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Film and Comedy

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Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

By-the-numbers old age comedy drama

(2 stars)10 Feb 2012

Early in this by-the-numbers comedy drama, a young salesperson eagerly enthuses to retiring couple Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) that 'the grey pound is very strong at the moment'. We’re quite clearly supposed to see this…

Electric Man

Electric Man

A patchy, if well intentioned, Edinburgh-set comic comedy

(3 stars)8 Feb 2012

(12A tbc) 98min Shot in Edinburgh on a micro-budget, comic shop comedy Electric Man declares its intentions from the off: this is to be no social realist kitchen sink drama, typical of the UK film industry, but rather a light-hearted love-letter to…

GFF 2012 - Day planner

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

6 Feb 2012

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

Zach Braff, writer, director and star of All New People - interview

Interview: Zach Braff, writer, director and star of All New People

The Scrubs and Garden State star discusses his new theatre production

2 Feb 2012

‘I’m still Jenny from the block,’ says Zach Braff after a moment’s reflection. ‘Even now I feel a bit underground in the acting world.’ For those who enjoyed Braff (and 20 million viewers around the world did) as the lovable JD in US comedy drama…

Young Adult

Young Adult

A fiercely dark comedy from Juno writer-director team Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman

(4 stars)2 Feb 2012

(15) 94min This reteaming of Juno director (Jason Reitman) and writer (Diablo Cody) is a fiercely dark character comedy that once again demonstrates the pair’s refusal to be limited by genre conventions, no matter how sacred. The set-up is…

The Muppets' most memorable moments

The Muppets' most memorable moments

A gallery of clips from our favourite frog and his friends

1 Feb 2012

The Muppets have a string of movies to their names already, including The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Christmas Carol, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and The Great Muppet Caper. Never ones to shirk away from serious film, darling, they’ve also had cameos in…

John C Reilly, star of Carnage and Terri - interview

Interview: John C Reilly on Carnage and Terri

The actor discusses his prolific rate of appearances in both higher and lower profile movies

1 Feb 2012

‘I have been a busy boy, haven’t I?’ grins John C Reilly. And it’s true. Last seen as the luckless father in We Need To Talk About Kevin, the Chicago-born actor now stars in Roman Polanski’s Carnage and US indie Terri. Factor in two major upcoming…

Carnage

Carnage

Polanski's comedy of upper-middle class savagery is fast, funny and filthy

(4 stars)24 Jan 2012

(15) 79mins Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play Gods of Carnage opens with a playground spat. Set over the opening credits, it’s this innocuous bust-up that drives the bitterly funny four-hander, as the parents of both children try to…

The Adopted

The Adopted

Quirky, saccharine directorial debut from French actress Melanie Laurent

(2 stars)24 Jan 2012

(15) 100 mins Still only 28-years-old, French actress and musician Melanie Laurent makes her directorial debut with this offbeat family tale, which owes more to her recent performances in US indie Beginners and the sentimental melodrama The Concert…

The Descendants

The Descendants

Star performances from George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in Alexander Payne's latest comedy drama

(4 stars)5 Jan 2012

(15) 115m In Alexander Payne’s first film since his 2004 critical darling Sideways, George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii-based businessman and heir to a hugely valuable piece of Hawaiian land. On the eve of him signing a deal to sell the land and…

The Sitter

The Sitter

Zippy but unappealing sub-Apatow comedy starring Jonah Hill

(2 stars)5 Jan 2012

(15) 81min After springing to stardom in Superbad, Jonah Hill gets his first lead role in The Sitter, an amiable low-brow comedy from director David Gordon Green which throws Hill’s laid-back slacker persona into a similar underworld of criminal…

HOT 100 2011 - 49 to 1

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

The Artist

The Artist

Delightful celebration of the bygone age of silent cinema, starring Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo

(4 stars)8 Dec 2011

(PG) 100min The Artist has in-built appeal for movie buffs who believe that the arrival of talking pictures was one of the worst things that ever happened to an art form that had found a universal language in the visual poetry of the late silent era.

