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Film and Reviews

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Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

By-the-numbers old age comedy drama

(2 stars)10 Feb 2012

Early in this by-the-numbers comedy drama, a young salesperson eagerly enthuses to retiring couple Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) that 'the grey pound is very strong at the moment'. We’re quite clearly supposed to see this…

Electric Man

Electric Man

A patchy, if well intentioned, Edinburgh-set comic comedy

(3 stars)8 Feb 2012

(12A tbc) 98min Shot in Edinburgh on a micro-budget, comic shop comedy Electric Man declares its intentions from the off: this is to be no social realist kitchen sink drama, typical of the UK film industry, but rather a light-hearted love-letter to…

Safe House

Safe House

Brutally slick but flawed action thriller starring Denzel Washtington and Ryan Reynolds

(3 stars)8 Feb 2012

(15) 115mins Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds make a formidable partnership in Daniel Espinosa's Safe House, a brutally slick, if flawed, action thriller.

Young Adult

Young Adult

A fiercely dark comedy from Juno writer-director team Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman

(4 stars)2 Feb 2012

(15) 94min This reteaming of Juno director (Jason Reitman) and writer (Diablo Cody) is a fiercely dark character comedy that once again demonstrates the pair’s refusal to be limited by genre conventions, no matter how sacred. The set-up is…

Red Dog

Red Dog

Hilarious and tearjerking scenes of human folly played as classic comedy

(4 stars)1 Feb 2012

(PG) 92min 2012 is turning into the year of the dog for cinema fans. After Uggie stole the show in The Artist comes this wonderful tale of canine tomfoolery. Told in a zippy boy’s own adventure style, this ‘inspired by a true story’ tale is set in…

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Elizabeth Olsen is remarkable in a film weak on intensity and narrative

(3 stars)1 Feb 2012

(15) 102min A young woman making her escape from a Manson-like sex cult sounds like the stuff of a lurid made-for-TV potboiler, but Sean Durkin’s debut eschews melodrama, instead presenting its protagonist’s ordeal in a hushed and gloomy style…

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Ex-Banshees bassist delivers brooding live score to 1930s horror classic

(3 stars)1 Feb 2012

The man with the flowing white hair walks towards a small table and chair to one side of the Cameo’s big screen. Sporting a long black winter coat and carrying a glass of red wine, the man looks as if he’s stepped in from another, altogether darker age…

Best Laid Plans

Best Laid Plans

Predictable grim Northern tale that fails despite Stephen Graham's great central performance

(2 stars)1 Feb 2012

(15) 108min Positive arguments for the public financing of UK films will not be encouraged by the release of Best Laid Plans, a dreary miserablist fable haplessly reconfiguring John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men into the world of Northern…

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill

Mirthless comedy atrocity sets a new low for all concerned

(1 star)1 Feb 2012

(PG) 91min Adam Sandler’s run of popular low-brow comedies has rarely hit the charming heights of The Wedding Singer, but even fans of Don’t Mess With the Zohan or I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will choke on their popcorn when confronted by his…

Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Fluid but uneven CGI movie based on the popular games franchise

(2 stars)1 Feb 2012

This is actually the third movie based on the immensely popular fighting games, but Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Manga Entertainment) is the first fully computer animated version and was originally available as part of the Tekken Hybrid package. It looks…

A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method

Cronenberg's cerebral study of psychoanalysis, starring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender

(4 stars)27 Jan 2012

(15) 99min David Cronenberg’s new film is a change of pace for the seldom gore-shy director of The Fly and A History of Violence, being a talky period drama about the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. But while the body-horror…

Girl Model

Girl Model

Clinical expose of the modeling industry

(3 stars)27 Jan 2012

(tbc) 78min Far from the fairy-tale fiction of America’s Top Model is Girl Model, a clinical, disturbing industry expose by documentary makers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Mardi Gras: Made in China). Ashley Arbaugh is an ex-model and now a…

Black Gold

Black Gold

Cliched, desert-set action adventure starring Mark Strong, Antonio Banderas and Tahar Rahim

(2 stars)27 Jan 2012

(12A) 130min The financial muscle of the Middle East has had a major impact on many spheres in recent years. Now that money is being directed towards movies. Bankrolled by the Doha Film Institute this action-adventure is set at the turn of the 20th…

