Film Reviews by PV

Somalia is seen as a failed state. Watch this and realise why. Part of the Italian empire until 1941 when British liberated the place and Ethiopia from Italian fascism, then Somalia and Somaliland (the northern bit, peaceful, prosperous part of British Empire) were British protectorates until independence in 1960. Since then, the place has followed the African basketcase model, with the cold war played out in its territory. Hence so many Somali refugees who conveniently use the 'civil war' to come to richer Europe (they never seem to go south to African states, east to China or directly north to Arablands. Somalia is only Muslim due to Arab empire colonialism of course, over a millennium ago.

Anyway, it amused me greatly that the Somali gangs attacking the Korean and other diplomats were anti-foreigner, yelling THIS IS OUR COUNTRY and SOMALIA FOR SOMALIS. So, they are probably 'far right' then eh? Maybe their equivalent UKippers or REFORM members? LOL. People forget that bare racism was and is behind so many independence movements in Africa/Asia, and see now the racism of the South African government against Afrikaaners who have been there 300-400 years - way longer than most Africans in Europe!

An unusual and original action movies which holds the attention was more than most Hollywood action movie dross.

A word of warning, however: it's a fact that the Koreans here all have similar features (black hair, east Asian features) and Somalis look African. That means much less diversity in appearance than Western films (which have white and black and all hair colours). SO it is VERY easy to get characters confused, mixed up, and to forget which one is on which side - the govt forces or the rebels. SO keep your wits about you when watching.

A decent action movie, original and interesting. One to watch with THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, RAID ON ENTEBBE, BLACK HAWK DOWN (also set in 1991 in Mogadishu), and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS with Tom Hanks battling hijacing Somali pirates.

4 stars

Partly in German, partly in French, this is a rare film from Luxembourg. Even now, the population of this tiny Duchy is just 680,000. It is an EU taxdodge state - why so many online companies have offices there.

With 2.45% of its prewar population killed, and a third of all buildings in Luxembourg being destroyed or heavily damaged (due to the Battle of the Bulge), Luxembourg suffered the highest such loss in Western Europe in proportion to its population. 1,000–2,500 of Luxembourg's Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

It's a small, modest so-so film, about the Resistance in WWII and betrayal, mixed with love stories.

Worth a watch without being stunning, so 3 stars

OK so I wanted to like this film, I did. But in the end I found it dull, derivative and a bit irritating. It is not all that explicit either if you are watching for that reason.

There have been a lot of films about male prostitutes, MIDNIGHT COWBOY the classic 1969 movie with John Voight and Dustin Hoffman most notable in defining performances. House of boys 2009 is another one. No doubt there are more.

This is mostly set in contemporary London and depicts the way such escort services have moved online, as has so much of our shopping lives!

What really made me roll my eyes is the idea that this 24/5 year old man is apparently one of GRANTA's 'one to watch' new authors of fiction and only after having one short story published. Gosh, and he already has an agent and a publisher begging him for a novel. What strange fantasy world is this, I wonder... In the last 20 years I have had contact with many writers of fiction and ALL published had to struggle hard to publish, often after years of rejection. Some selfpublish with success and some are signed later by agents and publishers.

Always a risk, as with films on fictional pop stars, when we actually hear the songs - which are always bad. The same happens here when the character Max reads his work to a reading group. What he reads is dire, very derivative bland prose peppered with stereotypes and clichés such as a man yearning for sex like a hungry/thirty man in the desert. Hardly original, that clunkingly obvious and trite metaphor. I found that entire claim absurd. WHY create such a character who is a supposed literary prodigy?

The only true thing is when they showed him with 5 other GRANTA young writers to watch and he was THE only 'white' male. True dat, these days. You have to be gay or disabled white male writer esp writing about those issues if you are to get equal treatment these days.

One line made me laugh: "there're no money in writing fiction, or writing anything, full stop." SO TRUE!

