Film and Reviews

Men in Black 3

Silly, lightweight, completely unnecessary but surprisingly fun

25 May 2012

In these times of austerity Hollywood seems scared of originals ideas. Studios demand ‘brand recognition’ before they’ll stump up the multi-million dollar budgets blockbusters require. And they seem willing to latch onto almost any brand, from comics to…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…

Cannes 2012: Amour

Deeply sad and affecting film from Michael Haneke, and winner of the 2012 Palme D’Or

28 May 2012

Unlike The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke’s Palme D’Or winning film from 2009), which stands out for its thematic and narrative complexities, Amour sees the Austrian director take a far simpler approach to filmmaking, with an intimate story of an elderly…

Cannes 2012: Holy Motors

Hugely satisfying and inventive celebration of cinema from Leos Carax

28 May 2012

Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is picked up by his driver Celine (Edith Scob) for a day’s work - 9 appointments that will take him across Paris and into the paths of an array of characters. If that sounds vague, it’s deliberate - to say anymore would…

Cannes 2012: The Paperboy

Lee Daniels’ plot hole-ridden latest film is still a compelling, if occasionally ludicrous, ride

25 May 2012

Lee Daniels follows up his sleeper hit Precious with an enjoyably trashy, if often misguided, story based on the book by Pete Dexter. It’s 1969 and journalist Ward (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown of Lately, Florida to investigate what…

The Angels' Share

Loach and Laverty's latest suffers from attempts to attract all-comers

23 May 2012

Here persists the noble quest of Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty to create accessible, populist films about the lives of the UK’s so-called underclass. Unfortunately, The Angels’ Share is straining so hard to be accessible and populist that it…

A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Crispian Mills' directorial debut starts well but quickly loses pace

11 May 2012

A film by the former lead singer of Kula Shaker might not sound an appetising prospect. But before dismissing A Fantastic Fear of Everything, we should remember that Crispian Mills’ film pedigree is pretty spot-on. He is, after all, the son of Hayley…

The Pact

An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension

11 May 2012

The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…

The Cold Light of Day

Clumsy, by-the-numbers action thriller starring Henry Cavill, Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver

12 Apr 2012

(12A) 93min Wall Street trader Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) is taking a break from his Stateside business worries to visit his family in Spain, despite terse relations with his father (Bruce Willis). Unfortunately, he barely has time to sip a sangria…

Red Tails

George Lucas pet WWII project suffers from thin characterization, cliché and crude simplification

11 May 2012

Star Wars creator George Lucas used clips from his favourite aviation dramas to stand in for battle scenes in the original rough-cut of Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that several decades later, Lucas has invested some of his personal wealth in an…

Iron Sky

Finland's so-so sci-fi comedy could actually benefit from an American remake

19 Mar 2012

Six years in the making, Iron Sky arrives in a blaze of pre-release publicity. Finland’s first blockbuster, partly funded by fans, you certainly can’t quibble with its killer pitch: Nazis on the moon. It’s just a pity that director Timo Vuorensola’s…

Piranha 3D

16 Aug 2010

Alexandre Aja, the gifted French filmmaker who has so far had the cajones to tackle remakes of Wes Craven’s 1977 wilderness horror The Hills Have Eyes and feted J-horror Mirrors, finally tackles the big one – Joe Dante and John Sayles’ 1978 frat comedy…

Cannes 2012: On the Road

Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel struggles to capture a sense of the times

25 May 2012

If, for two and a half hours, you can put aside the fact that Walter Salles’ (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) latest work is an adaptation of one of the most famous, influential books in recent American history, you might just enjoy this…

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami's novel is transferred to the screen by Anh Hung Tran

2 Mar 2011

(15) 133min Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has a unique voice in contemporary fiction, both hugely imaginative and intensely intimate. But with this adaptation of one of his most popular books, French-Vietnamese filmmaker Anh Hung Tran fails to…

The Cabin in the Woods

Excellent horror has something in its box of tricks to scare everyone

19 Mar 2012

(15) 94min A film that’s almost impossible to talk about without ruining its multiple pleasures, The Cabin In The Woods is the most original horror movie of the year. Reverential to the genre, yet shaking it up simultaneously, it’s exactly what you’d…

Cannes 2012: Killing Them Softly

Andrew Dominik’s stylish gangster film is visually impressive if occasionally lacking momentum

24 May 2012

Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik’s third film following Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, is a bleakly humourous gangster flick with an underlying commentary on modern day moral bankruptcy. It begins with…

