Reviews

"Ali" is a decidedly average biopic which fails to do justice to a unique and often controversial sporting figure.

Given that the years 1964 - 1974 were a monumental period of strife and upheaval in most Americans' lives - never mind someone like Mohammed Ali, the dramatisation of these events is a curiously dull and uninspiring affair.

Characters are undeveloped; dialogue is flabby and inconsequential. For unnecessarily large portions of this movie, "Ali" resembles a pretentious and self indulgent pop video. In fact you could quite easily leave the room, return twenty minutes later, and discover that nothing of any great consequence has happened.

Considering that this movie is almost three hours long, the audience's rapidly thinning patience is occasionally rewarded. The fight sequences (notably the legendary bouts with Sonny Liston) are tense and wonderfully choreographed. Will Smith also delivers an energetic and convincing character portrayal- which is just as well because he looks nothing like him.

In short, a disappointing and over-hyped film. The definitive story of this remarkable human being remains to be written.

"Sex Lives of the Potato Men" was the movie, that on it's release, had the chattering classes spluttering into their cappuccinos with indignation that the Film Council (of all people!) could commission, let alone, subsidise such a seedy and prurient production as this.

OK, SLOTPM is no "Battleship Potemkin" - and doesn't pretend to be. It is, however, a bawdy, unpretentious and genuinely funny slice of social realism. Which exceeded all possible expectations at the Box Office; and if anything, highlighted the ever widening gulf between what the critics perceive as "artistic endeavour" and what us lesser mortals view as disposable entertainment.

Curiously enough, given it's notoriety, SLOTPM has slightly less nudity than your average "Carry On" movie. Everything is implied, or "performed" off camera. Perhaps, the censors decided that the unedifying spectacle of Johnny Vegas sweating profusely in a string vest was justification enough to warrant issuing this film with an "18" Certificate.

The "Football Factory" is a low budget, low brow independent British movie that sunk without trace at the cinema and has now reinvented itself as a heavily promoted straight-to-video/DVD release.

It is not difficult to see why.

I was puzzled first of all by anyone wanting to make a contemporary film about a tired social issue that is about as relevant to life in 21st Century Britain today as flared trousers, spangles and the Bay City Rollers.

Nevertheless, British film makers in the past have produced a clutch of outstanding movies dealing with the self same subject matter such as "ID" and "The Firm", so I was prepared to give the "Football Factory" the benefit of the doubt.

I wish now that I hadn't bothered.

One of the most irritating aspects of this movie is it's total lack of originality. The "Football Factory", perhaps in a desperate bid to garner some sort of "cult credibility" with it's audience, shamelessly plagiarises innovations from virtually every successful British film of the last decade: "Gangster No1", "Trainspotting", Lock Stock" etc etc. The comparisons, unfortunately, end there.

If you want to watch a large group of foul mouthed, baseball cap wearing, lame brained little Englanders engaging in acts of pointless violence, steer clear of this celluloid calamity and go visit any UK town centre at the weekend instead. The acting will probably be a bit more believable too!

As an avid cricket fan, I am constantly puzzled and dismayed by the negative depiction of the sport on the big screen. Sadly, "Playing Away" is no exception.

A group of West Indian cricketers from inner city London are invited to participate in a charity match against a village team from rural Suffolk.

So far so good. But rather than portraying cricket as a potent social glue, the director instead chooses to use the game as a source of anger and bigotry. Throwing in some predictable racial stereotypes for good measure.

Indeed, the only time that black and white appear to reach an "understanding" is illustrated in a particularly tacky scene when one of the visiting players has sex with a local girl in the village churchyard.

"Playing Away" was released at a time in the eighties, when British movie makers felt compelled to "educate" their audiences about perceived social injustices rather than just try and actually entertain them.

Little wonder then, that UK cinema goers preferred watching Bruce Willis blowing up a fleet of jumbo jets in a vest as opposed to this moralistic claptrap.

I for one cannot blame them.

"How sleep the Brave", like countless other independent movies produced around this time, undoubtedly took advantage of the home video rental boom of the early 1980s. It is also pretty safe to assume that without the VCR it would have sunk without trace.

It is painfully obvious from the beginning, that this film was shot on a tiny budget. It looks like a badly made home movie produced by well meaning but technically clueless war reenactment enthusiasts.

The acting is, for want of a better word, embarrassing. Compounded by a script which is brainless and punctuated (literally) with unnecessary four letter expletives.

With all the best will in the world, a wood in the leafy wilds of rural Berkshire is never going to accurately recreate the steamy intensity of a South Vietnamese jungle. I almost expected to see some blue rinsed old dear emerge from the foliage and tell them to keep the noise down! It is interesting to speculate whether this film would have been a success at the Box Office had it have been given the full Hollywood treatment. The director's intentions are commendable, but the quality just isn't there.

As it is, "How Sleep the Brave", will always remain a largely forgotten and obscure celluloid oddity - let's just be thankful for that!

"The One that got away" is an outstanding World War Two adventure, based on the legendary exploits of Franz Von Werra - the only Luftwaffe Officer to escape from Allied captivity.

The film is now considered by many to be something of a minor classic, and it really isn't difficult to see why.