SO the rent-boy here - a British one, when I believe courtesy of Keith Vaz news story that many are foreign, often Romanian - predictably hooks up with older men, and rich Arabs in the closet in an orgy, and then an older academic whom he likes and talks with about literature etc. And somehow it ends up overseas with an unrealistic series of scenes which had me shouting at the screen almost: CALL THE POLICE!

Cue arguments with his agent, publisher, literary types and his supposed employer - but why would a freelance journalist even need to be in an office? They work from home.

I did watch some of the extras and cringed when the director said, as the remaker (NOT creator) of Dr Who Russell T Davies has done, that gay characters have to be played by 'out' gay - or 'queer' as he says - actors. Not 'cis straight males', and I quote. Come on now guys, think it through! That also means that out gay actors should be stopped from playing straight roles. That is NOt progress in any way, shape or form, That is identity politics tickbox tosspottery gone mad! It's called ACTING for a reason. You really do not have to be an 18th century pirate to play 18th century pirates. Get real eh?

Anyway, almost 3 stars but it is really a forgettable - not shocking or original - film in love with itself, and funded by Lottery and BFI, so 2 stars.

This film is well made and watchable, the latest from this writer/director. It is political with a small 'p', using the metaphor of a divided family for the state of the nation of Iran, under Islamist dictatorship since 1979. Everything is riddled with suspicion, whispers and betrayal - as is usual in dictatorships or volatile states, same in Britain in 17th century.

The acting is great too. It is all intercut with real-life footage, much from smartphones, or street protests of recent years. The creeping suspicion does strangle the family and film like the sacred fig parasite plant, as described at the start of the film.

OK so the downsides - this film like many these days is too long, some flab could be sliced off here easily. The plot becomes in the third act a B-movie thriller which reminds me of old black-and-white films really. No spoilers. I suppose it had to end somehow...

Moreover, like many films, TV dramas and claims of certain actives, men are pitted against women here, the claim made that men oppress women and are responsible for such dictatorships and oppressing women. WHAT ROT! Those who know such cultures know it is the WOMEN who rule the home, not the men, so it is the older women in many Muslim/Asian households who force girls into headscarves and burkas, and enforced FGM and forced marriage. Not the men.

Indeed, how ironic that in the UK, the feminist lobby DEFENDS girls wearing hijab/niqab/burka, and even BBC has shows promoting these. Over in Iran, brave women and girls ripping OFF the headscarves/hijab is a sign of liberation. The UK has areas in cities where those females NOT wearing hijab will get targeted by patrols enforcing these rules - and we let that happen! Tolerance of intolerance happens a lot in the UK. Well done Iranian people for being so brave!

France has a group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises made up of Muslim women fighting extremist moralising Islam and things like forcing women and girls into headscarves, and face veils, and against domestic violence,. Sadly, the UK does not. That speaks volumes. The UK should be ashamed of this, the way here the burka/headscarf is imposed, with even newsreader here in hijabs and students at colleges/schools in burkas. Just wrong. BUT this garb is imposed by women in those Muslim homes, NOT men.

I am sure things will change in Iran soon, from within, maybe a more modern Gorbachev-style politician emerging from the present structures rather than ground-up protests, or maybe a bit of both.

This film deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film (for Germany). A great watch, 4 stars

A look at the credits reveals this is made in Bulgaria, with most crew with names ending in -ov, and actors too. The main actor is an Italian man, and the director made his only other movie with the same main actress in 2021 (TILL DEATH).

It is watchable but at times feels like a soft porn movie showing latenight on Channel 5. It has that B-movie-for-TV feel, with the pulsing soundtrack background music always on. Some neat sequences though and dramatic tension, however unlikely. A popcorn movie, for sure, but relatively effective. The lot is absurd, with slush ladled on with the hospital op theme etc.

I liked the AI reference, though generative AI will not create human-like mannekens, almost impossible to do that; no, AI will just replicate humans online and datascrape text written by real humans, editing it to produce 'new' work; or mimicking voices or faking photos and films.