Macbeth

6 Sep 2007

There’s nothing particularly new about updating Shakespeare’s medieval Scottish tragedy to a modern criminal underworld setting - see the 1956 American mob movie Joe Macbeth - but Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Wright nevertheless makes a decent stab at…

The Edge of Love

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 110min Dylan Thomas, he of the milk wood, once remarked that: ‘When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.’ The Edge of Love is the story of how the great Welsh poet burnt a very big bridge, one that connected him to an…

Lady Godiva

17 Jan 2008

ROMANCE (12A) 95min According to legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an 11th century nobleman, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry in a successful act of protest against her husband’s taxation of his subjects. Here, in her debut…

The Meerkats

30 Jul 2009

There’s something about meerkats. Maybe it’s their little beady eyes, or their curiously stiff, upright posture that makes them appear to be striving to be human. Whatever that quality is, the camera clearly loves them, making the humble meerkat an…

A Royal Affair

A skillfully delivered but coldly aloof period drama from the Swedish Dragon Tattoo team

11 May 2012

Reuniting the writing team behind the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair is a welcome break from the current plethora of morbid Scandinavian thrillers; instead, Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel have co-adapted an unfamiliar but…

The Last Song

29 Apr 2010

(PG) 107min The meteoric rise to tween fame of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana has paralleled the rising popularity of writer Nicholas Sparks (A Walk To Remember, The Notebook), so having Sparks create a vehicle specifically for Billy Ray’s daughter must…

Ill Manors

A jarring, grimy and a searing indictment of Broken Britain, from debut director Ben Drew aka Plan B

11 May 2012

To say Ill Manors doesn’t pull punches is like saying Mike Tyson hits quite hard. Raw, uncompromising and brutal, this urban tale of violence, prostitution and drugs smacks you round the face, then kicks you in the groin for good measure. It marks the…

Love & Other Drugs

14 Dec 2010

(15) 112min Edward Zwick’s Love & Other Drugs may stylistically represent a throwback to the sort of intimate character driven drama of his first film About Last Night but it also possesses the epic scope of a director more commonly associated with…

Apocalypto

(18) 138min

3 Jan 2007

Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is about to go…

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson's latest echoes his earlier triumphs, but breaks no new ground

17 May 2012

Wes Anderson’s seventh film feels like a Greatest Hits package. Which if you’re a Wes fan will make you very happy. Set on a New England island in the summer of 1965, the opening sequence of Moonrise Kingdom, with its incessant camera-pans around the…

Dark Shadows

A fun, if forgettable vampire movie, starring Johnny Depp, Eva Green and Michelle Pfeiffer

10 May 2012

Like a kid who turns up late to a Halloween party, Tim Burton arrives with his latest, vampire movie Dark Shadows. After Twilight, 30 Days of Night and Let The Right One In, not to mention TV’s True Blood…aren’t fangs, dusty coffins and dissolving in…

Tales from Earthsea

1 Aug 2007

The familiar Studio Ghibli look is there, but Tales From Earthsea, based on the books by writer of speculative fiction Ursula K Le Guin, is directed not by the great Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son Goro.

Avengers Assemble

Joss Whedon’s finely balanced superhero extravaganza is well worth the wait

27 Apr 2012

The main issue facing the making of a superhero ensemble piece is balance: with so many strong personalities on screen, how do you ensure each of them get their due? It’s a problem Joss Whedon has tackled effectively in Avengers Assemble, keeping…

StreetDance 2

A sequel of so-so dances, hackneyed plotting and wooden performances

2 Apr 2012

(PG) 85mins The ‘kids dancing their way out of the ghetto’ trope has been a staple of cinema since the 1950s but taking inspiration from recent US products like Step Up and Stomp the Yard, StreetDance 3D inexplicably became the UK’s most popular…

Headhunters

Jo Nesbo adaptation is breathlessly, outrageously entertaining

19 Mar 2012

(15) 101min The twisty, tangled, page-turning bestsellers of Norwegian author Jo Nesbo seem tailor-made for the screen. The narratives move with all the momentum of a runaway train and there are enough flawed individuals and crumbling moral…

Cannes 2012: Trashed

British documentary about waste pollution could have done with burrowing deeper

24 May 2012

Watching British documentary Trashed it’s curious to think who the filmmakers imagined their audience to be. Exploring the impact and problems of waste disposal, the film barely scrapes the surface of its subject matter, giving the air of a dry…

