The British version has some of the country's finest impersonators and comedians. I can't comment on the US version, but they may have been less engaging. For example, Ray Winstone giving the odds is a regular feature in commercial breaks during football matches, while Jon Culshaw's Trump is also well-loved. Yes, the plot is predictable, but surely no-one expected Citizen Kane. As someone who has lived with four corgis since 1953, the animation of the breed was instantly recognisable in the texture of the fur and the characteristic scamper.

If you can't improve a classic film, why remake it? The real story of the wreck of the SS Politician might have provided a different angle, but this is just a warmed over version of Compton Mackenzie's fiction, albeit in colour, with the implausible addition of the Duke of Windsor's love letters. Not worth wasting time over.

If you just want escapism than this is your film, but this is not the film for you if you want an original story without the same tired standard clichés. It was entirely predictable that the two protagonists would end up alone having a hand-to-hand fight. Our heroes always escape just in time. You can survive serious car crashes emerging only briefly dazed. Out of the many hails of bullets only one slightly nicks our hero. There is the usual conspiracy in high places, and Morgan Freeman is yet again president. Probably 40 people appear to be killed, several by explosions, and yet not a single drop of blood instead of dismembered corpses. You can treat it as a spoof and tick off all the other events against the list of previous films, but for me it was two hours of my life that I have wasted.

This must be embarrassing for anyone who appears in the credits at the end. Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Costner should have known better, but they may have seen (and banked) the cheque before the script. I am happy to suspend belief in most films, but it was impossible to conclude that this anything but garbage after the first 15 minutes. More Hollywood cynical money making

I wouldn't have given a thought to seeing this film until someone suggested it. "Really? Sub-titles? OK, since you have been 100% right so far, let's go". A thought-provoking story emerges for the reasons for the estrangement of a daughter. (I am puzzled by IMDb's summary saying she is "stranded". Predictive text?) The film is well-constructed and well acted. The change of actors as they aged is handled well in general, but at least once I asked myself: "Who is this now?" What happened next would almost need another film, but I thought there might have been a still shot of an embrace just before the credits. Perhaps I should not assume that there was a happy ending. Thanks, Beryle for being right yet again.

Victoria Wood has written some brilliant plays but she missed with this one. There was a good idea to create a story about the Manchester Schools Choir and their 1929 recording of Purcell's 'Nymphs and Shepherds', but turning it into a musical wasn't. The first requirement of a good musical is good music. Unfortunately this used the same tunes that every failed musical has used since time immemorial. The lack of music might also have shown up that there was just too much sentimentality. I hope that this effort doesn't put off Victoria writing again, but please play it straight next time. She is good at creating authentic characters and authentic dialogue in locations and situations that she understands.

As the film announces at the start, it based on a true story. The essentials are true, and to get so much history into a film things have to be condensed. Unfortunately unnecessarily inaccurate things were portrayed which didn't save any time. For example, Turing mutters under his breath so most audiences will not notice, that the Poles made the first crucial breakthrough. By the start of the war, the Poles led by Marian Rejewski had been breaking Enigma for over six years and built the first machine, called a "bomba" in 1938.

In July 1939 the Poles passed on all the information to the French and British including details of the bomba and their successes at a meeting which included Denniston. The problem started to mount for the Poles and later the British when other rotors could be swapped in and the indicator method was changed by the Germans. The film is correct in showing that Turing's genius was using known words from the coded messages to reduce the myriad of possibilities. This idea happened in 1939 and so he started from the outset to design the British "bombes" to use this method, not after they had been running for months.

Four senior code-breakers, not just Alan Turing, but also Gordon Welchman, Stuart Milner-Barry and Hugh Alexander wrote to Churchill in 1941 over Denniston's head about the shortage of staff and praising Edward Travis. In February 1942, Denniston was demoted and transferred elsewhere. His successor, Edward Travis, transformed the procedures.

Cairncross, played by Downton's ex-chauffeur, never appeared at Bletchley until 1942 and the alleged blackmail is an unnecessary red-herring.

