Film, Issue 687

Attenberg

Clinical emotional awakening both intrigues and mystifies

(18) 95min Unfolding in a strangely deserted seaside Greek industrial town, Attenberg charts the gradual emotional awakening of a withdrawn young woman Marina (impressive newcomer Ariane Labed), whose dying architect father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis…

Colombiana

Photocopy action film features unconvincing super-soldier hit-woman

(12A) 107min After her breakthrough role as the doe-eyed alien love-interest in James Cameron’s Avatar, and as a sexed-up Uhura in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek reboot, Zoe Saldana clearly has the international profile to get almost any picture made. Almost…

Steam of Life

Beautiful but bleak documentary about Finnish sauna culture

There are five million people in Finland, and an estimated two million saunas – roughly one per household. They form an integral part of Finnish culture: women are encouraged to give birth in them, while men use the steamy rooms both as social venues…

Third Star

Complex emotional journey of a man in the final stages of life, starring Benedict Cumberbatch

(15) 85min In this road-trip movie with a twist, Benedict Cumberbatch plays James, a young man who is dying of cancer, on a camping trip with three friends. What is sold as a simple, matey excursion soon degenerates. The group lose their belongings…

Cabinet of Dr Caligari with Live Score by Minima

Inventive musical accompaniment to the classic silent horror

Made in 1920 by director Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is one of the touchstones of German expressionist cinema. Using angular set design, thick make-up and creative lighting techniques, it tells the tale of a murderous doctor and his…

Perfect Sense was filmed in my flat

A List writer recounts her experience of having a film crew use her flat as a set

Director David MacKenzie almost didn’t use our flat as Ewan McGregor’s bachelor pad in Perfect Sense. The Timorous Beasties wallpaper in the bedroom was too distinctive. They considered painting it over, then repapering it. Then they discovered the…

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay interview

The Ratcatcher director discusses adapting Lionel Shriver's best-seller

‘Every film has its ups and downs. Each time it seems like pushing a boat over a mountain. I worked on The Lovely Bones for five years before my involvement fell apart. I am committed when I make a film and if it takes a long time I would rather wait. I…

Take One Action Film Festival 2011

Event highlights from the political film fest

Radical, committed, and delivering a great, high-quality programme, this year the Take One Action Film Festival, celebrating, as patron Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it ‘the people and movies that are changing the world’, has an excellent programme of…

Pedro Almodovar -The Skin I Live In

Reunited with Antonio Banderas for film that blends genres and crosses formal boundaries

Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito) arrived at May’s Cannes Film Festival on a wave of expectation. Not only had the Spanish auteur behind such classics as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother and the…

Interview: David Mackenzie on Perfect Sense and You Instead

Director returns from Hollywood to Glasgow to make two films back-to-back

Having made his Hollywood debut with his last film, Spread, a gorgeously sun-drenched but beguilingly bleak sex romp-cum-romance starring Ashton Kutcher that comes across like a modern-day American Gigolo, Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie was set to…

Detours film project at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

Responses to work by Aidan Moffat, Josie Long and Ross Sutherland

While everyone might know about the Edinburgh Art Festival, a series of collaborations have been quietly reflecting the works exhibited in the various exhibitions around the city. Suzy Glass (behind the creative social network Central Station) and Angie…

Profile: Andre Ovredal

Writer and director of Troll Hunter

Born 1973, Norway Background After studying at Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute, where he made his first film, Future Murder (2001), Ovredal established himself as a successful director of commercials in Norway. What’s he up to now? He’s written and…

Final Destination 5

Horror franchise gets back on track with some suitably gory bloodshed

(15) 92 min In many ways the Final Destination series is the ultimate streamlined horror franchise, they have dispensed with a villain and it is death itself that stalks our victims. And FD 5 returns the glorious gory yucks to the screen after the…

A Lonely Place To Die

Tense and riveting Brit-thriller set in Scottish Highlands

How far would you go to save a stranger? Would you risk your life? And your friends’ lives? It’s a question Alison (Melissa George) and her fellow climbers must answer after they stumble across a young girl (Holly Boyd) buried in a wooden box while…

The Troll Hunter

'Found footage' mock doc ends up somewhere between horror and comedy

This monster movie was an unqualified box office hit in its native Norway, and has picked up dozens of rave reviews on the worldwide festival circuit, but aside from a couple of good jokes and a handful of impressive visual effects sequences, there’s…

Post Mortem

Powerful sophomore feature based on 1970s Chilean politics

(15) 97min It’s 1973 and work on President Salvador Allende’s ‘Chilean Path to Socialism’ is about to be brought to an abrupt halt by a Chilean military coup. Mario (Alfredo Castro) works for the Santiago morgue as a typist. Quiet, efficient, Mario…

The Hedgehog (Le Herisson)

Smart and faithful adaptation of Muriel Barbery's best-selling book

(12A) 99min There’s no demographic quite like the French bourgeoisie. Their revolution may as well not have happened, Gustav Flaubert pretty much summed things up when he wrote: ‘The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level…

The Art of Getting By

(12A) 83min ‘110 billion humans have walked the planet since the dawn of time, and none of them have made it.’ So begins schoolboy George Zinavoy’s narration in this melancholic teen comedy with heavy echoes of Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything. George…

The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito)

Almodovar's adaptation is measured, playful and spellbinding

(15) 120min The Skin I Live In has all the elements of a campy Vincent Price B-movie. There is a meddlesome scientist driven mad by grief, a grisly revenge plot and a hapless victim, not to mention multiple murder, kidnap and rape. In the hands of…

Jane Eyre

Gothic yet modern adaptation helped by excellent performances

(PG) 120min The latest adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic book demonstrates that great texts can have many different interpretations. Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) dumps the childhood chapters, makes insinuations as to the cruel…

Tomboy

Childhood gender identity struggle handled subtly and beautifully

(U) 82min As the title suggests, this quietly beautiful film is about a little girl who wants to look and act like a boy. But given that indicator, audiences may still be surprised when writer/director Celine Sciamma reveals that the character…

Friends with Benefits

Sappy rom-com fails to deflate clichés of the genre

(15) 109min The rom-com has been a moribund genre for years now, excepting Marc Webb’s acerbic and adventurous (500) Days of Summer. Despite promising a similarly caustic examination of the gap between real-life relationships and romantic clichés…

Weekender

Brazenly shallow ode to the do-it-yourself 90s rave scene

(15) 89min The do-it-yourself rave explosion in ‘90s Manchester is a moment of recent history ripe with storytelling potential – Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People demonstrated that wonderfully – but Weekender, Karl Golden’s...

You Instead

Poor dialogue lets down an otherwise whimsical love story

(15) 80min This breathless mismatched love story, filmed entirely over two days at T in the Park 2010, is the first of two new Scottish films from David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe), the second being next month’s Glasgow-set sci-fi Perfect…

Kill List

Genre-schizophrenic crime spree lacks clarity

(18) 95min Down Terrace director Ben Wheatley second feature is another tale of crime, skullduggery and mystery. Kill List is one of those movies that starts off in one genre (kitchen sink drama) and turns into another (horror). Robert Rodriguez…