Two Years at Sea

Meditative documentary about recluse Jake Williams, from British artist Ben Rivers

4 May 2012

Artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers’ debut feature film, Two Years At Sea is a handsome and meditative documentary about Jake Williams, a man living an isolated existence in northern Scotland. Shot on textured 16mm black and white film, Rivers captures…

The Lovely Bones

17 Feb 2010

(12A) 135min The problems with Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s popular novel run much deeper than the usual stumbling block of having a macabre subject matter. The casting of Mark Wahlberg as the grieving dad is seriously misjudged…

The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists 3D

An enjoyable, if occassionally laboured, family animation from Aardman

27 Mar 2012

(U) 88min Aardman's Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists is the most ambitious undertaking yet from the Bristol-based clay-mation specialists but while often enjoyable it's not all plain sailing. The madcap story of a pirate captain, who…

My Best Friend’s Girl

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min From Howard Deutch, the auteur behind the seminal teen movie Pretty in Pink starring Molly Ringwald, My Best Friend’s Girl is a 1980s throwback rom-com, updated with scatological language. Dane Cook, so disagreeable in last year’s Good…

American Pie: Reunion

The cast regroup for a fourth time, and still manage to raise some laughs

4 May 2012

The cast of American Pie may have matured since we last saw them nine years ago at Jim and Michelle’s wedding but their antics remain juvenile for this latest slice of raunchy comedy - and for the most part that’s a good thing. Written and…

Passenger Side is a witty road movie about sibling rivalries

Matt Bissonnette's comedy stars Joel Bissonnette and Adam Scott

28 Mar 2011

(12A) 85min Before the road movie was carjacked by the American gross-out comedy, Easy Rider and its offspring helped establish a genre of American outsider cinema, with its portraits of the big country beyond the confines of the Hollywood system.

Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

25 Feb 2010

Having passed on the Harry Potter directing reigns after the second instalment, Chris Columbus attempts to kick-start another fantasy franchise with this adaptation of the first book in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and The Olympians series.

Saw VI

23 Oct 2009

(18) 90 min. The Saw series is as fixed in the calendar as Halloween itself (they have had a movie out every October since the series started back in 2004), and surprisingly Saw VI is the best instalment for a good while (certainly trumping the last…

RocknRolla

4 Sep 2008

Is there a filmmaker in Britain who’s been more derided than Mr Madonna? A bit unfair all this criticism is too: it’s not Guy Ritchie’s fault that the competent, very watchable gangster flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch were some of…

The Last House on the Left

11 Jun 2009

Given the repellent nature of Wes Craven’s scuzzy little 1972 rape and revenge shocker, it’s a relief to find this glossy remake straying somewhat from the original’s sleazy path. Craven and original producer Sean S Cunningham steer the hand of Dennis…

The Innkeepers

A genuinely involving and disconcerting chiller that thankfully eschews any trendy post-modernism

11 May 2012

Having established his credentials as a serious genre fan with a spot-on homage to 80s horror movies in The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West reaches even further back into the past with this slow-burning thriller. Like all good haunted house…

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

A quietly dignified film about 17th century honour and vengeance from Japanese director Takashi Miik

4 May 2012

The rigorously restrained Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai is prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s follow-up to the exhilarating 13 Assassins. A companion piece, rather than a direct descendant, it’s a story of 17th century honour and vengeance which…

Piggy

Ultra-violent London-set thriller starring Martin Compston

23 Apr 2012

(18) 106mins Fight Club meets Death Wish in this ultra-violent vigilante movie, one so gratuitous it will turn even the strongest of stomachs. Set in a modern-day London where hoodies wielding knives seem to lurk on every street corner, Martin…

North Sea Texas

Sensitive performances fail to make this predictable coming of age story engaging

18 Apr 2012

(15) 98 mins Given how difficult we’re lead to believe it is to get an independent film distributed in cinemas in the UK, you’d be forgiven for wondering why some of those that do reach our screens seem so familiar. North Sea Texas, the story of…

Battleship

Michael Bay-inspired blockbuster burdened by bog-standard plot and uneven tone

11 Apr 2012

(12A) 131mins Inspired by the Hasbro board-game, Battleship is part Michael Bay-inspired planet-trashing mayhem and part love letter to the US Navy, with whom director Peter Berg shares an intimate family history (his father was both a former Marine…

Ponyo (Gake No Ue No Ponyo)

28 Jan 2010

(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…

The Girl Cut in Two

14 May 2009

Chabrot’s film is based on a real-life case in 1900s America, transposed to contemporary Lyon. A sly playful satire of the haute bourgeoisie world of publishing with elegant direction and fine performances. The film is filled with women who know far…

The Sick House

18 Sep 2008

HORROR (18) 104min (Showbox DVD retail) Young archaeologist (Gina Philips) finds her research into London’s great plague of 1665 barred when public health officials reveal that the former orphanage she is excavating still contains plague.