M3GAN and M3GAN2 are the latest robot-gone-wrong movies, and MICKEY17 maybe, but there've been MANY films about robots gone wrong, the WESTWORLD movie 1973 is a great example, and the TV series takes the theme further, and I suppose Spielberg's AI (2001) and the under-rated 1988 Canadian horror film PIN. I suppose The Stepford Wives (1975 movie the best not the newer version) counts too and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. So nothing new here.

Watchable but forgettable. 3 stars. Just

I had heard about this film, with - usually - younger women oohing and ah-ing about how sexually explicit and debauched it is. The thing is, it is not. I've seen more explicit sex scenes in mild TV drama.

I do not think I have seen so many plot-holes in many films though. At several points I though 'YES BUT WHY DOES HE NOT JUST...etc'. or 'HOW DID HE/SHE NOT NOTICE...etc'. It gets annoying.

Locations chosen for the look, the style, with set pieces to please the eye. This is FLUFF therefore. It's a bit like an episode of Midsomer Murders really in so many ways - lack of logic for a start. Although no police seem to exist in this fantasy world...no DNA testing...no CCTV...no logic... It was filmed at Drayton House in Northamptonshire, privately owned though open for visits, by upper class aristocrat mates of the poshogirl director, no doubt.

Also it is deeply derivative - THE TALENT MR RIPLEY is the base for the writer I think and BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. It's filmed in HERTFORD COLLEGE where the classic 1981 ITV series was filmed too (watch that, not the tedious later movie - the novel is NOT about a love triangle at all). Watch those films and not this dross.

The writer/director Emerald Fennell is a deeply posh entitled upper-class rich kid who got to play with film as an actress the director, funded by the #metoo craze.

I have noticed that in recent years there are a lot of films, by both male and female directors, which shod full frontal male nudity but no doubt deliberately show no female full frontal nudity. Such hypocrisy. Esp re the end dance scene here - I would slice that all off, the last 10 minutes, like the misandrist flab it is.

The equal and opposite rule applies. SO if a male director got his pretty female star to gratuitously prance and dance around naked in a film, while having no male nudity, what would he be called? A misogynist? The male gaze? A pervert even? Exploitative? Yes, all that. The sisters would soon be screeching and shrieking about it. SO WHY is it OK for a female director to do this? Well?

I am no prude but THIS nudity is gratuitous, as well as deeply misandrist, sexist and unequal. I am fine with nudity and sex scenes when the story demands it.

Also, why do films and TV drama do this with a song and dance number to end? Is it Bollywood influence? Dr Who Beatles episode did it, badly. MEDUSA DELUXE too. Why? STOP IT! This is not Summer Season from Scarborough!

It is watchable. And I do like Barry Keoghan as an actor THOUGH he'd maybe too old for the character here.

BUT it is really very badly-written, full of trite lines and cliches, and cartoon character aristocrats. So yes we know some upper-class toffs are nuts, just read history, and sexually incontinent too often, and that includes straight and gay sex. SO watch a DECENT depiction of that, in the 1981 ITV drama BRIDESHEAD REVISITS then.

2 stars

I do not usually like action movies, but this had my hooked. I watched all 4 episodes in one go from DVD disc 1 then did the same for disc 2. That sort of series.

I have watched series 1 and 2 and do wish the extras had a 10 minute recap of series 2 and even 1 as it is a LONG time since I watched them and I really cannot remember all the plot twists then.

Internecine warfare, shifting loyalities, betrayal, blackmail, love, hate, lust, drugs, murder - and seemingly no police anywhere on the streets (at least that bit is realistic then - UK police all down the nick starting at screens scouring the internet for hurty words these days to get easy meat arrested using bad thought crime laws).

Like Breaking Bad or Peaky Blinders in the levels of violence and body count. Maybe some room here for British gangsters - the Richardsons a famous real-life gang, so it is not all foreigners or Irish or Pakistanis or Kurds or Jamaicans etc.

Watch the short extras films - short but informative! Wonderful how foreign scenes all shot in UK studios - see how they made a palace in Pakistan's heat in the UK.

The set pieces in locations chosen to be eyecatching are as fun as a funfair, which is used to its full potential - and even an old hall of mirrors sequence which was used in the original AVENGERS in 1960s, But why not? Chose great locations and landmarks.