Geoff Dyer - Zona

Geoff Dyer - Zona

The multi-talented humourist turns his able hand to film criticism

(4 stars)27 Jan 2012

(Canongate) Having previously mashed-up fiction, journalism, essay, biography and travel writing, polymath and humourist Geoff Dyer once more defies genre with a book that’s one part film criticism, one part autobiography and several parts random…

Carnage

Carnage

Polanski's comedy of upper-middle class savagery is fast, funny and filthy

(4 stars)24 Jan 2012

(15) 79mins Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play Gods of Carnage opens with a playground spat. Set over the opening credits, it’s this innocuous bust-up that drives the bitterly funny four-hander, as the parents of both children try to…

Hadewijch

Hadewijch

Provocative religious drama from French director Bruno Dumont

(4 stars)24 Jan 2012

(cert tbc)105mins Don’t be put off the fact that it’s taken a couple of years for this provocative examination of contemporary religious martyrdom to gain a cinematic release in the United Kingdom. The film, which explores how extreme faith can…

The Adopted

The Adopted

Quirky, saccharine directorial debut from French actress Melanie Laurent

(2 stars)24 Jan 2012

(15) 100 mins Still only 28-years-old, French actress and musician Melanie Laurent makes her directorial debut with this offbeat family tale, which owes more to her recent performances in US indie Beginners and the sentimental melodrama The Concert…

Rampart

Rampart

A compelling performance from Woody Harrelson can't quite support the weight of this cop drama

(3 stars)24 Jan 2012

(15) 108mins At this rate, Woody Harrelson should keep Oren Moverman on a retainer. The director guided Harrelson to an Oscar nomination in 2009’s The Messenger. And their latest collaboration Rampart sees the actor on similarly searing form. Set in…

Like Crazy

Like Crazy

Sundance-wowing romance starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones

(3 stars)24 Jan 2012

(12A) 89mins Winner of 2011’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, Like Crazy is a long-distance love story mired in the complications of modern-day living. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a British student living in Los Angeles who spends the perfect summer with…

Bombay Beach

Bombay Beach

Half real, half dream-like American documentary from director Alma Har'el

(4 stars)23 Jan 2012

(Cert tbc) 80min There was a time when documentary at least generally gave the impression of being a medium distinct from fiction, where various movements (Direct Cinema, cinema verité) put their faith in the relative objectivity of the image, as…

The Woman In Black

The Woman In Black

Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter film lacks the requisite scares for a classic ghost story

(2 stars)23 Jan 2012

(12A) 95mins Susan Hill’s Victorian ghost story has been terrifying theatre audiences for the best part of twenty-five years, second only to The Mousetrap as the longest running show in the history of London’s West End. It has already been…

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This Tom Hanks-starring adaptation of the 9/11-themed bestseller lacks poignancy

(3 stars)23 Jan 2012

(12A) 129mins Are the memories of the 9/11 attacks now distant enough to justify their use at the heart of a personal tale of loss and grief? Stephen Daldry’s beautifully crafted adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer bestseller leaves the question…

The Woman In The Fifth

The Woman In The Fifth

Elegant but baffling Paris-set drama starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas

(2 stars)23 Jan 2012

(15) 85mins Hollywood studios are often derided for making simplistic dramas that feel obliged to spell everything out. The Woman In The Fifth errs in the opposite direction, leaving bewildered viewers scratching their heads and trying to figure out…

Man on a Ledge

Man on a Ledge

Well paced, high concept thriller starring Sam Worthington, Jamie Bell and Elizabeth Banks

(3 stars)23 Jan 2012

(12A) 102mins Sam Worthington’s latest is an occasionally tense but mostly silly thriller that at least realises its own absurdities. The Hollywood debut of former documentary filmmaker Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cité Soleil), the film follows a…

Shame

Shame

Steve McQueen's second directorial effort is an unflinching portrayal of sex addiction

(5 stars)5 Jan 2012

(18) 101min Sexual imagery oozes from every blockbuster and frat boy comedy, but serious discussion rather than cheap titillation is a rarity. Cinema actually finds it hard to confront sex, partly because the American censorship board takes such a…

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