Reviews

"Blonde" is yet another Hollywood travesty. Marilyn's life should not be defined merely by her supposed 'victimhood', and she was most certainly no 'dumb blonde'. She was an avid reader with an extensive personal library, and embraced radical left-wing politics throughout her short life, which was terminated when she threatened to expose secrets she had learned through her affairs with the Kennedy brothers. She was a rare beauty inside and out and deserves better than this exploitative Hollywood trash. It's a shame, as most people will now form their opinion of Marilyn from seeing this distortion of the truth. But at least we have her movies. This one should have been binned.

The other reviews here are, I think, a little unfair. OK, the music is not really ''by the Beatles'' ; it consists of dated jazzy interpretations of some of their early songs (the film was made in 1965); and the ''Mods and Rockers'' of the title are in fact a ballet company - because that's what this short piece is : a one-act ballet. As such it should be judged on its own terms, and those seeking any insight into the subculture of the mid-sixties should look elsewhere. Having said that the dancers are excellent, performing with energy and enthusiasm. All in all a pleasant enough half-hour of nostalgia for an era of (relative) innocence.

This is a beautifully photographed and charming evocation of a childhood in a small fishing village in Fife in the late 1940s and early 50s. It was filmed in Orkney, but is based on Christopher Rush's semi-autobiographical "A Twelvemonth and a Day", set in St Monans. The first collaboration of producer Christopher Young and director Ian Sellar has many touching moments, but is never over-sentimental at any point. The eponymous Peter is brought up by his grandfather (Ray McAnally) and educated about life and beauty by his Miss Brodie-like teacher, played by the lovely Sinead Cusack. The film is episodic rather than a narrative in form, though there is a theme throughout of the boy's sense of longing for the sea and his absent father. The acting is uniformly excellent. the direction superb, and even the occasional background music appropriate and haunting. A supremely well-crafted and under-rated example of Scottish cinema at its finest.

This must surely be a candidate for the worst film ever : certainly the worst British film, the worst sixties film, and the most unfunny 'comedy'. Freddie and the Dreamers were never big enough stars to carry a film and in any case were by 1967 when the film appeared, already past their use by date. There isn't a single decent 'gag' in the whole sorry mess, the 'acting' is uniformly dire and the likes of John le Mesurier must surely have been embarrassed to be associated with it. If I say that Kenneth Connor (of 'Carry On' fame) was taking a step DOWN in terms of quality and subtlety to appear in this appalling drivel, it might convey how truly awful it is. It's a mystery how it even got made, let alone released. Excruciatingly poor.

Patriot Porn and the Celebration of Psychopathy..... Yup, Hollywood just made another war-film.... (It seems as though producing the blockbuster Movie Of The War is now as much an integral component of the USA's murderous and insane Zionist-inspired foreign policy as the theft of oil, installation of Rothschild Central Banks, or privatization of water supplies.) Needless to say, we get the usual mix of re-written history, racism, and brain-rotting propagandist bullshit ....

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Iraq War veteran Brian Turner wrote : '' In American Sniper, Iraqis are called "savages," and the "streets are crawling" with them. Eastwood and his screenwriter Jason Hall give Iraqis no memorable lines. Their interior lives are a blank canvas, with no access points to let us in. I get why that is: If Iraqis are seen in any other light, if their humanity is recognized, then the construct of our imagination, the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-a-white-horse story we tell ourselves to push forward, falls apart.... In American Sniper, Iraqi men, women, and children are known and defined only in relation to combat and the potential threat they pose. Their bodies are the site and source of violence. In both the film and our collective imagination, their humanity is reduced in ways that, ultimately, define our own narrow humanity.

....There's a scene — scenes, actually — in American Sniper where Chris Kyle struggles with the decision to shoot a child. Those scenes dredged up memories of Mosul and Baghdad, where I once heard the words ''You are authorized to shoot children'' come crackling over the radio. I also remember watching soldiers in my own platoon lob plastic water bottles filled with their own urine at village children who would run to us as we drove by — thirsty children who motioned with their thumbs to their mouths in a gesture pleading for water''.

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Sadly, this kind of pernicious indoctrination actually works...

As the economic incentive for peace is lost or defeated, and is increasingly replaced by investment in an endless and un-winnable 'War on Terror', and the capitalistic exploitation of disasters, both natural and man-made, there is a danger that one part of human society will begin to look increasingly like Israel, with its walled-off areas, and massive 'homeland security' apparatus…. and the other like Gaza…… This film by Michael Winterbottom, based on Naomi Klein's terrifying book 'The Shock Doctrine :the Rise of Disaster Capitalism', attempts to show how we arrived at this critical point in history. The film is faithful to the themes of the book and makes good use of contemporary newsreels and pertinent interviews, some conducted by Ms Klein herself. An important documentary, thoroughly recommended.

Even the UN's climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri ( a man with a vested interest if ever there was one !) has had to acknowledge that until this year (2014) there had been NO rise in global temperature for the last 17 years….a period coinciding with an unprecedented expansion of CO2-emitting Power Stations in China and elsewhere.

The evidence in the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is that climate has ALWAYS been changing, (for instance, it was much warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now), and that Climate Change is primarily due to processes in the Sun which impact (via the 'solar wind') on cloud-formation, and NOT human activity.

CO2, man-made or otherwise, is NOT the driving force behind Climate Change now, and never has been in the past.

We can probably all agree that pollution is not a particularly good idea, but on the other hand it is alarmist nonsense to suggest that we are all going to drown under melting ice-caps or something if we continue to burn stuff.

The film also has important things to say on the origins of the "theory" of anthropogenic climate change… (think : Reagan and Thatcher)…, and its potential (or rather its AGENDA) to do great harm to economic development in the poorest regions of our planet.

Helen Castor knows her subject and presents a straightforward and intelligent chronology without the usual appeal to vicarious empathy which mars so much of TV's portrayal of women in history. The BBC4 series is a BBC Scotland production, which means that it is well-written and presented by an expert in the field, a welcome change from the usual patronising treatment of history on television, which makes a presumption of absolute ignorance and low attention-span in its audience. For those of us who, like me, needed gaps filling in our knowledge of Plantagenet and Tudor English History, or those to whom this is all new, this unfussy presentation by the delightful Ms Castor is thoroughly recommended.

After a couple of viewings of this undoubtedly enigmatic film it seems that the 'mystery' (if solvable at all) must revolve around the following 'clues', if that is indeed what they are : 1) Why did time stop at 12 ? 2) What is the meaning of the scratch marks on Irma's hands, and yet none on the rest of her body, except for the mark (identical to the one on the boy) on her forehead ? 3) Why do the girls fall asleep simultaneously just before their final ascent ? And what's with all the bird imagery ? And why do Irma AND Michael remember nothing of their experience on the Rock? That some kind of allegory of sexual awakening is intended, is so obvious as to be hardly worthy of mention.

All in all rather a frustrating film, though cinematographically excellent, and intelligently wrought.