Comedy and Kaleem Aftab

The Beaver - Jodie Foster interview

The director on working with Mel Gibson on comedy drama

1 Jul 2011

The Beaver is the third directorial effort from the iconic Jodie Foster. The 48-year-old actress burst onto the international scene as a child star in 1976 with films such as Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone and Freaky Friday. Lauded as a teenager for her…

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

27 May 2011

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

Passenger Side is a witty road movie about sibling rivalries

Matt Bissonnette's comedy stars Joel Bissonnette and Adam Scott

28 Mar 2011

(12A) 85min Before the road movie was carjacked by the American gross-out comedy, Easy Rider and its offspring helped establish a genre of American outsider cinema, with its portraits of the big country beyond the confines of the Hollywood system.

Profile: Matt Bissonnette, director of Passenger Side

Canadian director's third feature earning critical praise

24 Mar 2011

Name Matt Bissonnette Born Montreal, Quebec, November 2 1965. Background Bissonnette is an autodidact at the school of Alfred Hitchcock, Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater. He studied English and film at Concordia University and read law at…

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

15 Aug 2010

(12A) 112min Writer-director Edgar Wright has made a career out of subverting genres, as demonstrated by his collaborations with actor Simon Pegg: TV’s Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. For Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Wright left…

Kick-Ass

18 Mar 2010

(15) 117min Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic book series is a hilarious, hip twist on the superhero genre. Gone are the superpowers, the 100 inch chests and holier than thou attitude. Instead our hero is an awkward teenager, Dave…

Tormented

14 May 2009

(15) 91min Director Jon Wright wants his secondary school comedy horror to be the favourite pupil of Professor Shaun of the Dead and Ms Heathers, but his failure to study film history or show a basic grasp of storytelling ensures that Tormented makes…

Role Models

11 Dec 2008

How adults can benefit from relationships with children has been explored cinematically since before Charlie Chaplin met The Kid. One good recent example of this type of story was The School of Rock where Jack Black’s inner-child was flattered by a…

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

13 Nov 2008

Forget the salacious sounding title, Zack and Miri is a Kevin Smith movie so it was never going to be a Ron Jeremy skin flick. Indeed, it’s an archetypical Smith movie – an over-sentimental tale in which boy knows girl, boy and girl have relationship…

The Wackness

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA Jonathan Levine’s follow-up to the surprisingly good horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is another voyage into nostalgic romanticism and teenage growing pains. This time Levine is pining for his lost youth with a film set in 1994…

Hancock

3 Jul 2008

SUPERHERO/COMEDY (12A) 91min The writers and director of Hancock take a hyper-powered leaf out of the Mystery Men and Return of Captain Invincible school of heroism with Hancock. Will Smith plays a nihilistic superhero who has fallen out of favour…

Change of Address

22 May 2008

French horn teacher David (Emmanuel Mouret) is improbably picked up by impulsive Anne (Frédérique Bel). She convinces him to come and live in her small Parisian flat. These oddballs are obviously perfect for each other but in denial of this fact they…

Welcome to the Sticks

8 May 2008

COMEDY (12A) 106min Dany Boon’s box-office hit is the most successful French movie of all time. In just seven weeks on release, it broke 1966 comedy La Grande Vadrouille’s record for the highest ever attendance for a French film on home soil with 17…

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

24 Apr 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 110min The Judd Apatow movie production line shows no signs of abating as Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows the template of Knocked Up to deliver some laughs, banal moralising and side characters that outshine the lead. Writer and…

27 Dresses

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 110min During an interview to promote Knocked Up, actress Katherine Heigl said of the Judd Apatow comedy that brought her worldwide fame (after her years lighting up Grey’s Anatomy): ‘It paints women as shrews, as humourless and…

Harmony Korine

13 Mar 2008

Harmony Korine was thrust into the limelight aged 22, when his sensational script for Kids garnered him the status of overnight sensation. Then came Gummo, a film made in the best traditions of German maverick Werner Herzog, which established the young…

Margot at the Wedding

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 92min Writer/director Noah Baumbach starts proceedings on his latest feature with a block capital title caption, forewarning the audience that his latest offering pays homage to the French New Wave, in particular the work of Francois…

Sydney White

17 Jan 2008

Ever since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless loosely adapted Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern High School setting it’s been the done thing to drop classic texts into a contemporary teenage setting. Joe Nussbaum’s Sydney White, which was released in the US shortly…

He Was A Quiet Man

29 Nov 2007

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 95min It seems a long time ago that Christian Slater was making a living as the ‘young Jack Nicholson’ in teen yarns Heathers and Pump Up The Volume. In this audacious crime caper, written and directed by Frank A Cappello (No Way…

Clubland

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 107min Brenda Blethyn is on Little Voice form in this touching, bittersweet Australian comedy. She plays Jean, an ageing stand-up comedienne whose best days are behind her. She’s also a control freak who refuses to accept that her…

Knocked Up

(15) 128min

23 Aug 2007

Production assistant Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she is given the chance to present on an entertainment TV channel. One day her producer tells her that her body could do with being a little ‘tighter’. But no…

Dark Horse

11 Dec 2006

The first hour of Icelander Dagur Kári’s follow up to Nói Albínói is just as good as his quirky debut. Daniel (Jakob Cedergren) is a graffiti artist who makes money by taking commissions to write girls’ names on walls for men who are trying to impress…

Stranger Than Fiction

27 Nov 2006

We’re so used to Will Ferrell playing the crazed maniac that it’s a pleasant surprise to see that he can play the straight guy equally well. He’s Howard Crick, a taxman with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whose life is turned upside down when he hears…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny - review

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

13 Nov 2006

COMEDY/MUSICAL Jack Black and Kyle Gass formed rock band Tenacious D a dozen years ago. Noteworthy, mostly, for their wild and profane lyrics, their existence has witnessed a best selling album, a short-lived HBO series, and the movie stardom of lead…

Accepted

(12A) 90min

2 Oct 2006

COMEDY Steve Pink the director of Accepted also wrote High School tribute movie Grosse Point Blank, adapted Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity so there was much hope that this film would herald a second coming. Alas, Pink’s movie lacks two vital ingredients…