Film and Drama

A Walk with Love and Death

22 May 2008

ROMANCE/DRAMA (15) 90min (BFI) Made immediately after his boisterous Scottish historical romp Sinful Davey, this long lost, now cult, 1969 film was a much more personal project for the great John Huston. Based on Dutch writer Hans Koningsberger’s…

Bandit Queen

22 May 2008

DRAMA (18) 115min (Metrodome) Made in 1994 Shekhar Kapur’s (Elizabeth) brutal retelling of the true story of Phoolan Devi, India’s only modern day female outlaw is still a compellingly tough watch. Jailed in 1983 and released in the year Bandit…

Honeydripper

8 May 2008

DRAMA (PG) 124min God may have given rock’n’roll to us but Alabama gave us the electric blues. The story of its genesis is one that writer and director John Sayles (Lone Star, Matewan, Silver City) sets out in his latest film treatise in search of the…

Heartbeat Detector

8 May 2008

DRAMA (12A) 135min Visually spare, leisurely in pace, wordy and featuring an eclectic, occasionally jarring soundtrack, this French corporate thriller is demanding and rewarding in equal measure. Adapted from François Emmanuel’s novel La Question…

XXY

8 May 2008

DRAMA (15) 90min What would you do if your only child was a hermaphrodite? Would you let this anomaly of nature lie or would you welcome the intervention of major surgery? This is the dilemma at the centre of Argentinean screenwriter Lucía Puenzo’s…

Honeydripper - John Sayles Interview

8 May 2008

‘Some of the plot of Honeydripper comes from this rock’n’roll legend called Guitar Slim who was a New Orleans guitar player in the early 1950s. He had a huge hit with a song called ‘The Things That I Used to Do’ which was arranged by Ray Charles when he…

The Last Mistress

8 May 2008

DRAMA (15) 114min Despite suffering a cerebral haemorrhage in 2004, the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has returned with her most entertaining and accessible work to date. Based on the 19th century novel by the controversial writer Jules-Amédée…

Caramel

8 May 2008

DRAMA (PG) 95min Dedicated ‘to my Beirut’, the charming, bitter-sweet debut feature of writer-director Nadine Labaki centres upon the ‘Si Belle’ beauty parlour in the Lebanese capital. The 30-year-old proprietor Layale (Labaki herself) is guiltily…

Cashback

8 May 2008

In the words of Faithless’ Maxi Jazz, art student and late night supermarket shift worker Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) ‘can’t get no sleep’. Ever since he split up with his girlfriend Suzy (Michelle Ryan) he’s been wandering around in a daze. While his…

Under the Bombs

8 May 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 98min This heartfelt road movie from Lebanese writer-director Philippe Aractingi was filmed during Israel’s 33-day bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. It follows a wealthy Shiite woman Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) and a…

Smart People

8 May 2008

COMEDY DRAMA (15) 94min Another week and another dysfunctional American family comedy. Scripted by novelist Mark Poirier and directed by newcomer Noam Murro, Smart People examines the improbable rejuvenation of widowed, middle-aged English professor…

Charlie Bartlett

8 May 2008

DRAMA (15) 96min In a crafty move that befits its wheeler-dealer anti-hero, teen comedy Charlie Bartlett arrives on the coat-tails of the highly publicised Iron Man, which also features Robert Downey Jr. The star gives a pleasing supporting…

Pink String and Sealing Wax

8 May 2008

DRAMA (PG) 86min (Optimum) This is the debut feature from Robert Hamer, the talented but troubled (by the bottle) filmmaker who went on to make the superb Kind Hearts and Coronets and terrific School for Scoundrels. Having contributed a segment of the…

Private Property

24 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 95min ‘The story of an explosion in a closed world’ is how the young Belgian writer-director Joachim Lafosse has described Private Property, his emotionally complex and mordantly amusing family drama, in which the boundaries between parents…

Stop-Loss

24 Apr 2008

DRAMA/WAR (15) 111min ‘Stop-Loss’ is the rule that stops American soldiers leaving a conflict even after they have completed their tour of duty. This fate befalls Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), a former star college footballer, whose return from Iraq…

