Film, Issue 623

Edith Piaf: Le Concert Ideal/The Documentary

(E) 110min (Acorn DVD retail) MUSIC/BOXSET The life of legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf was the stuff of melodrama, which, along with her incredible talents, accounts for her enduring appeal and status as a kind of deity in her native France. The…

The Class: To Sir, with love

Laurent Cantet’s Palme D’Or winner The Class is the best film ever made about education. Paul Dale explains why every MSP should be made to watch it

Glasgow Film Festival: FrightFest

There’s something primal about being scared, that jolt of adrenaline that makes us feel alive. Going back to the monsters of Greek and Roman mythology to scary stories told round the campfire, the horror genre is one of the oldest recorded forms of…

Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell is the unrepentant king of the Bs. He burst onto the world of underground cinema with the ultimate video nasty, The Evil Dead, its two sequels, and a string of unacknowledged classics such as Maniac Cop, Crimewave, Man With the Screaming…

Che: Part Two

WAR/BIOPIC (15) 127min Che Guevara’s final fatal campaign in Bolivia gets bold and bleak treatment in the second part of Steven Soderbergh’s extraordinary bio-historical epic about the ultimate revolutionary. It’s 1967 and Guevara (Benecio…

Gran Torino

Uneven and lacking in subtlety, this role is undoubtedly the one Eastwood was born to play

Clint Eastwood attempts a light-hearted reproach to some of the more reactionary values of his previous films in this, his acting swansong. Recently bereaved Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) lives in a Michigan neighbourhood dominated by immigrants. Walt, a…

Glasgow Film Festival: Flash of Genius

As those old seat belt safety films (‘clunk click every trip’) fronted by Sir Jimmy Saville taught us – it’s difficult to make car safety stimulating. Flash of Genius, a David and Goliath style story based on the true story of university professor and…

Interview: Anvil - The Story of Anvil

You’ve probably never heard of Anvil, but bands like Slayer, Metallica and Anthrax all cite them as an influence. Formed by childhood friends Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow (on vocals and guitar) and drummer Robb Reiner in 1973, they tasted success in the 80s with…

Film Books Roundup

There’s something of a publishing boom in books about cinema at the moment. Whether anyone is actually going to buy these books is obviously a moot point, the current mantra of publishers and university presses is ‘publish and be damned, libraries will…

Three Monkeys (Üç maymun)

Following on from Uzak (Distant), his melancholic portrait of troubled masculinity, and his intimate study of a relationship meltdown in 2006’s Climates, Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan ambitiously branches out into film noir territory with this…

LGBT interest DVDs

ROUND-UP The re-release on DVD of Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together (Artificial Eye) ●●●● is cause for celebration. The award-winning film follows the fortunes of a gay couple from Hong Kong, who part company shortly after arriving in Argentina, leaving…

Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival and goNORTH

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is offering budding filmmakers the chance to have their work screened across the country. The winner will see their work up on the big screen in cinemas across Scotland this October, with entries…

The Devil and Daniel Webster

(U) 106min (Eureka DVD retail) FANTASY A very welcome release for this diabolically undervalued 1941 masterpiece of 19th century American folklore fantasy. Based on a story by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet-writer Stephen Vincent Benét (upon…

Paris 36

(12) 120min DRAMA Director Christopher Barratier had an enormous hit at the French box office in 2004 with The Chorus, a saccharine tale of an inspirational teacher at a reform school setting up a choir for the boys. Working now on a much bigger…

Nomad

(15) 112min (Optimum DVD retail) EPIC This might have been Kazakhstan’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, and was several years in the making, but the end result is weary with predictability. Like many a big…

The Unborn

(15) 87min HORROR Screenwriter David S Goyer’s literate work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman has little relation to his work here as writer and director. The Unborn is a by-the-numbers fright-flick elevated by a resonant grounding in Jewish…

The International

German filmmaker Tom Run Lola Run Tykwer’s globetrotting intelligence thriller sets in motion a new kind of cinematic corporation tax. When Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) witnesses the killing of one of his colleagues, who was…

Film Noir

(18) 96min (Optimum DVD retail) ANIMATION/THRILLER Mixing the conventions of its genre namesake with explicit sex scenes, this adult animated feature is a cross between 40s noir The Big Sleep and 70s underground cartoon Fritz The Cat. It…

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Meet Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), an aspiring journalist who runs up a hefty seven-figure credit card bill while pursuing her dream in New York. With the pesky IRS on her trail, she tries to kick her plastic habit without losing the respect of her…

New in Town

(12A) 96min ROMANCE/COMEDY Imagine Local Hero shorn of wit, poetry and atmosphere and you have New In Town, a cheeseball rom-com from Danish TV director Jonas Elmer. Renee Zellweger plays Lucy Hill, a corporate high-flier from sunny Miami who…