The main director is Korean and this definitely has an Asian flavour - and Sky is aiming it at the Chinese/Far East market for sure.

The character arcs and plotlines intersect well, with so many twists that views have to pay attention of the shifting loyalties. Acting is great.

The moral questions give depth to the characters too, more so than in many action movies and it is that psychology I like - it helps me to forgive the OTT absurd plots and violence, in a fantasy London, a city where shooting a gun gets no police response at all, even after half an hour...

BUT it is not realism; it is stylised fantasy, and best watched as that. Just roll with it.

No spoilers but ambiguous in last part, so there may well be a series 4.

4 stars.

OK so there have been MANY films about robots gone wrong, the WESTWORLD movie 1973 is a great example, and I suppose Spielberg's AI (2001) and the under-rated 1988 Canadian horror film PIN. I suppose The Stepford Wives (1970s movie the best) counts too and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. So nothing new here.

In fact, this theme can be traced back to ventriloquism, as shown in DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) and 1970s Tony Hopkins film MAGIC, and of course FRANKENSTEIN. And before that to Automata, like the Mechanical Turk built in 1770 which toured Europe for 85 years and beat men at chess (a scam really, a human chess player was hidden within). So we humans find this human-not-human trope fascinatingly spooky and disturbing then.

This is an effective and entertaining horror, silly in the third act which jumps the robotic shark and then some. Plot full of holes and lack of realise - we are meant to believe some genius young female robotics engineer managed to create a near-human robot in a week - now that's what I call a side hustle! And the robot walks and runs just like a real girl! Well of course it does seeing as a child actress is of course playing the 'robot'.

Total blarney, and not just for the superhuman achievement. Fact is, IT industry is 80% male and robotics probably 100% male - just the way it is, innate evolutionary reasons why males tend to invent big stuff and females do not. BUT this is post #metoo Hollywood so OF COURSE the main characters have to be strong and independent women and girls, and the slacker buffoons are all male characters as is the bullying boy (with a magical stretchy ear).

There is a lame attempt to balance the inherent sexism here with 3 mad older female characters (no spoilers). Tiresomely eyerolling. I look forward to the day when Hollywood movies can bring themselves to have male leads and male stories again.

Some complete rip-offs in this plot, from Jurassic Park (2023) amongst others. And of course Michael Crichton wrote that THEME PARK GONE WRONG shtick first as WESTWORLD and Jurassic Park has the precise same conceit. Well, why not. If it ain't broke...

Best not to think too hard about the scientific absurdity of this. A perfect solid silly nasty horror movie to watch with friends with beers and takeaways on a Friday night tbh.

3 stars

I watched the director's last film BLURRED LINES which I gave 3 stars; the main actress here Leonie Benesch won the German Film Award for this movie, and she was in the superb PERSIAN LESSONS which I gave 5 stars and Berlin Babylon, an excellent German TV series. She is one to watch for sure and is utterly believable here as the idealistic newbie teacher confronted with the cynicism of the real world.

This film is called Das Lehrerzimmer in German, literally TEACHERs' ROOM, so STAFF ROOM in British English, though they are absurdly called TEAM ROOMS a lot now in UK.

Filmed in a disused school in Hamburg before demolition (very weird, as it looks GREAT, modern, nearly new - compare to many crumbling UK schools!).

I cringed in recognition at SO much here, having worked in UK colleges, and so witnessed the nasty, snide, sneaky office politics and backbiting of teaching staff. Apparently teaching has more bullying than any other profession. I believe it! The women especially can be so underhand with their agendas. I found the students fine; it was always my colleagues I disliked and often avoided. I winced at what was happening in the staffroom here as it is all so believable, the timeserver teachers who've been there years and so pick on the newbie; the little cliques sticking together; the passing of the buck always.

Anyway, the acting is superb amongst the kids too. This is like a YEAR 7 or 1st year UK school class, age 11/12 though this is a like a British Middle School. for years 7 and 8 up to age 13; then in Germany and countries with German influence like the Czech republic, kids go to high schools which in Germany means a selective school system (no US comprehensive school system imported there - they have grammar schools for the academic, vocational schools for the less academic but then they also have the manufacturing jobs and apprenticeships for school leavers, and general high schools).