Beaufort

24 Apr 2008

WAR/ACTION/DRAMA (15) 125min The Beaufort of the title refers to a castle built by the Crusaders during the 12th century in southern Lebanon. In 2000 this mountaintop fortress is occupied by IDF (Israeli Defence Force) troops, who are preparing to…

Indiscretion of an American Wife

24 Apr 2008

DRAMA (U) 69min (Freemantle DVD rental/retail) Coming in at just over an hour, this is a film that can be found in different versions (another one goes under the title of Terminal Station). This one’s strength lies in another of Montgomery Clift’s…

Happy-Go-Lucky

10 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 118min The social realism-orientated cinema of British filmmaker Mike Leigh takes on a slightly different tone with Happy-Go-Lucky, his most recent foray into a kind of filmic anthropology of (to use the great filmmaker’s own words) ‘how we…

Flashbacks of a Fool

10 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 113min Between Bond outings Daniel Craig has made good use of his greatly increased clout to get this interesting, if not outstanding drama about the repercussions of childhood folly, green-lit. Set in present-day California and an English…

21

10 Apr 2008

ADAPTATION (12A) 123min Robert Luketic’s unfaithful adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House: The Inside story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas For Millions can’t decide whether it’s high stakes or high school. In real life a…

Four Minutes

10 Apr 2008

DRAMA (15) 115min How about this for an enjoyably overwrought contemporary German melodrama? Traude Kruger (Monica Bleibtreu) suffered the trauma of seeing her female communist lover hung by the Nazis during WWII, and has spent the last 60 years…

In Memory of Me

10 Apr 2008

DRAMA (U) 114min (Artificial Eye DVD retail) What happens when life no longer tastes so sweet? One option is to undergo a period of spiritual training that will eventually lead to the priesthood. As with much of the best Italian cinema in recent…

Son of Rambow

27 Mar 2008

DRAMA (12A) 95min It’s the summer of 1983. Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party are winning their second landslide election victory and NASA is putting the first American woman in space, two schoolboys from the south of England are about to…

My Brother is an Only Child

27 Mar 2008

DRAMA (15) 103min It is sometimes worth remembering that there was a time of passion and politics in Europe before mass consumerism and cultural deception helped nullify and stupefy the general populace. This nostalgic idea runs through Antonio…

You, the Living

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 93min In an unnamed Nordic city a moustachioed tuba-player starts talking about savings and pensions, while making love to his wife who is wearing a military helmet. A dog is dragged along a pavement, attached to the walker of its…

How She Move

27 Mar 2008

DRAMA (12A) 91min The latest entry in the competitive step-dance cycle initiated by Bille Woodruff’s 2003 Honey, Ian Iqbal Rashid’s How She Move adds little to the tried-and-tested format of recent entries Step Up and sequel Step Up 2 The Streets.

Bloody Sunday

27 Mar 2008

DRAMA (15) 110min (Optimum DVD retail) Better known for his bigger budget work on The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum films and United 93, Paul Greengrass’ 2002 docudrama showing the events that led up to the tragic incident on 30 January 1972 in Derry…

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…

The Spiderwick Chronicles

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA/FAMILY/FANTASY (PG) 95min When newly divorced mother of three Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker) moves her kids to the secluded rundown Spiderwick estate, once owned by their great great uncle Spiderwick, the children are less than impressed. Twin…

Lars and the Real Girl

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA (12A) 106min If, as the American columnist and poet Don Marquis noted, ‘fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in bad clothes’, then he should try a few hours in the sub zero Wisconsin town where Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) lives.

Flight of the Red Balloon

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA (PG) 113min Taiwanese New Wave cinema pioneer Hou Hsiao-hsien makes his French language debut with this eloquent drama loosely inspired by Albert Lamorisse’s much-loved 1956 short, The Red Balloon. Taking as its starting point that film’s…

Children Of Glory

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA (15) 120min Made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the doomed Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule in 1956 (which cost some 5000 lives including that of the executed prime minister Imre Nagy), director Krisztina Goda’s Children of Glory…

Water Lilies (Naissance Des Pieuvres)

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA (15) 83min The literal translation of this film’s French title is ‘Birth of Octopuses’, which is a far more apt description of how the growing pains of a trio of 15-year-old girls translate into arrogance and sexual confusion. Set in a new…