Joy Division

24 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 96mins After last year’s Control, Anton Corbijn’s considered and stylish dramatisation of Ian Curtis’ life, it would be easy to think that everything you need to know about the legend and legacy of English post-punk outfit Joy…

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

Tightly directed action-comedy that even ardent Mel Gibson-haters will find difficult to dislike

10 May 2012

There are probably quite a few people – not least screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus, judging by his recently published missive – who would probably like to see Mel Gibson languishing in a filthy Mexican jail. But sadly for them, How I Spent My Summer Vacation…

Outside Bet

Low-budget British horse-racing comedy falls at the first hurdle

18 Apr 2012

(12A) 101mins The cinematic equivalent of the clumps of horse dung that characters repeatedly step into for the cheapest of laughs, Outside Bet is strictly a non-runner in terms of light entertainment. In this painfully naïve British comedy, Bob…

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

By-the-numbers old age comedy drama

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…

Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti)

Enjoyable gay rom-com-cum-family soap by Turkish/Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek

14 Dec 2010

(12A) 112min This gay rom-com-cum-family soap by Turkish/Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek is as enjoyable as his winning 1996 debut, Hamam (The Turkish Bath). And over the 14 years since that international success introduced a bright new talent to…

Streetdance 3D

12 May 2010

The creative team behind Streetdance has sought to put a different spin on the UK grime scene by portraying teens in a more positive light while paying homage to American dance films such as Footloose and Step Up. It’s a shame, then, that they chose to…

The Battle of the Somme

11 Dec 2008

(E) 74min Originally released in 1916, right in the middle of World War I, this important documentary might not be known to viewers in its entirety, but individual moments will probably be familiar: its images are regularly ransacked for various…

The Children

27 Nov 2008

HORROR The current fad for evil kiddie chillers – see Ils (Them) from France, Eden Lake from the UK and While She Was Out from the US – continues with another British horror flick in which children do diabolical things to disbelieving adults. As the…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

Jules et Jim

3 Jul 2008

French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut’s third film, made in 1962, was undoubtedly his masterpiece. Set in the 1910s and 20s it is the story of a freewheeling love triangle between alpha female Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), Austrian Jules (Oskar…

What To Expect When You’re Expecting

A witless and bland work based on the pregnancy self-help book

23 May 2012

‘You don’t know what love is until you’ve wiped someone’s ass,’ offers one of the many baby-boomers in Kirk (Waking Ned, Everybody’s Fine) Jones’ multi-stranded adaptation of the bestselling self-help book about the dos and don’ts of pregnancy.

She Monkeys

Impressive coming-of-age drama with frank depiction of adolescent sexuality

23 May 2012

A courageous, periodically unsettling coming-of-age tale, She Monkeys is the arresting first feature from director Lisa Aschan. It’s a Swedish production which - in its frank approach to adolescent sexuality - bears comparison with Katell Quillévéré’s…

Death Watch

Well-deserved re-issue of Bertrand Tavernier's prescient Glasgow-set sci-fi thriller

16 May 2012

Its plot is a credibility stretch even in these days of de rigueur media paranoia, and its relentlessly murky, moody tone might raise the odd giggle, but Tavernier’s long-neglected sci-fi curiosity is compelling nonetheless. Romy Schneider plays…

Clone

Stilted science fiction psychodrama starring Matt Smith and Eva Green

4 May 2012

Originally entitled Womb, 2010 film Clone proves to be a painfully earnest slice of sci-fi psychodrama that attempts to meld burning questions of genetic ethics with the starkness of a Greek tragedy. The clipped, stilted script often appears to have…

All in Good Time

Sweet-natured culture clash comedy starring Amara Karan and Meera Syal

17 Apr 2012

(12A) 93min Originally a 1965 play and subsequently a film by Irish writer Bill Naughton, this sweet-natured comedy became a theatre hit again in 2007 when East is East writer Ayub Khan-Din adapted it into a present-day British-Asian setting. The…