Those wanting easy resolution endings will not like this. That is me, tbh, so I found the ending deeply unsatisfying but perhaps necessary. I found Act 3 frustrating though.

Not sure I believed ALL of the plot - the initial investigation is based on a real event the director saw, but later on, the jeopardy is ramped up in perhaps an unrealistic way (I did not believe the angelic teacher would not report some of the worst stuff). Did I believe the set-up, plot point one, regarding a fellow staff member and allegations and how it went after that? Not really.

The director said the film is to ask questions not to provide answers. But it is NOT about race or racism really, as it of course would be if made by British directors or the BBC/BFI. Why I prefer German and foreign films and TV drama really, it shuns tickbox diversity casting and preachy woke lectures and sermons. This movie would so easily have gone that way, and would if made by Brits or UK TV, but did not THANKFULLY. It showed. It did not tell or lecture or sermonise. Phew!

Reminded me a bit of 2008 German film set in a high school THE WAVE.

4.5 stars, 4 stars overall, acts 1 and 2 were 5 star quality though.

This is the movie and NOT the 8 part French TV series with Jeremy Irons also from 2024.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, which I could not stop watching although I'd only planned to watch half - so I stayed up 90 minutes past my planned bedtime to watch it. i was HOOKED. It is good old-fashioned story-telling, with love, passion, betrayal, war, violence, hate, revenge/vengeance, and a theme of justice throughout. I loved it!

Thankfully no colourblind casting which it WOULD have in Hollywood BUT this is the sort of great entertainment Tinsel Town USED to make, but no more. Ironic as Alexander Dumas did have an African slave grandmother and a nobleman French grandfather - their St Dominique(Haiti)-born son was a high-ranking French general, so his son Alexander Dumas was high-born and privileged indeed.

Dumas was highly prolific, almost a French Dickens, with serialised novels (as MonteCristo was in magazines first in 1844) BUT Charles Dickens wrote all his own work. Not so, Dumas. He has a factory system, a bit like novelist James Patterson now, with a team of writers in a production line and Dumas providing a plot which was then embellished and added to. Of course, Dumas did write a lot too. but...

The Count of Monet Cristo, like many of his novels, was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter, Auguste Maquet who did take Dumas to court in 1851 but lost.

A big budget is needed here and pays dividends. The character list and complex relationships DO require concentration, though on Wiki and online there's a handy character map for anyone who gets lost.

Yes, the plot is silly and unbelievable BUT it is fiction, not a documentary - and Dumas himself had to flee France after Napoleon III took over in 1851 so lived in Italy and Russia, so his life was an adventure! But where would Shakespeare be without the conceit of disguise? A bit James Bond at times and the Kingsman films BUT this is WAY more entertaining for me than either.

Some gripes: the phrase 'red in tooth and class' is used. It originates in English poet Tennyson's IN MEMORIAM (1850); this story is set from 1815 and 25 or so years ahead.

Secondly, Britain banned the slave trade and enforced the ban from 1807 at great cost to herself in all ways (one third of the British navy died doing it). So that does not fit UNLESS these are illegal slave ships mentioned. maybe to the birthplace of Dumas, modern-day Haiti. Not sure. Dumas is his slave mother's surname (and she was later sold on as alves with her two daughters, sisters of Alexander, before their father returned to France). The statue in France of Dumas's mixed-race father was melted down by the Nazis in 1941).

This is, in a word, GREAT entertainment - for the family too as no explicit sex or swearing - and was the 2nd highest grossing French film of 2024. I loved it. 4 stars because it sags a bit in the third act and one or two minor characters needed a more explicit backstory stated (BUT this film is GOOD at explaining often, as the inter-relationship multi-character landscape can confuse - a large cast here!)

4 stars. 4.5 even.

