Film, Issue 649

An award is born!

Yuletide comedy Nativity! starring Martin Freeman and Ashley Jensen has won The List’s Film of the Year Award as part of the fourth annual Richard Attenborough Awards (RAFAs). Confetti director Debbie Issit’s new film pleased our readers so much they…

Cary Grant retrospective heads up impressive Glasgow Film Festival programme

A Career to Remember

Miles Fielder talks to Glasgow Film Festival co-director Allan Hunter about a retrospective of the films of one of Hollywood’s true greats. If old movies are your thing – and they should be, because they rarely do make ‘em like they used to anymore…

A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood and the silver screen

With Tom Ford’s stylish adaptation of A Single Man tipped for Oscar glory, Allan Radcliffe looks into novelist Christopher Isherwood’s enduring relationship with the silver screen. Think of Christopher Isherwood, and the first image that springs to…

Mighty Boosh, Todd Solondz and Michael Moore amongst Glasgow Film Festival highlights

Youth Journey of the Childmen: The Mighty Boosh on Tour Documentary look at the genius of the Boosh being screened with Julian Barratt’s short Curtains and a Q&A (tbc) with the cast. GFT, Fri 12 Feb, 8.15pm. Cary Grant Bringing up Baby…

Central Office of Information and Agnes Varda among DVD highlights

DVD boxsets roundup

(15) 116min Director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro) returns to the scene of one of his early successes with this feature film adaptation of the 1985 BBC television series that helped make his name. Mel Gibson (in his…

Murray Grigor shot-for-shot remake set for Glasgow Short Film Festival

The GFF short film strand contains some of the festival gems, writes Miles Fielder. ‘Short film is something of a catch-all term,’ says Matt Lloyd, co-curator of the Glasgow Short Film Festival and co-founder of Scotland’s independent shorts…

Food, Inc.

(PG) 93min Robert Kenner’s Oscar-nominated documentary seeks to lift the veil surrounding the food industry in America, and to reveal, in the director’s own words, ‘the truth about what we are eating’ – cheap food, it transpires, comes with some…

Invictus

(12A) 133min ‘Rugby is’ as Oscar Wilde noted on behalf of the sane and humane ‘a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of the city.’ Clint Eastwood’s new film Invictus not only invites the bullies back within the city walls but…

Youth in Revolt

(15) 90min Alongside Adventureland star Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Cera has cornered the market over the last few years when it comes to playing the thoughtful, mildly nerdish boy-next-door. Be it in juvenile comedy (Superbad), adolescent angst-drama…

A Single Man

(12A) 99min Tom Ford, the fashion industry’s Dorian Gray, adapts Christopher Isherwood’s spare, lyrical study of alienation and loss for his film debut (as director and screenwriter). A Single Man traces a day in the life of George Falconer…

In The Electric Mist

(15) 117min (High Fliers) The real mystery surrounding this adaptation of James Lee Burke’s bestselling crime novel In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead is why a perfectly respectable Hollywood movie boasting such an impressive cast and…

Taking Chance

(PG) 78min (HBO) There’s something to be said about a movie which doesn’t take the knee-jerk sensationalist route to making its point. And with a sensitive subject, such as the war in Iraq, you can see why Taking Chance would opt not to ramp up the…

The Fox Family

(15) 102min (Terracotta) Manic Korean tale about a family of shape-shifting ‘kumiho’ (literally a nine-tailed fox) spirits hiding out with a circus troupe as they prepare to become human beings permanently. The chance occurs only once every thousand…

Mary, Queen of Scots

(PG) 126min (Second Sight) Charles Jarrott’s 1971 historical melodrama chronicling the tiaras, tantrums and Machiavellian spite traded between Tudor royal cousins Mary and Elizabeth re-emerges on DVD as something of a surprise. For Mary, Queen of…

Died Young, Stayed Pretty

(E) 95min (ICA) Eileen Yaghoobian’s film delves into the underground poster culture in North America. In detailing the motivations and examining the creative spirit of these independent graphic designers, Yaghoobian uncovers a whole stratum of…

It’s Only A Movie - An Evening with Mark Kermode launches his autobiography

The Exorcist-obsessed, leather-clad and utterly iconic film critic is in (both) town(s) this fortnight, to discuss his autobiography, It’s Only A Movie, probably in a sardonic and slightly sarcastic fashion. Little-known Kermode fact: he plays double…

Battle For Terra 3D

(PG) 78min Having festered on the shelf since its April 2009 US release, Battle For Terra 3D arrives in our cinemas to cash in on the current wave of enthusiasm for three-dimensional cinema, and specifically Avatar, although Canadian director…

Ponyo (Gake No Ue No Ponyo)

(U) 101min An animated feature about a five-year-old boy who falls for a goldfish princess may not sound like a hot ticket, but the delightful content of Ponyo will be no surprise to anyone already in thrall to the Studio Ghibli brand. After Hayao…

Astro Boy

(PG) 93min A popular manga in Japan since 1952, and a cult TV show in the US since the early 1980s, Astro Boy makes a bid for worldwide domination in this flashy but flatly realised animation from director David Flushed Away Bowers. Freddie…