Project X

Major league mayhem with a dark, twisted edge

1 Mar 2012

(18) 88mins Animal House meets The Blair Witch Project, only this time the horror is very real in a movie that will undoubtedly give all parents nightmares. No, this is not a film about paranormal activity, but a high school party that gets…

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

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

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…

You’ve Been Trumped

Controversial doc on Donald Trump's Scottish golf course plan a triumph

22 Sep 2011

(12) 95min Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ll no doubt be aware of American tycoon Donald Trump’s controversial plans to build a golf course and hotel complex in an area of outstanding natural beauty and…

The Way Back

Heavy on pretty spectacle but light on character development

10 Dec 2010

(12A) 133min Australian filmmaker Peter Weir (Master and Commander, The Truman Show) defies most prison escape movie conventions to make a film that is heavy on pretty Lawrence of Arabia-type spectacle but light on significant character development.

Winter's Bone

7 Sep 2010

(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…

Trash Humpers

2 Jul 2010

Returning Harmony Korine to the downbeat Nashville locations of his 1997 debut feature Gummo, in some ways his new effort, Trash Humpers, has its roots in films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Like those, Korine wants you to think…

Hachi: A Dog's Story

2 Mar 2010

(PG) 93min Lasse Hallstrom, director of My Life As A Dog, returns to his canine roots with Hachi: A Dog’s Story, an unashamedly sentimental version of the story most Scots would recognise as Greyfriars Bobby. The cited real-life inspiration for…

The Last Thakur

4 Dec 2009

(15) 83min (Artificial Eye) This Bangladeshi Western directed by British filmmaker Sadik Ahmed is a clumsily realised tale of Oedipal tensions. The film focuses on Kala, a young man visiting a small town determined to find out who raped his mother.

The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band)

4 Nov 2009

(15) 143min Writer/director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Hidden) mainlines the sentiments of fellow Austrians Alfred Adler (the psychiatrist who first formulated ideas of the inferiority complex) and novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach (who…

Lesbian Vampire Killers

19 Mar 2009

HORROR/COMEDY Overexposure can shoot down even the most promising career. And while Mathew Horne and James Corden aren’t quite there yet, they need to be careful. A double act since their award-winning Gavin & Stacey, for their first big screen…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

5 Feb 2009

MYSTERY/ROMANCE What would it be like to live in reverse? Born as an old man only to die as an infant, the Benjamin Button character created by F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1922 short-story gets the full ‘prestige picture’ treatment in David Fincher’s…

Lakeview Terrace

27 Nov 2008

THRILLER (15) 110min What could be safer than living next door to a cop? Well just about anything if that cop happens to be played by one of America’s leading black actors. Smug young marrieds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) move…

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

27 Dresses

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 110min During an interview to promote Knocked Up, actress Katherine Heigl said of the Judd Apatow comedy that brought her worldwide fame (after her years lighting up Grey’s Anatomy): ‘It paints women as shrews, as humourless and…

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Crisp restoration of the 1940s satire by Powell and Pressburger

18 May 2012

Spry and delightful nearly 70 years on, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is one of many masterpieces from filmmaking virtuosos Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, collectively known as The Archers. Their fifth collaboration, from 1943, is an…

Sing Your Song

A thorough account of the life of Harry Belafonte that occasionally lapses into hagiography

16 May 2012

This timely and thorough account of the extraordinary life of Harry Belafonte finds so much in its subject that it almost suffers by an over-abundance of material. A matinee idol whose benign appeal to white audiences masked fierce political…

The Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest has moments of solid satire but still feels stale

11 May 2012

From the naked scrotum-in-the-face wrestling of Borat to the manifold outrages of Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen is not a man overly acquainted with subtlety. His latest, The Dictator, drops the improvisational feel of those earlier films, but doesn’t lower…

Lawrence of Belgravia

Intimate and touching documentary about the eccentric Felt frontman

10 May 2012

Lawrence - surnameless former front man of the variably appreciated 80s-90s indie bands Felt and Denim, and current leader of the barely-appreciated-at-all Go Kart Mozart – is a bit like the picture in Jarvis Cocker’s attic, psychologically speaking.