Co-written by Herman Cohen who also wrote 1957 horror I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and more, in the same vein, and the last film to be directed by Arthur Crabtree who made the Will Hay and Arthur Askey films, then was a salaried director with Gainsborough in 1930s and 40s, this is a technicolour horror alright.

It starts well, the first half is tense with jeopardy and scares and gore, which is the whole reason for making it in colour - to show the fake blood! Some ingenious deaths. Plus a Poundland Marilyn Monroe/Diana Dors dancing. BUT Shirley Anne Field played a victim in the great Michael Powell classic PEEPING TOM (1960), The Entertainer (1960) and kitchen sink drama, and she was also apparently a friend of John F. Kennedy...who was obviously very attracted by her nice pair of...eyes, and intellectual acumen.

Plus some non-pc misogyny in Michael Gough's character's monologues which would get the metoo mob triggered and a half! Not that the rather wooden Welsh-born actor Graham Curnow retired from film and was the long term partner of Victor Spinetti (famous for being in the Beatles films).

It all gets a bit silly really and sags badly in the second half. Some dodgy makeup and illogical plotline with a mention of Jekyl and Hyde does not help. And it rather reminded me of CARRY ON SCREAMING - I wonder if this is where they got the idea for 'dipping' people in vats of solution (FRYING TONIGHT!). The film's plot is as thin as the boiling water really. BUT the point of this story is GORE and it was aimed at late night cinema goers, couples, watching a X certificate with girls hugging their boys in terror, which was good for the boys, and girls, maybe.

Unintentionally funny at times to laugh-out-load levels - especially the primitive computer technology with pointless flashing lights which is there, for what reason? The film attempts to blind with science AND it probably worked in 1959. This is a B-Movie for sure.

Nice to see 1959 streets, cars and a funfair though. Always love a ghost train (see THE GIRL ON THE PIER 1953 and Brighton Rock 1948 for more).

3 stars, almost more, first half is 4 stars.

This is based on a novel, not a memoir, but depicts the notorious Magdalen laundries operating in Ireland for many decades until 1998. 56000 young pregnant women were sent to them, much as in the UK and Europe, to give birth and have their babies adopted out - and who can say that was not for the best? For stable lives and opportunities for those kids.

However, the iron rod by the notoriously stern and harsh nuns was not necessary and seems just sadistic. Female violence and abuse is often ignored utterly by the media and film industry which portrays all females as victims of monster men as standard, so it is healthy to get it out in the open. 40% dv done to men mostly by women, after all, and much child abuse; most babies killed are killed by women too.

Workhouses were pretty standard in all the UK until well into the 20th century. And boys in such places and children's homes and borstals often had sexual abuse to deal with as well. Sadly, abuse of the vulnerable, female or male, is universal, especially in totalitarian societies, which is what Ireland was under the rule of the Catholic church, until very recently indeed.

Of course, the best depiction of this brutal abusive Catholic culture is in the wonderful film PHILOMENA based on the nonfiction book by Martin Sixsmith and that IS based on a real true story.

I often dislike state-funded kitchen sink dramas but this sucked me in and I watched it intently to try and understand which bits were flashbacks to the 1960s and which were set in 1980s - I feel DATES on-screen were needed to be honest. Some undercurrents here lightly sketched and ambiguous too, esp the relationships of the Bill's mother and her protector, the lady in the posh house on the hill.

But I enjoyed it, perhaps best watched as an add-on to PHILOMENA, a slight but well-made and acted film. Though a tad too ponderous at times. And confusing because of lack of dates on-screen - so if you watch, BE AWARE of the unflagged flashbacks!

Glad the film did not drag on, so well done for that - the abrupt ending worked!

3.5 stars rounded down.

Based on a 2022 sci-fi novel, this movie is not for me - I find the director massively over-rated too (who has a track record of silly monster movies in Korea, I see).

It is too long, silly, tiresome, misfiring satire - esp with Mark Ruffalo doing his best Trump impression - and eye-rollingly tiresome.

Not original - cloning etc done since Brave New World in 1930s and MANY times since. Various bodyshock dramas, films about twins etc.