The idea that there would be a chart on the wall in Hut 8 showing the latest positions of all Atlantic convoys is laughable. This chart was in a secure bunker in Liverpool that was as closely guarded as Bletchley Park.

Turing's team had no input into how the information was to be used, but it is true that Ultra intelligence had to be supported by other information and so patrols were sent out to find what was known to be already there.

Lastly Turing would never, ever, have disclosed even the existence of Bletchley Park to a detective he had just met.

The performance of Benedict Comberbatch is exceptional, and the rest of the cast good. Keira Knightley is pretty enough to have turned even Turing, but, despite the lines that told us, she never gave the impression she had a double first in mathematics from Cambridge.

Good film, though it could have be closer to reality without making it longer or more complex.

This is a gem. I wouldn't have watched it unless I had been taken. (Thank you, Beryle.) If it had been on TV, I might have watched some of it, but that is the joy of cinema. You have no distractions. I thought it might be depressing; it wasn't. I thought it wasn't my sort of film; it was. Thought-provoking.

It was easy to forget that you were watching actors. The performances were that good and very moving. It was very much like a French film.

It was interesting how much back-story was left out and yet it still worked. I asked myself a few questions because I wanted to know more. (Perhaps I felt I could help.) Where were we? (North-east London/Essex?) How long had she lived in England by depending on her husband and son for all communication with the outside world? What did people do for a living? Where did the translator come from and was she being paid? Without her son would she at last break out into the world? However I realised the back-story didn't matter. It told you all you needed to know. The nub was all that mattered: an insight into communication, memory and grief. Some things have to be said and some things are perhaps best left unsaid. The characters kept asking the translator not to translate after they had said something because they had time to see the effect it would have, (something that does not happen with a common language) but even the translator could not help but get involved.

You could speculate on a happier outcome but the final scene where she drifted back to the last meeting with her son perhaps indicated it would be a while yet before she could move on.

Very, very good.

The first thing to say is that the film is long. It takes its time and so often nothing much is happening that advances the story. This has the effect of making you believe you are watching reality, rather than a tightly scripted film. However some scenes are so long that you shift in your seat and you again notice you are in a cinema. The realism is therefore lost. This particularly applies to the first sex scene which could have made its point in half the time. There are also gaps in the time-scale that are quite disorienting. The film skips on months and even years without any hint for a while that this has happened. I suppose it is like a memory. Some things are vivid and you can re-live them, while large chunks of life fly past un-memorably. Consequently things happen off-film of which you become aware later. It means that sometimes you miss some of Adèle's motives and experiences and you have to guess, which may be the point. We saw Emma's relaxed parents but not Adèle's clearly less relaxed parents. This aspect is covered in the original graphic novel. Perhaps with the gaps filled in, we could have been able to understand why she was so alone. Was her longing to deal with children driving Adèle's relationship with men? We can only speculate. Adèle Exarchopoulos certainly gives a superb performance and so you feel for her character throughout. This aspect alone makes it worth watching. All in all, it is a good, thought-provoking film, but not one to knock your socks off.

The film starts with the message that it is based on true events. Although you might wonder what was changed for the film, you soon forget that and accept it as a whole. In short it was brilliant. It could have been a predictable story but instead it had other dimensions and took unexpected directions with strong characters and some humour. I thought I knew an outline beforehand and was pleasantly surprised when that part was covered in the first twenty minutes. It was intriguing where the story would take us and that happened a few more times later. In addition to Philomena's journey, there was also Martin Sixsmith's journey from the beginning as just a detached journalist doing a human interest story on someone, whom he thought was beneath him, to being totally involved and offering not to publish it. To illustrate the depths of this film you can see how it attacks cruel, narrow-minded, sanctimonious Catholicism and at the same time shows how the faith gave strength to Philomena and the ability to forgive rather than to wreak vengeance. The acting was totally convincing. It is going to be a competitive year but Judy must be up for another Oscar. Just watching Steve Coogan's almost imperceptible expressions of irritation as Philomena told him the interminable plot of the book she had just been reading, was wonderful. This is definitely the best film I have seen all year. After writing this I read the interview with Martin Sixsmith on the Guardian web-site. It fills in more detail about Michael Hess (Anthony Lee) but confirms the whole truth of the story.

