Film, Drama and Brian Donaldson

Ken Loach's Route Irish doesn't shy away from asking some tough questions

Mark Womack and John Bishop in Paul Laverty-penned Iraq drama

10 Mar 2011

(15) 104min You can almost feel Ken Loach and Paul Laverty bracing themselves for another critical onslaught by the establishment. It happened to the director/screenwriter duo with their Irish civil war drama The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and it’s…

The search for truth: Paul Laverty on Route Irish

The screenwriter discusss his latest Ken Loach-directed project, an Iraq-based drama

2 Mar 2011

Waterboarding. A barbaric act of intolerable cruelty that should have stayed in the middle ages or a justifiable military tool in extricating information from the sworn enemy? Given what we now know of western forces’ sometimes inhumane tactics in Iraq…

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

The Corner

25 Jun 2009

Long before The Wire became every two-bit critic’s all-time favourite show (be afraid people, even George Osborne is a fan) David Simon gave us The Corner, a relentlessly bleak mini-series which fleshed out the painful lives of West Baltimore’s most…

Incendiary

2 Apr 2009

DRAMA The tale of a guilt-ridden mother losing her young son and husband to a suicide bomb attack should make for unbearably emotional viewing. Instead, it’s more likely you’ll be watching through your hands on account of the ham-fisted approach and…

Quiet Chaos

19 Mar 2009

FAMILY DRAMA When his wife collapses and dies on their lawn surrounded by chopped melon and a traumatised young daughter, Pietro (Nanni Moretti) is saving an ungrateful woman from drowning. It’s just one of several delicious ironies during a movie in…

Magicians

1 Nov 2007

A film written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb: it’s Peep Show The Movie, right? Well, not quite, though the script never asks the pair to shy too far away from their small screen personae of uptight posh one and…

Manji

4 Oct 2007

(Yume Pictures) 90min DRAMA As strange as it is sensual, Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 melodramatic sizzler Manji succeeds in being various things to different people. At its best, it casts a visceral eye upon the codes of a sexual culture which would…

Dead or Alive

(18) 105min (Tartan DVD rental/retail)

9 Aug 2007

FUTURISTIC DRAMA In 1999, Takashi Miike released two films. The powerful and disturbing Audition was joined by this ramshackle futuristic affair which featured similar stunts to that year’s Matrix while bowing heavily to the influence of Sergio Leone…

DVD - Twelve and Holding

Twelve and Holding

11 Apr 2007

COMING OF AGE DRAMA When a prank goes horribly wrong with one boy being burned alive in a tree house, his closest allies cope with the loss in their own ways. The dead lad’s brother Jacob, born with a massive birthmark, goes on a mission to make the…