Film and Issue 565

Bugsy Malone

Razamataz and splurge

11 Dec 2006

You’ve cracked it this time Captain Schmowlski! 4 stars

DVD round-up of 2006

Film Editor Paul Dale picks his DVD releases of th

11 Dec 2006

As internet rental services continue to dent the once all-consuming (not to say exorbitant) high street video shop, interesting patterns seem to be emerging.

Review of the year

11 Dec 2006

This is all relative. I’m well aware, as a film critic and man who has lost all his friends since recommending the complete works of Bela Tarr to them, that what might be right for me, may not be right for some. The films released in 2006 that reminded…

* Hitlist

Hitlist

11 Dec 2006

The Wizard of Oz Victor Fleming's evergreen 1939 adaptation of L Frank Baum's book gets a brand new print so it can be seen as was always intended. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 15 Dec. Read review

Deep Water

(PG) 93min

11 Dec 2006

DOCUMENTARY This cogent and authoritative documentary feature recounts the sad, regrettably true story of a British eccentric and loser. In 1968, amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst decided that he would take part in The Sunday Times’ first Golden Globe…

Deja Vu

(12A) 126min

11 Dec 2006

SCI FI/ADVENTURE/THRILLER A massive explosion, a slow-mo on our hero arriving on the scene of a terrorist attack, and within the first ten minutes it’s clear that we’ve entered the destructive cinematic world of Tony Scott. But, unlike with the…

Dark Horse

(15) 106min

11 Dec 2006

COMEDY/ROMANCE/DRAMA The first hour of Icelander Dagur Kári’s follow up to Nói Albínói is just as good as his quirky debut. Daniel (Jakob Cedergren) is a graffiti artist who makes money by taking commissions to write girls’ names on walls for men who…

Do You Remember Dolly Bell? - DVD review

Do You Remember Dolly Bell?

11 Dec 2006

COMEDY/ROMANCE Emir Kusturica usually works a combination of nostalgia and rumbustiousness, but often the former loses out to the latter and many of his films (like Underground, Black Cat, White Cat) end up like crazy multiple circus acts. Which is…

Black Sun: The Nankin Massacre - DVD review

Black Sun: The Nankin Massacre

11 Dec 2006

HISTORY/HORROR This is a very weird amalgam of sub-standard video nasty style gore and sanctimonious documentary footage of the Nanking massacre of 1937. The film might have been a genuine exploitation classic, or a horrifically reflective…

Jerkbeast - DVD review

Jerkbeast

11 Dec 2006

MUSIC COMEDY The people at Videosyncratic are so painfully desperate to prove their really cool independent credentials that they remind us of them in this DVD’s accompanying brochure and at the beginning of this ‘film’. But the definition of…

Tales of Beatrix Potter - DVD review

Tales of Beatrix Potter

11 Dec 2006

DANCE Dance on screen rarely captures even half the magic of seeing it live on stage. Which is why this adaptation by the Royal Ballet is so successful - it doesn’t even try. Instead the action takes place in a variety of locations, from the green…

Bollywood Round-Up

7 Dec 2006

Vivah - A Journey From Engagement to Marriage (PG) 166min (1 star) harks back to an innocence that hardly, if ever, existed in Bollywood cinema. Prem (Shahid Kapoor) the eligible young son of a business tycoon agrees to an arranged marriage to Poonam…

Flags of Our Fathers

(15) 132min

7 Dec 2006

WAR/EPIC At 76 years of age, Hollywood living legend Clint Eastwood crowns his glorious career with his most ambitious film to date. Flags of Our Fathers is not his best film, but it’s an impressively epic endeavour, the first of two grand scale…

Container - profile of Lukas Moodysson

Profile

7 Dec 2006

Name Lukas Moodysson Born Malmo, Sweden, 17 January 1969. Background Moodysson came to prominence with his debut film, Show Me Love (for some reason the much better Swedish title Fucking Amal was not used in the UK). In a country starved of…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

(15) 147min

7 Dec 2006

ADAPTATION/THRILLER The most daunting task facing director Tom Twyker (Run, Lola, Run, Heaven) when adapting Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume was how to stimulate the olfactory senses onscreen in the scintillating way the author managed on the page.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - profile of Ben Whishaw

Profile

7 Dec 2006

Name Ben Whishaw Born 14 October 1980, Bedfordshire. Background Whishaw grew up in Bedfordshire where he attended the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre before transferring to RADA. He first started making waves on the London stage, first in His…

Wizard of Oz, The

The Wizard of Oz

7 Dec 2006

NEW PRINT/CLASSIC The Wizard of Oz is about a girl called Dorothy (Judy Garland) whose neighbour, Miss Gulch, threatens to take away her dog, Toto, but they run away. A hurricane hits the house and the house gets blown away. Suddenly the hurricane…

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed

(15) 102min

7 Dec 2006

CRIME/THRILLER Ex-Cahiers du Cinema critic-turned-director Serge Le Péron revisits the intriguingly murky circumstances surrounding one of Gaullist France’s greatest political scandals. On 29 October 1965, an exiled Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka…

Container - review

Container

7 Dec 2006

EXPERIMENTAL DRAMA Lukas Moodysson continues his cinematic journey into the abstract with the beguiling Container. Since his striking debut Show Me Love, his films, Together, Lilya 4-ever and A Hole In My Heart have become less and less centred on a…

Eragon - Edward Speleers profile

Profile

6 Dec 2006

Name Edward Speleers Born 21 December 1987, Chichester, West Sussex. Background Likeable toff Speleers got a taste for acting at the private boarding school in Eastbourne which he still attends (he’s due to leave after his A-levels later this…

Gabrielle

(15) 90min

6 Dec 2006

DRAMA/ROMANCE ‘I love her as a collector does his most prized possession’, announces Jean (Pascal Greggory), a wealthy publisher in pre-WWI Paris, of his socialite wife of ten years Gabrielle (Isabelle Huppert). The husband’s arrogant self-regard is…