This is not an enjoyable film. I could appreciate Cate Blanchette's truly great performance but after a while I hoped there would be something else. It is obviously a morality tales about the section of New York society that is shallow, materialistic and callous, but we got this message and all about Jasmine fairly quickly. There was nothing else - that was it. As we continued to follow her downward path, I had expected the ray of light about the future. Instead we got a more detailed description of the past, even though she had already told us all there was to know about her history. There was never a sign that the penny had dropped about what was really important in life. All we ever got was an indication that things were going to get even worse without even a hint of redemption. Thoroughly depressing. When they give out the Oscar I can say I saw it, but that is a small consolation.

There is no doubt that this was well-acted and directed. Michael Douglas and Matt Damon produced brilliant performances that are believable. The problem for me was sitting through a film about two unlike-able characters. I looked at my watch a few times as the hollowness of Liberace and the idiocy of Scott Thorsen gradually unfolded. Meanwhile in the background the manager and the plastic surgeon exploited them. In end I was glad it was all over. The film may well have been accurate, but it was unbearably sordid. My rating is based on how much I enjoyed rather than the technical excellence of the production. (Why doesn't Michael Douglas feature in the cast list on this site?)

How times flies when watching a good film! The story is compelling because it is based on real events, though the sets, script and acting also all contributed. The result is not only moving but you get a great insight into the dilemmas and vested interests that can exist at top of government and management.

The film is based on the last of Feynman's autobiographical works "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" so it is told from his perspective. The film shows how Feynman was pointed in the right direction. However the story is more complicated. For example there was not time to mention the role of Roger Boisjoly of Morton Thiokol who wrote a damning report about the O-rings six months before the disaster. The report was ignored. He lectured on work-place ethics.

William Hurt is physically similar Richard Feynman and did incredibly well with his impersonation. You can see Feynman in action in videos of him lecturing to a lay audience in Auckland and judge for yourself. Feynman died one year and nine months after the publication of the Rogers Commission Report with his appendix, and sadly his wife Gweneth also died the following year.

I had guessed some of the plot just from the trailer, but don't let that put you off. There is much more to this film than I had guessed in advance. How well it does it is remarkable. It could have been trite, but the dialogue and the acting from Terence Stamp, Gemma Arterton and Vanessa Redgrave turned this story into heart-warming and heart-breaking reality. Although only a small part, Christopher Ecclestone was also worth the admission price on his own. I am a true cynic when I detect attempts to get at my emotions, but this film is irresistible. My one gripe is probably something that probably ended up on the cutting room floor. The relationship between Elizabeth and Arthur changed too quickly. I reckon there had to be another scene in between Arthur's stubborn resistance and sodden Elizabeth's opening up on the doorstep. However that sudden discontinuity was soon forgotten. It might even do good for some families who see it.

It felt about two hours shorter than "Lincoln" and on these grounds alone deserves a higher rating though "Lincoln" got its 7 from me for acting. The film, although bracketed by some history before and a little more after, it is mainly about a fairly small incident, the visit to the USA of the parents of the present Queen. At times it was almost "The King's Speech 2" and so it was more about them than FDR. You had to compare Samuel West with Colin Firth (not quite as convincing) and Olivia Colman with Helena Bonham-Carter (too toothy). Some of the royal scenes didn't quite work, eg the regal waves at a farm worker. Apparently hundreds of people lined the highway between New York and Hyde Park to see the King and Queen go by. I am also sure than QE would not have compared KG unfavourably with his brother and would not have reprimanded him over his stammer. Perhaps its attempts at comedy mixed its objectives. I can't remember seeing any dates, and this would have helped. The royal visit was June 1939 and so war really was imminent and the visit essential for the British. Having said that, it was an enjoyable though slight film.