It may appeal to sci-fi fans but I suspect the novel is better - imagining stuff is often better, esp re alien life forms etc. BUT only enough here to sustain a short story WHICH actually was the author Edward Ashton's original intention for the story.

The director here wrote the screenplay with the author - always a danger sign. EDITS NEEDED. Fresh eyes to slice off the flab and give the script focus. THIS is a bloated director's cut really and the Oscar-winner (for the over-rated Parasite) can obvs greenlight ANYTHING in Hollywood, which is NOT always a good thing. Because it leads to misfiring big-budget bloated pet projects like this.

The only new original idea here is the 3D-printing of people concept. The rest has been done.

Predictable CGI which is as OTT as the whole bloated movie, and some absurd, silly scenes - which were LAUGH AT not LAUGH WITH.

As another review said this socalled satire is just not funny and does not hit the target - ever. It's an OTT mess, a panto really with cartoon characters. A comic strip.

There is GREAT satire out there in novels and films too - find it; avoid this misfiring blobmonster mess of a movie.

Strictly for scifi fans only. 1.5 stars rounded up.

I enjoyed this - to a point. It rattles along at a rollicking pace with Adrian Brody's voiceover and split screens making it seem retro, like a 60s/70s madcap movie. I have never liked split screens - ever - though. No wonder the technique died out.

And I liked the fact it is based on real nuggets of truth (Agatha Christie DID state in the 1952 Mousetrap contract that a film could not be made until the end of the theatre run, which she assumed would be 8 months, 73 years later it is still going... hence no movie of it, this is the closest we can get!). Those who know the plot of the Mousetrap will enjoy the red herring here with the focus of suspicion on many but esp on the boozy detective. No spoilers, but those who want to can research what inspired the play.

What I found esp tiresome was the colourblind casting. This is 1953. There would not be a black british screenwriter then or a famous black archaeologist; at a push a fellow tenant neighbour might be black, Would an assistant to a big producer by a BAME woman? Remember, in 1939 there were just 6000 black people in britain of a population of 44 million and it was not much more in 1953. Just watch coronation footage, for goodness sake! Some like colourblind casting, I do not - it can work on stage BUT if you are making a movie that purports to have an authentic historical setting, colourblind casting is absurd. ANd the inconsistency is racist. if black actors can play 'white' characters then why not the equal and opposite, so maybe some 'white' Zulu warriors of Chinese emperors or Indian Maharajahs then? Do you see? It spoils it all!

But the irritation is more than that. Of course, like all modern movies, there must be the 'strong and independent' woman who is in charge, however unrealistic (watch LIFE ON MARS maybe, and that is set in 1970s!).

The acting is great however, the alcoholic police inspector and his female partner and everyone else.

And I did like the ending MOSTLY (no spoilers). It is a tad too madcap and farcical, black comedy. But a pleasant enough fantasy ride farce.

Maybe watch old classic Agatha Christie, movies and TV drama pre 2000 which is about when woke quotas ruined them; or Poirot on ITV3.

And watch BRIGHTON ROCK to see Richard Attenborough in his prime.

2.5 stars rounded down.

Amazing this is made in 1936. That means HG Wells himself visited the set! he died in 1946. Tbh this is based on one of his later, weaker novels.

More a curiosity piece now, the acting very stagey. The theme of the future being the destruction of civilisation and a return to a feudal farming system is not new, and has been used many times since in novels and movies, from Planet of the Apes and more. The Second Sleep novel by Robert Harris and in a way, Harvest by Jim Crace (which SHOULD have won the 2013 Booker prize). So many examples. All the post-nuclear war movies for a start.

Fascinating really the visions of a future with dates on screen, 1940, 1945, 1966/7, 1970 and 2036. And of course there are flying cars or similar - as ever in visions of the future!

In 1936 when the film was made, Fascist rule in Italy was over 12 years old and 3 years old in Germany, so HG Wells used that source material and details of USSR maybe, though Stalin's crimes were yet to be exposed.

One for fans only but an important British scifi film nonetheless. Watch with Fritz Lang's silent masterpieces like Metropolis and more.