What particularly impressed me, was how Roy Ward Baker managed to create a genuine empathy between Von Werra (brilliantly portrayed here by Hardy Kruger) and the audience without resorting to cliché or racial stereotyping. Accepted, Von Werra may be representing one of the most vile regimes in history but you desperately want him to succeed, and it's real edge of the seat stuff to see if he can pull it off.

Head and shoulders above most other British war movies produced during this era, it just gets better and better every time I see it.

"Shaun of the Dead" is a cheap and cheerful Zombie Brit Flick. With the accent firmly on "cheap".

It looks and feels as if it was hastily conceived by a group of six form students on a media studies field trip. More akin to "Carry on Screaming" than "An American Werewolf in London".

Which is a shame really, because the horror genre has plenty of comic mileage left in it - if you can get the balance right.

And that's another thing. Is it obligatory these days for British film directors to include at least one (or in this instance two) unemployed actors from TV's "The Office"? OK it was a very funny series while it lasted, but it's been flogged to death and I'm bored with it now.

Let's face it, Lucy Davis was hardly a barrell of laughs in this film was she?

Mississipi Burning is a movie which succeeds on two levels.

On the one hand you have a taut, edgy thriller. On the other, a powerful, and unflinching portrayal of the horrors of racial bigotry in America's Deep South.

Just one criticism though, why does Hollywood always depict white supremasists as dungaree clad, banjo strumming, inbred illiterates? Racism, as we all know, has many insidious guises - this is a rather oversimplistic interpretation.

That said (and historical inaccuracies aside), Mississipi Burning is a courageous and challenging film. Surely Alan Parker's finest hour.

This is a real hidden gem of a film. Thought provoking, intelligent and times indignant, without resorting to sentimentality.

Contrast this,with the commercially lucrative but artistically meaningless "Crash, Bang, Wallop" movies that Stallone became synonymous with in the 1980s.

Stallone can act when he wants to, and FIST amply demonstrates this wasted potential.

Based (very loosely) on the life of the Teamsters boss, Jimmy Hoffa, FIST charts the rise and fall of a Trade Union leader. A cautionary tale of how noble causes can be sullied by ambition and hubris.

I highly recommend it, if only to convince others that Stallone occasionally turned in a credible performance without the promise of a big pay day.

Oh dear. This is a film which, contrary to initial expectations, bombed at the Box Office. Most Python fans have never heard of it, and on TV it is quietly tucked away in the late night schedules;normally sandwiched between a documentary on walruses and a Czechoslovakian cartoon.

Supposedly a "parody" on Edwardian moral values, this film looks as if it was scripted and performed by sexually frustrated public school boys (and girls). The comedy is non existent and Michael Palin has a very haunted look about him - perhaps wishing, like the audience, that he was doing something slightly more rewarding.

If you're still curious to know why this movie is so incredibly bad. Keep an eye out for on the TV.Set the video, and tape for a rainy day - a very rainy day!

Lets get one thing straight, shall we?

Michael Moore did not set out to score any political points with this film. His intention was to document the human suffering created when Big Business, motivated by greed and selfish intentions, decides to betray an entire community. No "clever or selective editing" can ever hope to conceal this.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, is that this film remains as relevant and controversial now as it did when it was made some fifteen years ago.

Accepted, we all have to "live with" capitalism, it's just a pity that we also have to endure the brutal realities of the "Free Market" when things go horribly wrong.

Like the previous reviewer, I watched this film on television the other night and am eternally grateful that I didn't spend any hard earned cash going to the pictures to see it. What a disappointment.

When I read the plot synopsis in the newspaper, I was expecting something vaguely along the lines of "Carve her name with pride". A stirring tribute to the men and women of the SOE who put their lives on the line in Wartime Occupied France. What I actually got in return was a jumbled mess resembling an advert for expensive perfume, full of meaningless close ups and mumbled dialogue. Cate Blanchett's character (supposedley a hard bitten Secret Agent)looked as if she'd just stepped off a photo shoot for "Cosmopolitan", and exuded all the sexual allure of a maths lesson.It was over an hour before I saw a German.

Pretentious arty farty rubbish.Sensitive girlies who think Sebastian Faulks "is like really, really good" will love this film. I hated it. I'm off to get me some real WW2 action - "Guns of Navarone" anybody?

I had the misfortune to see this film when it was first released. A decade on, and my hatred for this puerile stinker remains unabated.

Think of your very worst celluloid nightmare. Multiply it by a hundred and you are only a fraction of the way to realising what an artistic shambles this film really is. Even "The Swarm" had some redeeming features.

All the depressingly familiar ingredients are here: wooden acting, stilted dialogue and warbly singing. It's overlong, overrated and features one of the most irritating soundtracks in the history of American cinema, which makes me want to stick pins into a wax work effigy of Dolly Parton every time I hear it.

Mow the lawn, bath the dog, watch paint dry. I implore you do anything but watch this film.

How the respected British Director, Mick Jackson, became involved with this outrage is anyone's guess. Back in 1984, he brought us one of the most disturbing and innovative films ever shown on British TV called "Threads". Perhaps he should attempt to combine the two films together. Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner disappearing under a mushroom cloud - now that's what I call a happy ending!