Beloved

A sprawling, messy epic on unrequited love from French director Christophe Honoré

10 May 2012

Christophe Honoré's Love Songs (2007) established a talent for musical melodrama that eschewed all the traditional razzle-dazzle trappings of Hollywood. Characters break into song as they casually stroll down a city street and the often banal…

Babycall

Noomi Rapace stars in creepy thriller that loses focus

23 Mar 2012

(15) 96min Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, whose fearless performance as Lisbeth Salander was the best thing about the original Millenium trilogy, gets a chance to stretch her acting muscles again in this creepy thriller. Rapace plays Anna, a young…

Cleanskin

A gratuitously violent Sean Bean action vehicle light on sociological insight

9 Mar 2012

'I love my country. I’ve killed for it and I’ll die for it', growls Ewan (Sean Bean), an ex-soldier turned secret service agent who is tasked with tracking down a cell of homegrown suicide bombers in this London-set thriller by British writer-director…

This Means War

Unsuccessful mash-up of the rom-com and spy action genres

1 Mar 2012

(12A) 97min McG attempts to satisfy both sexes in This Means War – a testosterone-driven action meets girl-pleasing rom-com, that ends up not being good in either genre, despite featuring two of the hottest young actors around (Tom Hardy and Chris…

Bombay Beach

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

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 Debt

Sober-minded spy movie with Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington

14 Sep 2011

(15) 113min The Debt has languished on the distributor’s shelf for a year since screening in Toronto last September, betraying a lack of studio confidence in the commercial prospects for John Madden’s sober-minded remake of 2007 Israeli espionage…

Colombiana

Photocopy action film features unconvincing super-soldier hit-woman

19 Aug 2011

(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…

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

15 Aug 2011

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)

9 Aug 2011

(12a) 104min Despite the efforts of a fine French cast – which includes Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila and Audrey Tautou – this visually unremarkable romantic comedy from writer/director Pierre Salvadori (Wild Target, Priceless), in which mother and…

Mother's Day

Rebecca De Mornay stars in rare example of a horror remake done well

23 May 2011

(18) 112min Following on the heels of bloodless remakes of cherished 1980s slasher flicks like The Stepfather and Prom Night, Mother’s Day is a nastier but more accomplished beast. This home invasion drama is a reboot of the 1980 Troma original, and…

Takeshi Miike's 13 Assassins strikes a balance between measured character development and violent brutality

25 Apr 2011

(15) 126min Prolific to the point of insanity, unpredictable and blatantly controversial, Takeshi Miike is not your average Japanese filmmaker. His notorious body of work which includes loads of straight to video fare, the Dead or Alive trilogy, Ichi…

The Rite - Demonic possession thriller bogged down by script

Anthony Hopkins, Rutger Hauer and Colin O'Donoghue fail to escape The Exorcist's shadow

18 Feb 2011

(15) 113min ‘What did you expect, spinning heads and pea-soup?’ asks Vatican-approved exorcist Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) in Mikael Håfström’s demonic possession thriller, which initially offers a sober take on a horror genre that usually…

Never Let Me Go is an inspiring call to catch love while you can

Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation akin to science fiction in bleak tone and existential theme

2 Feb 2011

(12A) 103min The students of Hailsham boarding school are special: set apart from normal society, they are being prepared for an unspecified purpose. No further details are apparent, to them or us, as this story begins, and to divulge more would take…

F

British ‘hoody horror’ thriller in which a group of teachers defend themselves from schoolkids

12 Jan 2011

(18) 78min F is the latest in a line of peculiarly British ‘hoody horror’ films that also include Eden Lake and Heartless. English writer/director Johannes Roberts’ effort is the best yet thanks to his smart script, crisp direction and a fine…

Donkeys

6 Oct 2010

(15) 76min The second film to come out of the three-part Scottish-Danish co-production project The Advance Party is a very different beast from the first. By contrast to Andrea Arnold’s disturbing thriller Red Road, Donkeys is a black comedy also set…

I Know You Know

Robert Carlyle stars in working-class tale director of Human Traffic

12 Aug 2010

(15) 81min (Network) Despite garnering acclaim for his 1999 clubber comedy Human Traffic, writer/director Justin Kerrigan hasn’t made a movie since. Making the decade-long wait worthwhile, the Cardiff-based writer-director returns with a moving and…

Step Up 3D

Other film releases, August 2010

3 Aug 2010

A group of underground street dancers from New York City team up with freshman Moose (Adam G Sevani) and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a life-changing showdown. Silly but euphoric and enjoyable street dance flick. If…