Nanni Moretti, writer-director of We Have a Pope - interview

Interview: Nanni Moretti, writer-director of We Have a Pope

Director of moving and downbeat film on Catholic Church

15 Nov 2011

Did you ever think of casting yourself in the lead role of Melville, the newly elected Pope, who suffers a crisis of confidence? When I was still in the initial stages of the script, I was chatting to friends and I told them I was thinking of writing a…

Bill Bailey's guide to scary film soundtrack music

Bill Bailey's guide to scary film soundtracks

The comedian and orchestra appreciator on what makes for good malevolent music

21 Oct 2011

What’s your favourite score to a scary movie? The Bernard Herrmann score to The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951]. It’s quite futuristic and incredibly orchestral and atmospheric. He uses the Theremin [an early electronic instrument that can be played…

Rob Brydon, comedian, actor, presenter and now author - interview

Interview - Rob Brydon

The comic actor answers our questions ahead of the release of his autobiography, Small Man in a Book

17 Oct 2011

First record you ever bought Apart from Rupert Bear, Propaganda by Sparks. Last extravagant purchase you made A cashmere scarf. First film you saw that really moved you Barney’s Version. Last lie you told I never lie. First movie you…

Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo

Flat romcom vehicle for Justin Bieber's paramour Selena Gomez

(2 stars)12 Oct 2011

(PG) 108min The star of tween drama Wizards of Waverly Place, but better known as the current squeeze of Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez is being relentlessly packaged for fame. Her previous venture, last year’s Ramona and Beezus sank like a stone, and…

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris

Another warm and witty all-star comedy from Woody Allen

(4 stars)14 Sep 2011

(12A) 94min Midnight in Paris is one of the warmest and wittiest Woody Allen films in recent memory. The jaunty manner and literary bent are reminiscent of Vicky Cristina Barcelona as Allen invests what could be a New Yorker short story with a…

Profile - Sebastian Koch

Profile - Sebastian Koch

German star of coming-of-age Brit comedy Albatross

13 Sep 2011

Name Sebastian Koch Born Karlsruhe, Germany, May 31 1962 Background Koch has worked solidly in European films and TV for over 25 years, but it was his terrific performance in The Lives of Others (2006) that made him recognisable to cinema…

Albatross

Albatross

Well-balanced coming-of-age comedy starring Downtown Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay

(3 stars)13 Sep 2011

(15) 89min This British coming-of-age comedy drama from debut director Niall MacCormick retreads familiar ground with its story but, thanks to a very funny script and a combustible lead performance from newcomer Jessica Brown Findlay, it’s never…

Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits

Sappy rom-com fails to deflate clichés of the genre

(2 stars)19 Aug 2011

(15) 109min The rom-com has been a moribund genre for years now, excepting Marc Webb’s acerbic and adventurous (500) Days of Summer. Despite promising a similarly caustic examination of the gap between real-life relationships and romantic clichés…

The Room

The Room

Gloriously awful Rocky Horror-style particapatory film screening

(4 stars)11 Aug 2011

The midnight movies phenomenon is well documented – starting in the 1970s at fleapit cinemas, movies that were too bizarre, too violent or too extreme for the mainstream were shown to cult film-loving audiences in the dead of night. The Rocky Horror…

Arrietty

Arrietty

Studio Ghibli takes on The Borrowers and delivers charming results

(4 stars)13 Jul 2011

(U) 94min Over three decades, the Studio Ghibli brand of animated storytelling has become a worldwide phenomenon through beloved classics My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and the recent Ponyo. Although not directed by the studio’s co-founder Hayao…

Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses

Seth Gordon's comedy rides high with the titular bosses, but is let down by their minions

(3 stars)13 Jul 2011

(15) 97min The blunt title of Seth Gordon’s star-packed comedy might lack finesse but it is certainly accurate: Horrible Bosses features three utterly repulsive Los Angeles-based line managers as its villains. Dr Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) is…

Cars 2

Cars 2

Uninspired sequel fails to keep the Pixar engine running

(2 stars)13 Jul 2011

(U) 112min After 25 years of animation production and a run of critical and commercial smash-hits, the super-smooth Pixar production line finally blows a gasket with Cars 2, a colourful but overstuffed, noisy and heartless sequel that feels more like…

Zookeeper

Zookeeper

Kevin James stars in woefully bad family rom-com

(1 star)13 Jul 2011

(PG) 101min Part rom-com, part Doctor Dolittle style family comedy, Zookeeper, starring lardarse comic actor Kevin James (The Dilemma, Grown Ups), is a wholly unsatisfactory experience for all but the most juvenile minds. The latest offering from…

