Film and Drama

Confessions - Dark drama of murder and revenge in the classroom

Japan’s contender for Best Foreign Language Film at 2011 Oscars

11 Feb 2011

Japan’s contender for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards is a real departure for its director, Tetsuya Nakashima, whose candy coloured comedy Kamikaze Girls and musical Memories of Matsuko previously brought him international…

The Happiest Girl in the World (Cea Mai Fericita Fata din Lume)

10 Jun 2010

(15) 100min The debut feature of Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, this ironically titled comedy unfolds over the course of a sweltering summer day in Bucharest. Provincial working-class teenager Delia (Andrea Bosneag) has won a new car in a competition…

Ugly Truths: The Dry Land

2 Jun 2010

‘I’m not a professional expert in post-traumatic stress disorder,’ says Ugly Betty star America Ferrera. On the strength of the popular fashion-industry sitcom, few would have any expectations that the LA-born actress would have much flair for examining…

Toy Story 3 and The Illusionist among Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 highlights

5 May 2010

With The Edinburgh Film Festival 2010, which runs between 16-27 June, only a matter of weeks away, the red carpets are getting waterproofed and the popcorn machines are getting serviced. Now in its 64th year, the twelve day festival, packed with…

The Blind Side

22 Mar 2010

(12A) 128min If movies could be made out of human foreskins, Kentucky Fried Chickenbuckets and American Football sponsorship deals, The Blind Side is the film the Republican Party would make to fund their next attempt to hang some chads. Based on…

Trucker

19 Mar 2010

(15) 92min An interesting little drama that’s light on incident but big on character, Trucker is a welcome showcase for the acting talents of Michelle Monaghan. Having been a solid support player in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone, here…

The Kreutzer Sonata

18 Mar 2010

(18) 99min Having discarded cumbersome period trappings for his superb, stripped down, contemporary Los Angeles-set Tolstoy adaptation Ivansxtc, writer/director Bernard Rose does the same with another story by the Russian master, the second in a…

Glorious 39 - Stephen Poliakoff interview

Shooting the past

13 Nov 2009

Stephen Poliakoff wanted to take the subject of Nazi appeasement and turn it into a thriller for the big screen. Brian Donaldson hears how he succeeded

Nativity!

13 Nov 2009

(U) 105min Surprisingly enjoyable British family drama about one school’s attempt to put on the best nativity play in Britain by getting the media involved. Martin Freeman and Marc Wootton as the two primary school teachers at the eye of the storm…

Jeanne La Pucelle: The Battles/The Prisons

Epic Joan of Arc biopic

22 Oct 2009

Following on from Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson in exploring the story of Joan of Arc, Jacques Rivette offers an account of the martyr that is as political and gender oriented as it is spiritual in this 1995 two-film epic finally available on two…

Secret Defense

Menace in every moment

22 Oct 2009

Veteran New Wave filmmaker Jacques Rivette (Paris Nous Appartient, La Belle Noiseuse, Celine and Julie Go Boating) explores the sins of the past. Rivette regular Sandrine Bonnaire plays Parisian research scientist Sylvie Rousseau. When her brother shows…

Night Train to Inverness

Gutsy period curo

22 Oct 2009

Directed by oft overlooked British film and TV director Ernest Morris (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Court Martial of Major Keller), this tight, train-bound 1960 thriller has a lot to commend it. When ex-convict Roy Lewis (Norman Wooland) turns up in…

Tales of the Golden Age (Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur)

Affectionate Romanian cinema

21 Oct 2009

Cristian Mungiu, the Palme D’Or winning Romanian filmmaker of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, would almost certainly find himself in contention with American communications magnate Harold S Geneen’s much quoted belief that ‘We must not be hampered by…

An Education

Lessons in love

16 Oct 2009

Danish director Lone Scherfig is showing something of a liking for making films in Britain. The director of Glasgow-set Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself returns to the UK for this 1960s romantic drama featuring conmen, generation gaps, young love, swinging…

Profile: Ramin Bahrani

The film-making son of Iranian immigrants

16 Oct 2009

Name Ramin Bahrani Born 20 March 1975, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Background The son of Iranian immigrants to America, Bahrani grew up in North Carolina and studied film at Columbia University in New York, where he made several short films.

The Holly and the Ivy

50s British melodrama

5 Oct 2009

Although it’s by no means a classic, this British melodrama from 1952 provides an interesting snapshot of domestic life in postwar Blighty. Taking place over Christmas in rural Norfolk, it revolves around a family gathering at the vicarage of the…

I Sell the Dead

The horror comedy comes to DVD

2 Oct 2009

First-time writer-director Glenn McQuaid does a pretty good job of invoking the spirit of the camp old Hammer chillers films with this low-budget comedy horror about a pair luckless bodysnatchers. Set in a mist-shrouded backwater of 19th century feckin…

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

An enthralling morality tale

1 Oct 2009

Terry Gilliam has pulled a rabbit from his mad hat with his latest, a lively if flawed fantasy that looks set to reward him with one of his biggest hits. Notorious for having been interrupted by the death of Heath Ledger, the film only saw the light of…

Triangle

Severance director returns with another horror trip

1 Oct 2009

Christopher Smith’s CV so far comprises the lamentable Creep and the far better Severance. Triangle, his third film, falls somewhere between the two. A psychological thriller with supernatural elements, the film is designed to chill and keep you…

Thirst

Korean vampire flick

1 Oct 2009

The success of Twilight has inevitably paved the way for a glut of vampire- themed movies of varying merit. But Park Chan-wook’s Thirst is well worth sinking your teeth into. Admittedly overlong and occasionally disjointed, the film nevertheless offers…

The Godfather preview

23 Sep 2009

The most iconic mafia film of all time, and rightly so, in which Francis Ford Coppola weaves a rich and detailed story of family, bloodshed and crime all ruled by a masterful Marlon Brando. A great opportunity to see the life of the Corleone family on…

The Hurt Locker

23 Sep 2009

It’s well worth highlighting that Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker is still on limited release. Based on a journalist’s account of the Iraq war, this is one of the most realistic films to tackle the conflict, as you’d expect from the woman who gave us such…

The Beaches of Agnes

Playfully eccentric feminist biopic

17 Sep 2009

If this idiosyncratic cinematic self-portrait is indeed Agnes Varda’s final film, it’s an illuminating and poignant adieu. The Belgian-born octogenarian film-maker ‘walks backwards’ through her life, narrating and drawing on clips from her own films and…

Agnès Varda

The considerable career of the ‘grandmother’ of Le Nouvelle Vague

17 Sep 2009

There are rumours that Agnès Varda’s 2008 cinematic autobiography The Beaches of Agnès is her last film. For any octogenarian filmmaker, this might seem like the logical conclusion to a prolific career, but Varda is no ordinary artist. When she…

Playlist 18 - Short films

Though far from short of quality

17 Sep 2009

The internet has gifted us with the attention spans of goldfish. But that’s no bad thing when the best short films can stimulate more thoroughly than a dozen features, as well as providing the perfect calling card for up and coming directors. Witness…