Film and Issue 605

The Edge of Love

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 110min Dylan Thomas, he of the milk wood, once remarked that: ‘When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.’ The Edge of Love is the story of how the great Welsh poet burnt a very big bridge, one that connected him to an…

Man on Wire - James Marsh interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Philippe Petit was the man who dared to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Director James Marsh tells Kaleem Aftab how he made a film of this incredible feat

Bigga Than Ben: A Russian's Guide to Ripping Off London

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(SA Halewood, UK) 85min Allegedly based on the diary of a young Moscovite who came to London in the late 1990s, Bigga than Ben is, for the majority of its running time, a distracting black comedy. Cobakka (Ben Barnes) and Spiker (Andrei Chadov) are a…

The Escapist - Brian Cox interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

As Brian Cox welcomes me into the interview room at London’s Gibson Guitar Studio, he points out a picture of Syd Barrett, ‘a son of Cambridge’, on the wall. It’s been just a few months since the Dundee-born actor was treading the boards on Broadway to…

Eat, For This is My Body

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Michelange Quay, Haiti/France) 105min Quay’s semi-abstract look at colonial elements in Haiti is comparable to two 1980s touchstones, Marion Hänsel’s Dust and Claire Denis’ Chocolat. While there is an impressive opening shot that glides over the…

WALL-E - Angus MacLane interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Could you fall in love with a robot? Animation studio Pixar is betting that you will. The little metal critter with designs on your heart is called WALL-E, and this summer, he’ll be giving Indiana Jones and Carrie Bradshaw a run for their money at the…

The Visitor - Thomas McCarthy interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Thomas McCarthy works as an actor or a writer or a director, but feels that to do all three jobs in one film would be a little too much for him to take. As an actor, despite turns in such stellar productions as Syriana, All The Kings Men and Flags of…

Matter of fact - Documentaries at the EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

When the Edinburgh International Film Festival opened its doors for the first time in 1947, documentary films were the only things on the menu. Much has changed since then, but the EIFF has continued its commitment to the feature documentary form. Every…

Standard Operating Procedure

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Errol Morris, USA) 116min The great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War) turns his investigative eye towards the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The coup of the film is that Morris interviews some of the soldiers who…

Elite Squad (Tropa D'Elite)

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(José Padilha, Brazil) 118min Based on Luiz Eduardo Soares’ bestseller, Elite Squad is a favela thriller from the director of 2002 documentary Bus 174. It’s 1997 in Rio de Janeiro, months before a visit from Pope John Paul II. The rundown housing…

Donkey Punch

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Oliver Blackburn, UK) 99min New British director Oliver Blackburn marks himself out as a name to watch in this misogynistic horror set in Marbella. When three lasses from Leeds (Sian Breckin, Jaime Winstone and Nichola Burley) decide to board a yacht…

Shiver (Eskalofrio)

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Isidro Ortiz, Spain) 91min Once again Spain is proving to be a breeding ground for newly discovered horror talent. Isidro Ortiz puts in his most satisfying feature yet as paranoia and the old staple of something lurking in the woods are brought into…

Somers Town

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Shane Meadows, UK) 75min While Shane Meadows’ last outing, This is England, showed the racist side of British nationalism, his follow-up, the black-and-white Somers Town, demonstrates just how nice the Brits can be to immigrants. Starting life as a…

Tiramisu

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Paula van der Oest, Netherlands) 90min Abandoned by her theatre director husband for a younger woman, middle-aged actress and retail therapy junkie Anne seems unconcerned by the impending loss of the Amsterdam houseboat she and her long-suffering…

Death Defying Acts

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Gillian Armstrong, UK, Australia) 97min It’s 1926, and the world tour of escape artist Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) brings him to Edinburgh. There he’s charmed by local con-artist Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who poses as a psychic to put…

Jesus Christ Saviour

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Peter Geyer, Germany) 84min At the beginning of Werner Herzog’s engrossing documentary homage to his favourite actor and nemesis Klaus Kinski, My Best Fiend, there is a tantalising glimpse of Kinski performing his infamous 1971 Jesus concert. Finally…

Before The Rains

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Santosh Sivan, US/India) 98min Set against the backdrop of the decline of the British empire and growth of the nationalist movement in southern India in 1937, this tale of forbidden love between an English spice merchant (Linus Roache) and a local…

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Steven Sebring, USA) 109min Patti Smith, the singer-poet and one-time ‘godmother of punk’, bares her soul in this intimate self-portrait, culled from over 11 years of filming with her friend, the photographer Steve Sebring. Beginning in 1995, the film…

14 Kilometres (14 Kilometros)

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

This issue-driven Spanish drama isn’t afraid to draw on several stock clichés of the well-trodden road movie genre. Three Africans undertake the arduous journey from Niger to Spain, crossing deserts, trying to get through corrupt border controls and…

Fears of the Dark

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Various, France) 85min This episodic animation is destined for cult status. Five respected graphic novelists have each penned a story detailing what made them scared at night. Dogs, mad girls and silence all feature strongly. Each story has then been…

The Wackness

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Jonathan Levine, USA) 110min Jonathan Levine’s follow-up to his superior teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is just as assured a film, although this wigged-out high school movie is greatly enriched by being a far more personal project.

Couscous - Abdel Kechiche interview

19 Jun 2008

‘With Couscous, which is set in the southern French port city of Sète, I wanted to represent a social milieu, which I knew very well because I’d grown up there, and which hasn’t been represented on screen before. I think that when you make a film about…

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

19 Jun 2008

DOCUMENTARY (18) 93min Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – most people would regard this maxim as pretty true. Documentary filmmaker Chris Waitt, however, flies in the face of danger. After finding himself on the receiving end of a string of…

Female Agents (Les Femmes Des Ombres)

19 Jun 2008

WAR/THRILLER (15) 116min Spring 1944, the lead up to the Normandy landings, and the technical planning and manufacture of a floating dock has been going on since January. When a British geologist ends up in a French hospital, the plan is thrown into…

Couscous (La Graine et le mulet)

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 154min Filmmaker Abdel Kechiche builds on the promise that he displayed with 2003’s L’Esquive by creating a drama similar in style and spirit to Vittorio De Sica’s 1951 neorealist fantasy Miracle in Milan. The man in need of a miracle in…