Firstly, Daniel Day-Lewis gave a great performance, worthy of an Oscar. Leaving that aside, the film can be described as a reconstruction in great detail. This was necessary because many Americans already know much of the story and would rightly complain if Hollywood simplified this bit of their history with its quasi-religious overtones. However there were occasions when you would have liked them to just get on with it. Despite this precision, the anachronistic recitation of the Gettysburg Address by the soldiers is so obviously clunky that it is a wonder that Spielberg didn't spot it. With Lincoln himself available, it seems that he should have given his own speech. The apologies inserted at the end for things that Lincoln wished he hadn't said also seemed to be a blatant piece of Band-Aid. Interestingly, instead of scene in Ford's Theatre, they had a scene in another theater reminiscent of Erich Leinsdorf's announcement of the assassination of President Kennedy.

For me the film highlighted the fundamental flaw with the American Constitution that is still with us today. To get things done the proverbial 'pork-barrel' is still needed. There often has to be something in it for everyone, whatever the merits of any given proposition on its own. Vested interests still rule and in an era of fiscal cliffs, this is worrying.

First half an hour was more than enough to set up the personalities and yet I still was not convinced that they were retired musicians. The performances were not those of ex-professionals. The plot, such as it was, started when Maggie Smith appeared at the home. She found an ex-husband was at the home and she didn't want to perform again. She was reconciled with her ex-husband and was persuaded to perform and that's about it. The final climax should have been the performance of the quartet but the film stopped before then presumably because the actors were not singers and so could not do a convincing job. The best that could be said was that the film was innocuous.

I would be rightly regarded as a Philistine to criticise a book that has won the Booker Prize. However this is a film, not a book, and so it has to play by different rules.

To start with the positives, it is brilliantly filmed and acted. It was an interesting family narrative, until Saleem started hearing voices. Even then there is a good film in there showing Indian/Pakistani attitudes and history. It might even have worked without the fantasy elements, though it would have to change its title.

I recognise that the fantasy elements are supposed to show that the ideals that were born at midnight before Independence Day were personified by Saleem and the other children. Their experiences show how the the ideals were destroyed. Even so, it didn't work for me, who prefers a narrative to be told straightforwardly.

This isn't just a lack of imagination on my part; it is because a film can't contain as much as a book, and this limitation negates the book's allegorical ambitions. There is less time to show why the children exist and what they experience. Consequently the allegory becomes peripheral, even an annoyance, when there is so much reality to include.

Finally, I may be dim and/or too literal, but I can't see how the family nose was passed on to Saleem from his grandfather, when he was the son of Vanita and Methwold. Is that part of the fantasy?

Sometimes you sit through a film you have seen before and enjoy it, even though you know the plot. This time I sat through a film I hadn't seen before and I didn't get that much out of it.

It may be partly because the BBC had done an excellent adaption only one year ago. The serpentine plotting of Dickens was also better suited to the longer format of three episodes rather than a two-hour film. There are limits to how much plot you can cram in and the film probably exceeded them.

In both versions the acting was good, but I query the casting in the new film. I would say I preferred Ray Winstone as a true Cockney Magwitch and David Suchet as a creepier Jaggers. Estella is also supposed to be someone who captivates Pip. Even though Holliday Grainger acted well, I couldn't see her as a woman who could drive someone to distraction with her stunning beauty.

The sets were obviously intended to outdo any previous versions. Satis House was straight out of Gormenghast while London looked more mediaeval than it probably was in 1860.

If it hadn't been done so soon before, it would probably be rated as a better film.

It is easy to forget that you are watching a film and become completely absorbed. In my opinion that only happens with excellent films. It seemed all too real. Its low key atmosphere, few feel good moments and the lack of (unnecessary) block-busting special effects probably explains why the audience was so sparse, but its plot and its re-creation of 1990s Belfast had me hooked.

The character of Collette as portrayed by Andrea Risborough was wonderfully inscrutable. I was trying to remember what I had seen her in, and I was astonished that she had also played Margaret Thatcher in "The Long Walk to Finchley". What that really the same actress? Well, yes it was, and shows she is one of the best in the business.