Benny's Video

13 Mar 2008

DRAMA (15) 105min (Tartan DVD retail) ‘How beastly the bourgeoisie is,’ DH Lawrence once proposed, and they don’t get much worse than in Benny’s Video. Not that the parents in Michael Funny Games Haneke’s film are especially cruel or vindictive, it’s…

Paul Taylor - We Are Together

28 Feb 2008

Director Paul Taylor had just finished his first year studying film at Bournemouth in 2003 when he went off and worked for a few months at the Agape Orphanage in South Africa. A year later he returned with a camera and documented the kids. In some ways…

Garage

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA (18) 84min Director Lenny Abrahamson follows his quirky junkie comedy Adam and Paul with another tale of oddballs living life on the margins of Irish society. Stand-up comedian Pat Shortt plays against type as the gas station attendant Josie…

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…

The Edge of Heaven

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA (15) 121min With Goethe’s assertion that ‘We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens’ ringing in his ears, the seriously gifted Turkish/German filmmaker Fatih Akin (Head-On, Crossing the Bridge) delivers something completely…

Don't Touch The Axe

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (PG) 138min Adapted from Balzac’s The Duchess of Langeais, Jacques Rivette’s latest film tells the tragic story of a French general Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu), back from a difficult trip in Africa, who falls for married…

Bergman: The Faith Trilogy

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA (15) 260min (Tartan DVD retail) As with much of Ingmar Bergman’s work this trilogy of early 60s films on the issue of faith are really chamber pieces, where a sense of claustrophobia weighs heavily on the characters’ lives. Whether that’s the…

There Will be Blood

14 Feb 2008

EPIC/DRAMA (15) 158min As the American industrialist Jean Paul Getty noted, ‘Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever finds it keeps it.’ It’s a notion that lone silver prospector Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) soon discovers when he finds black gold…

The Italian

14 Feb 2008

DRAMA (12A) 99min It’s 2002 in a rundown orphanage in a remote, god forsaken corner of Russia. The boys live in hope of being picked out by one of few visiting couples keen on adoption. Sweet six-year-old Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov) is one day lucky…

My Blueberry Nights

14 Feb 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (12A) 95min Wong Kar-wai’s compelling 1997 Buenos Aries-set Happy Together demonstrated that he can successfully transplant his inimitable style away from Asia, but here the director of Chungking Express and In The Mood for Love has made…

Omagh

14 Feb 2008

DRAMA (15) 102min (Optimum DVD retail/rental) On August 15 1998 a peaceful small town was blown apart both literally and figuratively by a bomb blast that killed and wounded many of its citizens. Written by Paul United 93 Greengrass but directed by…

Penelope

(U) 89min

31 Jan 2008

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away from self-conscious satire, there lived a girl named Penelope (Christina Ricci). With her moneyed background, good sense of humour and French language skills, Penelope should be a bit of a catch. Sadly, Penelope…

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - interview with Marie-Josée Croze

31 Jan 2008

‘When I first met the director Julian Schnabel to discuss being in his version of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I remember that Julian was wearing these beautiful silk pyjamas. They were the same pyjamas that Bauby…

Chromophobia

(15) 135min

31 Jan 2008

Writer-director Martha Fiennes’ follow-up to her impressive debut, Onegin, is a disappointment. The cool manner with which Fiennes told the story of the emotionally distant St Petersburg aristocrat in that film is here frozen solid, so that what’s…

Things We Lost in the Fire

(15) 117min

31 Jan 2008

Danish director Susanne Bier’s films Open Hearts, Brothers and After The Wedding all revolve around the fallout from a tragic and unexpected accident. Now the director is trying to repeat the feat in an American setting and with Hollywood stars. The…

The Frightened City

Crime/drama

31 Jan 2008

Chiefly notable for an early screen appearance from Edinburgh’s most famous former milkman, this somewhat pedestrian 1961 British film noir features Sean Connery in one of his last supporting roles, here playing a cat burglar the year before he was cast…

The Savages

17 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 114min Nine years after her 1998 feature debut Slums of Beverley Hills, writer-director Tamara Jenkins returns with this richly observed and terrifically acted character study. The Savages of the title are a pair of intellectual…