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Fast & Furious 6
17 May 2013
If you like your stunts outrageous and your plot soapy and undemanding, this won't disappoint
For a franchise with simple tastes – gleaming cars, well-oiled muscles and bikini babes – the Fast & Furious series has always been ultra-willing to re-tune its engines. This time, we’re in London – a first – and the gang, led by Vin Diesel’s Dom…
The Stone Roses: Made of Stone
17 May 2013
Shane Meadows' rockumentary fails to satisfy either as a concert film or fly-on-the-wall doc
To borrow from an old Stone Roses B-side, the Mancunian band’s much-hyped reunion may well have been ‘what the world is waiting for’, though it’s hard to claim the same for this accompanying Shane Meadows-directed documentary. The director of Dead Man’s…
The Iceman
17 May 2013
Impressive mafia-themed dramatic thriller starring Michael Shannon, James Franco and Ray Liotta
Is there no film Michael Shannon doesn’t excel in? Here the star of Take Shelter plays real-life New Jersey hitman Richard Kuklinski, who – upon his arrest in 1986 – is thought to have committed over 100 assassinations. Directed by Israeli-born…
The Great Gatsby
15 May 2013
Baz Luhrmann’s lavish adaptation of Fitzgerald’s novel finally arrives
A far cry from the drab pastel shades and muffled emotion of the 1974 Robert Redford/Mia Farrow film, Baz Luhrmann’s new version of The Great Gatsby aims to put the ‘great’ back into F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. Many have tried and failed to…
The Stoker (Kochegar)
17 May 2013
A stange, dark and clever Russian black comedy with an unexpectedly forceful moral message
Edinburgh’s beloved Filmhouse cinema has chosen an unusual and intriguing curio for its first release as a distributor. Directed by the prolific Alexey Balabanov - known for his unflinching but darkly comic fables of the Russian criminal underworld…
Star Trek Into Darkness
9 May 2013
Solid sci-fi story in the vein of JJ Abrams' first Star Trek film
With his brilliant restart to the Star Trek series in 2009, director JJ Abrams delivered an origin story that was both respectful to the series’ history while unafraid to take its well-known characters in new and surprising directions. Added to this…
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
10 May 2013
Adaptation of Mohsen Hamid’s book starring Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson
A globetrotting adaptation of Mohsen Hamid’s allegorical first-person novella, director Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a thriller in which the character names are freighted with symbolic baggage. Britain’s Riz Ahmed is impressive as the…
Neil Young: Journeys
16 May 2013
An intimate homecoming documentary by the country rock legend, shot by Jonathan Demme
‘This is a town in North Ontario,’ are the first interview words uttered by Neil Young in this Jonathan Demme-directed documentary, and it’s probable that he’s consciously referencing the lyric of his own song ‘Helpless’. In the opening few minutes of…
Chimpanzee
30 Apr 2013
Disney's latest nature documentary will keep young animal enthusiasts happy
This kid-friendly documentary has all the elements you would expect given its Disneynature origins: excellent production values (many of the crew are veterans of the BBC’s natural history documentaries), slick filmmaking and a generally wholesome…
Iron Man 3
24 Apr 2013
Director Shane Black recovers from a lacklustre second instalment with wit and subversion
The third instalment in Marvel’s Iron Man franchise has its work cut out in both bettering its own relatively lame sequel and following the massive success of The Avengers. Thanks to director Shane Black (who also co-wrote the script with Drew Pearce)…
The Liability
10 May 2013
Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell pair up for a seemingly familiar hitman film
You may get struck by déjà vu watching The Liability, the third feature film by former cinematographer Craig Viveiros. A story of a taciturn hitman and his callow assistant starring Tim Roth, it sounds suspiciously like a remake of Stephen Frears’ 1984…
Vehicle 19
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10 May 2013
Car-based thriller starring Paul Walker neither fast nor furious enough
Having made his name with souped-up vehicular antics in the Fast and Furious franchise, there’s a small smirk to be had when Paul Walker’s Michael Woods lands in Johannesburg and finds himself mistakenly saddled with a sedentary rental minivan. Fans of…
Dragon
30 Apr 2013
Fast-moving martial arts flick with dazzling action scenes
A welcome entry to the martial arts genre, Peter Chan's Dragon is a fast-moving action thriller that has the brains to match its brawn. Set in the Yunnan province in China in 1917, the film picks up as peaceful handyman Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) is forced…
Something in the Air
10 May 2013
Olivier Assayas returns with bittersweet portrait of countercultural French 70's youth
French writer-director Olivier Assayas follows up his epic chronicle of legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal with this bittersweet portrait of countercultural youth in early 70s France. ‘Diffusely autobiographical’ is how the filmmaker has described…
Nothing but the Truth
16 May 2013
Serviceable political thriller starring Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, David Schwimmer and Alan Alda
It’s amazing how many films with big name casts slink out direct to DVD. Take Nothing But the Truth, featuring Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, David Schwimmer and Alan Alda. To be fair, NBT was a victim of circumstance rather than some…
The Village at the End of the World
10 May 2013
Sensitively-made documentary about remote village life in Greenland
Niaqornat is a tiny settlement in north west Greenland. Accessible only by helicopter or boat, home to just over 50 people and surrounded by ice and snow for much of the year, it’s truly deserving of the title of ‘the village at the end of the world’.