My only minor concern was the brief romance. Possibly an extra conventional courtship scene was needed. Did Mac really have enough motivation to conceive the maverick idea of running off with her? Did Collette kiss him just to get greater protection, or were there true feelings which she overcame for the final denouement? This aspect was sketchy, but, I suppose, intriguing. I concluded that someone with the commitment to plant a bomb, wouldn't change her principles just because she had been threatened with jail.

As ever Ken Loach's message is loud and clear: breaking the cycle of deprivation needs people to be given chances; recognition of hidden talents; and getting away from an innately conservative and negative society with its habitual violence. At the start you can't see a way out for Robbie. However a meeting with a victim, his idealistic promises to his new son and the generosity of the supervisor of his community work give him just enough impetus to break away, albeit on a new criminal venture to steal some whisky. As a result these 'angels' get a small share from a large cask that would not be missed by the connoisseur buyer. Yet someone spending over £1 million on a cask of whisky could be thought of as a greater crime, and so it is forgivable.

The casting is so good there were times when you couldn't believe you were watching actors, most notably in the performance of the mother of his victim and the wine lecturer. Although it is eventually becomes a good "caper" film, much of the film is all too real. This may be because some of the actors were amateurs, playing themselves. As a result the film is gritty and thought-provoking as well as uplifting. What a treasure we have in Ken Loach.

I think the sudden expertise in whisky arising from the theft of a few miniatures was a little odd, but you can go along with this as a compression of the timescales. Some people may also wish there were sub-titles, but you can guess what was said most of the time, though I suspect that a version for America would have them.

If there were an English international acting team, like football, this cast would have won fifty caps each often playing together in the same team. Each took their familiar roles such as a feisty Judy Dench, a thoroughly decent Tom Wilkinson, a xenophobic Maggie Smith and all played well. It just needed Juliet Stevenson, Julie Walters, Hugh Grant and Helen Mirren to appear in cameo roles as substitutes at half time. India also put in a stunning performance. The problem was the predictable script which began to drag after a good first hour. Bill Nighy could have ditched Penelope Wilton far sooner and saved about ten minutes. I kept feeling that I had seen the film before especially with all the actors playing in familiar positions. It was all too neat and everything came together all at the same time. A couple of other things didn't work either. I know it was supposed to have comic aspects but Dev Patel's stereotype might even have embarrassed Peter Sellars. However the most incongruous moment was when Maggie Smith suddenly revealed herself no longer a senile old nanny who used to manage a household budget but someone who could glance at a set of accounts and instantly assess a hotel business. I enjoyed it but it was really was a remake of Lavender Ladies' Room with a View of Cranford's Calendar Girls with Mussolini.

The basic premise is that if you can pick music from nine years in the most productive periods in popular music, you should have a great basis for a film. Sure enough the tracks were well chosen in general, even though only snatches were heard of some. (The soundtrack CD has some eccentric choices such as Crimson & Clover by Tommy James rather than Mony Mony, but I can't remember this in the film anyway.)

After its well-loved soundtrack, I am struggling to think of something good to say about this film. It has Richard Curtis's standard themes of: each person has someone out there with whom to fall instantly in love; and that a four-letter word will always cause a laugh, but sadly, there are few other comedic moments.

What is worse is that the characters are barely developed and so you never identify with anyone. Instead I got the impression that writers had several half-baked ideas, but no one ever got round to picking just one or two. For example, after the son discovers his father, they just look a bit uncomfortable and the scene shifts to something else. In short, this is a film still in search of a script. I think Richard Curtis thought his reputation would be sufficient. He was wrong.

And do not expect it to bear any relationship to history, though in fairness Richard Curtis admits that its objective was only entertainment rather than truth. Even so, it is still worth mentioning that instead of being a bunch of idealists who would go down with the ship, many of the DJs simply joined the BBC in 1967 (Tony Blackburn, Dave Cash, Kenny Everett, Ed Stewart, Dave Lee Travis, Johnny Walker etc). All in all a waste of an evening, though sitting through some of trailers before the film, made me realise the forthcoming attractions would have been far, far worse, so I ended up feeling grateful!