Jodie Foster interview for The Beaver

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…

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Uncompromising, awkward and confrontational style and content cements reputation

(4 stars)28 Jun 2011

(2entertain) The second series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle will do very little to alter the entrenched opinions on both sides of his critical fence. Those detractors will switch off in their droves at the uncompromising, awkward and…

The Last Circus

The Last Circus

Spanish black comedy/horror takes in clowns, circus life, love and madness

(4 stars)20 Jun 2011

The latest film from writer/director Alex de la Iglesia is almost unclassifiable, a love story, a black comedy and horror all apply and as fans of his Accion Mutante (1992) will know it’s this glorious mess of ideas and themes that makes for such a…

Kim Cattrall, star of Sex and the City, discusses her new film Meet Monica Velour

Kim Cattrall, star of Sex and the City, discusses her new film Meet Monica Velour

Indie comedy about an aging porn star is set to screen at the EIFF

27 May 2011

‘To have a role like this in your fifties is quite extraordinary,’ says Kim Cattrall, who is 53 and has made a virtue of playing sexy older women in a business that refuses to equate the one with the other. ‘When Meet Monica Velour showed at the Tribeca…

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

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…

Kristen Wiig writes and stars in sharp apatow comedy Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids

Kristen Wiig writes and stars in sharp Apatow comedy

(4 stars)23 May 2011

(15) 125min Kristen Wiig (Adventureland, Whip It!) comes close to grasping the comedy crown from her Saturday Night Live colleague Tina Fey with this hilarious reinvigoration of the chick flick. As co-writer and star, Wiig disposes of traditional…

Cult director Gregg Araki returns to his B-movie roots with comedy-sci-fi-horror Kaboom

Kaboom

Cult director Gregg Araki returns to his B-movie roots with comedy-sci-fi-horror

(4 stars)23 May 2011

(15) 86min Cult director Gregg Araki (The Living End, Mysterious Skin), one of the leading figures in the New Queer Cinema of the 90s, returns to the style of his earlier work for Kaboom, a gloriously trashy, insane ride of a film that wears its…

Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu star in playful French comedy Potiche

Potiche

Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu star in playful French comedy

(4 stars)23 May 2011

(15) 103 min Catherine Deneuve has a gift of a role in this deliciously subversive farce from the prolific François Ozon. Deneuve is Suzanne, the ‘potiche’ or trophy wife, blithely content to be a domestic goddess in the shadow of insufferable…

Disney comedy Prom is bland and generic tween fluff, starring Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell

Prom

Disney comedy is bland and generic tween fluff, starring Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell

(2 stars)23 May 2011

(U) 103min After the huge success of the High School Musical franchise, Disney have been quick to cash in on the teen genre, and Prom is based on another event from the school calendar upon which it hangs a familiar story. But despite the assured…

Mammuth

Mammuth

Gerard Depardieu stars in road trip comedy

(3 stars)17 May 2011

(15) 92min Directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern have shown a talent to amuse with politically-incorrect, deadpan delights like Aaltra (2004) and Louise-Michel (still awaiting a Scottish cinema release). Mammuth offers more of the same with…

Attack the Block plays for scares more than laughs, and succeeds admirably

Attack the Block

Plays for scares more than laughs, and succeeds admirably

(3 stars)25 Apr 2011

(15) 87min Coming from the same production team as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, this confident debut from Joe Cornish (one half of duo Adam and Joe) is much less a comedy than might have been expected. Rather it’s a…

Xavier Dolan returns with sophomore effort Heartbeats

Xavier Dolan returns with Heartbeats

The film marries humour with Nouvelle Vague cool, and stars Monia Chokri and Niels Schneider

(4 stars)20 Apr 2011

(15) 100min Xavier Dolan caused a stir two years ago when his assured debut feature, I Killed My Mother, won a string of awards at Cannes. The young director from Montreal was only 20 years old. If that wasn’t impressive enough he returned to the…