The Eye of the Storm
30 Apr 2013
Adaptation of Patrick White's 'unfilmable' novel starring Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush
He may have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, but Australian novelist Patrick White has not has much impact cinematically beyond his screenplay for 1978’s The Night, the Prowler. His novel The Eye of The Storm has often been described as…
I’m So Excited
18 Apr 2013
Pedro Almodóvar returns to the brassy style of his earlier films
The new comedy from beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar begins with a message assuring us that the film ‘is fiction and fantasy, and has no connection to reality’; a provocation to assume the opposite is true if ever there was one. But while there…
The King Of Marvin Gardens
10 May 2013
Reissue of forgotten 70s film starring Jack Nicholson by director of Five Easy Pieces
'In the fun house how do you know who's really crazy?' that's the pertinent question in The King of Marvin Gardens, Bob 'Five Easy Pieces' Rafelson's third film. This reissue is a chance to re-appraise the 1972 financial flop starring Jack Nicholson and…
Deadfall
10 May 2013
Contrived thriller from the director of The Counterfeiters
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s concentration camp drama The Counterfeiters won him an Oscar and promised to spring the Austrian director through the ranks of directorial talent. Strangely, it’s taken him five years to make his English language debut, and despite a…
Olympus Has Fallen
18 Apr 2013
The Gerard-Butler starring action flick is a derivative throwback to straightforward action movies
Will anyone welcome Kim Jong-Un’s flirtation with nuclear apocalypse? Well, Gerard Butler might, as the new Dear Leader has provided the mother of PR gifts to this piece of action-disaster cinematic imperialism. Butler plays Mike Banning, head of the…
Dead Man Down
30 Apr 2013
Overlong and silly crime drama starring Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace
This convoluted thriller's nondescript title is a pointer to its flaws: unfocused and overlong, its swill of criminal characters and sub-plots feel like an unfinished work-in-progress, thrown together and stamped with a generic title whose meaning is…
Julie Brook's made, unmade
15 May 2013
Fascinating multimedia installation calling upon all senses to enter landscapes' wilderness
For this large-scale multimedia collaboration with Dovecot Studios, Julie Brook has attempted to bring the wilderness with her and site it within a darkened gallery space. Although she lives on Skye, it’s the hot desert tones and ambience of her working…
Billy Liar
19 Apr 2013
John Schlesinger’s classic British New Wave comedy has a warm and light touch
Not many classic films have also enjoyed success as a book, play, sitcom and musical. It’s testament to the timelessness of Keith Waterhouse’s source novel, about a 19-year-old lad who ‘can’t say two words to anybody without telling a lie’, that the…
Bernie
18 Apr 2013
Jack Black and Shirley Maclaine star in this nicely-mounted but ultimately oddly bloodless comedy
We’re all familiar with the clear-cut outrage that follows a heinous crime perpetrated by a dark, twisted monster against a dewy innocent – but what if it’s the other way round? What if someone hugely popular does something terrible to someone widely…
