Drama

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

One of the key American films of the 1980s

27 Aug 2009

Paul Schrader’s brilliant overlooked 1985 biopic of the mad life and times of one of Japan’s most brilliant and troubled souls, Poet and novelist Yukio Mishima, gets a very rare outing on a new print in Glasgow while in Edinburgh they are showing the…

The Big Smoke

A series of films about London

27 Aug 2009

The ever English capital-centric British Film Institute presents this collection of films from lost London which includes shots of Victorians going to work, some turn of the 20th Century street scenes and, most interestingly, sci-fi short The Fugitive…

Home

26 Aug 2009

Quirky dark drama concerning an isolated family who live on the edge of an abandoned motorway. However Isabelle Huppert and Oliver Gourmet’s life is disrupted as the road reopens and the thoroughfare that once offered them freedom rapidly becomes a…

(500) Days of Summer - Joseph Gordon-Levitt interview

The former sitcom star talks about his movie success

21 Aug 2009

‘You have to make it for yourself. You have to figure it out for yourself, and if it’s real love it’s going to be unlike anyone else has ever felt before’. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of the new romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, is getting…

Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One

Second part of biopic on France's most notorious bank robber

21 Aug 2009

Part two of Jean François Richet’s epic account of the contrary life and times of France’s most famous bank robber and criminal mastermind Jacques Mesrine – we are now in the realm of myth and self-deception. Written, like it’s predecessor, by Abdel…

Profile: Jean-François Richet

The French film-maker behind Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One

21 Aug 2009

Name Jean-François Richet Born 2 July, 1966, Paris Background Having grown up in the satellite town of Meaux, east of Paris, Jean-François Richet made his feature debut in 1995 with the Cesar-nominated Inner City (Etat des lieux). He went on to…

Funny People

More bittersweet comedy drama from Judd Apatow

21 Aug 2009

In his third film as director, Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) spreads his wings with a bittersweet drama about the moral vacuity of celebrity. Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a stand-up actor gone Hollywood, whose success in films…

Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos)

New work from Pedro Almodóvar

21 Aug 2009

Since moving into his mature period of filmmaking Pedro Almodóvar’s films have benefited from both an increasingly dramatic emotional impact and an ever more cinematic sensibility. His latest boasts a little less of the former than its predecessors, but…

The look of love: Pedro Almodóvar interview

We preview the Spanish filmmaker's Broken Embraces

20 Aug 2009

Pedro Almodóvar, the most famous Spanish filmmaker since his Aragónian idol Luis Buñuel, and one of the most acclaimed auteurs in international cinema, once described his relationship to his chosen medium of expression thus: ‘Cinema has become my life.

Capturing the imagination: Terry Gilliam

Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam talks about The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

20 Aug 2009

Terry Gilliam is without doubt a singularly gifted visionary and an irrepressibly maverick filmmaker. However, the 66-year-old American former Monty Python animator also appears to be cursed with dreadfully bad fortune. The debacle with the financiers…

The Constant Gardener

19 Aug 2009

This month’s screening in association with The British Science Association is Fernando Meirelles’ thoughtful adaptation of John Le Carre’s thriller about the murky practices of multinational pharmaceutical companies in the third world. Medical…

Inglourious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino interview

15 Aug 2009

The sixth film by Quentin Tarantino has been a long time coming. Tarantino began writing his World War II men-on-a-mission adventure Inglourious Basterds more than a decade ago. Unable to finish it, he put the script aside and instead made the two-part…

Scarface re-released

The greatest of all modern gangster films returns, but why now?

14 Aug 2009

It’s been twenty six long years since Tony Montana (Al Pacino) invited us to ‘say hello to my little friend’ in director Brian De Palma and then screenwriter Oliver Stone’s Reagan era update of Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht’s gangster polemic of the same…

Just Another Love Story (Kærlighed på film)

14 Aug 2009

While much has been made of Danish cinema’s interest in realism in the wake of Dogme, how many Scandinavian films have been equally interested in self-reflexivity? Whether it’s von Trier’s overlooked Manderlay playing like a homage to curious 1970s…

Top 5 Things To Do This Week

14 Aug 2009

Bloody Beetroot (clubs), Inglourious Basterds (film), Emergent Artists (Visual Art), Soulsavers (music), Christopher Brookmyre (books)

Kursk - Submarine Drama

12 Aug 2009

While Hollywood loves its war stories, theatre and the military have traditionally made uncomfortable bedfellows, if they’ve even got past first base at all. That began to change, certainly on the Fringe, after the invasion of Iraq. Over the past five…

Mid-August Lunch

The subtle drama of an Italian village

12 Aug 2009

Hitherto best known for co-writing Gomorrah, 60-year-old Gianni di Gregorio makes his directorial debut with this charming tale, which beautifully illustrates Tolstoy’s dictum that ‘To speak to the world, one should write about one’s village’. The…

The Fireman's Ball

12 Aug 2009

(PG) 73min (Arrow Films DVD retail) COMEDY/DRAMA Milos Amadeus Forman’s much loved 1967 Czech New Wave lynchpin has the honour of being one of only four films to be ‘banned forever’ by the Czech/Soviet authorities of the day who presumed it was…

Film: Also Released

This week's other cinematic offerings

10 Aug 2009

A Perfect Getaway, Imagine That, The Time Traveler's Wife, Sin Nombre

Alastair Sim season calls at Filmhouse

A season of films celebrating the Scottish actor

4 Aug 2009

The films of (arguably) Scotland’s greatest stage and screen actor (sorry Sir Sean) are celebrated in this superb season. Things kick off with the 1954 adaptation of JB Priestley’s celebrated play An Inspector Calls with Sim masterful in the titular…

Cine Cuba

Fifty years of revolution on film

4 Aug 2009

This season celebrating ‘50 Years of Revolution on Film’ hits its stride with Pavel Giroud’s ageing gangster drama Omertà and the queer politics of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Strawberry and Chocolate. Also showing later in the season are Manuel Pérez’s…

Words and Pictures

David Peace and Garrison Keillor celebrate fiction and adaptation

4 Aug 2009

Writers David Peace and Garrison Keillor will both be making an appearance at this short season celebrating fiction and adaptation. Peace will be talking about The Red Riding Trilogy and Keillor will be talking about A Prairie Home Companion. There…

The Go-Between

Film adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery

4 Aug 2009

Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter’s immaculate 1971 adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery in Edwardian Norfolk enjoys a slight return on new digital print.

Am I Black Enough For You?

Philadelphia soul legend Billy Paul in a film by Goran Olsson

4 Aug 2009

Taking its title from his most impassioned and radical tune, the life and formidable times of Philadelphia soul legend Billy Paul are celebrated in Goran Olsson’s engaging, well-researched documentary. GFT, Glasgow from Mon 10-Wed 12 Aug.

Looking For Eric

Ken Loach does love, delusion and footballers

4 Aug 2009

Last chance to catch Ken Loach’s pleasing comedy of love, delusion and platitude-quoting retired footballers on the big screen. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 7-Mon 10 Aug.