Tom McCarthy's Win Win is a sterling comedy/drama starring Paul Giamatti

Win Win

Tom McCarthy's sterling comedy/drama starring Paul Giamatti

(4 stars)18 Apr 2011

(15) 105min Like his earlier two films, The Station Agent and The Visitor, Tom McCarthy’s new film Win Win makes no grand statements and is all the better for it. An expertly shaken comedy/drama cocktail, it tells of small-town attorney Mike Flaherty…

Your Highness starring Danny McBride is a load of fantasy rubbish

Your Highness starring Danny McBride is a load of fantasy rubbish

James Franco, Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman fail to improve it

(1 star)14 Apr 2011

(15) 102min Before Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy heralded a resurgence of the ‘fantasy quest’ movie, this much-derided genre enjoyed a kind of golden age in the late 1980s, when Labyrinth, The Princess Bride and Willow captured the…

Hall Pass high on gross-out but low on entertainment

Hall Pass high on gross-out but low on entertainment

Farrelly Brothers’ take on wife-sanctioned adultery is just unfunny

(2 stars)1 Apr 2011

(15) 105min From its preoccupations with midlife crises and marital woes, it’s tempting to think that Hall Pass represents the Farrelly Brothers having grown up. Rest assured however, there are plenty of gross-out gags – culminating in what may be…

Matt Bissonnette's road movie Passenger Side is a smart comedy-drama about sibling rivalries, starring Joel Bissonnette and Adam Scott

Passenger Side is a witty road movie about sibling rivalries

Matt Bissonnette's comedy stars Joel Bissonnette and Adam Scott

(4 stars)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

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…

Nick Hamm's rock'n'roll comedy Killing Bono fails to hit its targets

Nick Hamm's rock'n'roll comedy Killing Bono fails to hit its targets

Ben Barnes, Martin McCann and Pete Postlethwaite star in U2-envy film

(2 stars)18 Mar 2011

(15) 113min Killing Bono – it’s probably a thought more than a few have entertained over the years. Whether Neil McCormick ever did is another matter. Author of the exuberant rock memoir I Was Bono’s Doppelgänger, aspiring musician McCormick grew up…

Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs)

Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs)

Overlong comedy-drama starring Marion Cotillard, Francois Cluzet and Benoit Magimel

(2 stars)18 Mar 2011

(15) 154min Following the international success of his innocent-man-on-the-run thriller Tell No One, French actor/director Guillaume Canet returns with this sprawling ensemble drama, which concerns a group of friends in their 30s and 40s. One of…

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Woody Allen's London-set comedy lacks vitality

(2 stars)10 Mar 2011

(12A) 98min Sally (Naomi Watts) is frustrated with her marriage to failed writer Roy (Josh Brolin) and is struggling to understand her mother Helena (Gemma Jones) who has turned to a fortune teller to guide her through her break up with husband Alfie…

GFF blog: You Instead premiere creates perfect T in the Park vibe

GFF blog: You Instead premiere creates perfect T in the Park vibe

Featured musician Jo Mango talked to us at the after-party

2 Mar 2011

Sigma Films – the Glasgow-based company behind the likes of Red Road, Hallam Foe and Young Adam – celebrated its 15th birthday with the premiere of You Instead on Friday night. The film tells the tale of two bickering rockstars – played by Luke…

Profile: Richard Ayoade

Profile: Richard Ayoade

Boosh, IT Crowd and Darkplace star directs Joe Dunthorne adap Submarine

2 Mar 2011

Name Richard Ayoade Born 12 June 1977, Whipp’s Cross, London Background Best known for playing Moss in Graham Linehan ’s hit TV comedy The IT Crowd, Ayoade first came to the notice of cult comedy fans as writer, director and co-star of spoof…

Submarine

Submarine

British coming of age tale, directed by Richard Ayoade

(4 stars)2 Mar 2011

(15) 98min Here is a rare thing: a British comedy debut that’s surprising, witty, hugely accomplished and fully capable of finding an audience worldwide. Richard Ayoade, previously best known for his TV roles in The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh…

GFF blog: cinema showman Bruce Goldstein talks The Tingler

GFF blog: Bruce Goldstein talks The Tingler

The Vincent Price-starring, William Castle-directed gimmick fest gets a new lease of life at the GFF

22 Feb 2011

Bruce Goldstein is not happy about his official job description at the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘I’m not a film historian – well, I guess I am, of a sort – but primarily, I’m a film distributor, and I run a cinema. Most successful repertory stream in the…

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