Film, Issue 666

Take One Action, Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival and Africa in Motion set for 2010

Festival-ed out post Edinburgh? If you’re a red carpet junkie, worry not, 2010 still has plenty to offer the discerning cineaste. But forget Venice, Toronto and London, what about film festivals a bit closer to home? The Scottish arts calendar is…

Resident Evil: Afterlife (3D)

(15) 96min In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, Alice (Milla Jovovich) continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety, while her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new…

The Maid (La Nana)

(15) 94min Chilean black comedy about a long-serving housemaid who begins to go a bit mental. Writer/director Sebastián Silva’s carefully empathetic screenplay and gutsy direction and an all-dominating performance by Catalina Saavedra make this well…

Welcome to 3D hell - upcoming 3D films

The latest films unable to say no to the film technology

Jackass 3-D The third documentary feature outing for Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of aging masochists is, you guessed it, in 3D. Why and to what effect remains a mystery. Out 5 Nov. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 & 2 The…

I’m Still Here

(15) 108min Joaquin Phoenix meltdown documentary. Selected release, Fri 17 Sep.

Simon Pegg stars in film adaptation of Burke and Hare story

Edinburgh-set horror-comedy released this Hallowe’en - Simon Pegg interview

William Burke and William Hare were two 19th-century serial killers – not grave robbers, as widely believed – who made a living selling off their victims’ bodies to the Edinburgh Medical College. This might not scream ‘comedy’ to the average passer-by…

Student Film Guide 2010

What's coming out when

From mainstream classics to art school gems, film critic Miles Fielder offers a rundown on the movies you cannot afford to miss

Know your cinemas

A round-up of all the best screens

Niki Boyle takes you through the cities finest silver screen haunts

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival 2010

Bill Douglas Trilogy screening and premiere of David Greig’s Monsters in the Hall

If there’s one thing that Scotland has in spades, it’s a proliferation of some mighty fine smaller scale festivals, and the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (now in its 4th year) has more than earned the credibility to rub shoulders with…

Burke and Hare

Set in ye ol' Edinburgh

If you want to see an old school Edinburgh, look out for it on the silver screen this Autumn says Miles Fielder

Bang for your buck

Stretch your film budget further

When it comes to concessions for the silver screen, some of the cities’ finest have ensured you’ll still have plenty of popcorn money in reserve.

Debra Granik's Winter’s Bone explores American mountain people

Adaptation of Daniel Woodrell novel

The American film writer-director Debra Granik has just returned from visiting this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival and she’s recalling the films she managed to cram in between her promotional duties. ‘I loved Thundersoul, a documentary about an…

Alamar

(U) 73min An artful fusion of documentary and fiction in which the non-professional cast play versions of themselves, Mexican filmmaker Pedro González-Rubio’s Alamar begins with a couple separating. Roberta (Roberta Palombini) has returned to her…

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

(15) 93min Inspired by true events, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done tells the story of Brad Macallum (Michael Shannon), an aspiring actor who commits the crime he is to enact in a Greek tragedy in which he is performing. So here it is. The…

Going The Distance

(15) 102min Whisper it quietly, but Drew Barrymore is beginning to lose her touch. Her early likeable films Never Been Kissed and The Wedding Singer meant we cut her a lot of slack as the girl-next-door. But after Music and Lyrics, 50 First Dates…

The Other Guys

(12A) 107min The action/comedy genre gets a welcome boost with Adam McKay’s crowd-pleaser The Other Guys teaming Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz, an oddly-matched couple of New York cops. After years in the shadows of…

Cyrus

(15) 90min Sibling writer/directors Mark and Jay Duplass are figureheads of the Mumblecore movement – ultra-low budget, largely improvised films featuring non-professional actors – and after earning praise on the American indie circuit for their…

The Runaways

(15) 106min For all its rock’n’roll rebellion and punk power, there’s something quite conventional about music promo director Floria Sigismondi’s biopic about The Runaways, the ’70s all-girl group that gave the world the Joan Jett. Perhaps it’s that…

The Hole

1980s wunderkind Joe Dante will forever have his name associated with hits Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins and Innerspace, but he’s been missing in action cinematically since 2003’s flop Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Fantasy adventure The Hole returns…

Winter's Bone

(15) 100min With its all too familiar theme of familial collapse and undercurrents of social disgrace and fear of the local customs, Debra Granik’s excellent second feature film could be a British colonial horror from a distant age, and in some ways…

Frontier Blues

(12A) 97min British-Iranian director Babak Jalali captures the absurdist details and quiet tragedies of life in a remote Iranian border town in his debut feature Frontier Blues. Through long, static shots and slow-pacing, Jalali details the lives…

The Kid

(15) 100min Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels alumnus Nick Moran has been quietly building himself a respectable second career as a writer, producer and director. His adaptation of the Kevin Lewis misery memoir The Kid is told with great energy and…

Ivul

(15) 100min Artist, writer and occasional filmmaker Andrew Kötting (Galivant, This Filthy Earth) returns to cinema with Ivul, the story of Alex who is caught by his father playing a sexualised game with his sister. In a state of rage the father sends…

Tamara Drewe

(15) 109min Just because a film is based on a newspaper comic strip does it have to feel like a crass pantomime? If you happen to be usually dependable British director Stephen Frears, apparently so. His relentlessly jaunty adaptation of Posy…

Just Wright

(PG) 100min Future definitions of the word ‘mawkish’ may well include a synopsis of Just Wright, a truly lame sporting rom-com in which the romance is as tepid as the comedy. The usually personable Queen Latifah (Chicago) plays lovelorn…