Film, Reviews and Brian Donaldson

The Governor, Being Human and Traffik among DVD highlghts

The old school fares well against newbies in TV drama releases

29 Jun 2011

The Governor ●●●● features a curious performance from Janet McTeer, just four years before her 1999 Oscar nomination for Tumbleweeds. In the first season of Lynda La Plante’s excellent prison drama, she switches between giggling schoolgirl and feisty…

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Uncompromising, awkward and confrontational style and content cements reputation

28 Jun 2011

(2entertain) The second series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle will do very little to alter the entrenched opinions on both sides of his critical fence. Those detractors will switch off in their droves at the uncompromising, awkward and…

Ken Loach's Route Irish doesn't shy away from asking some tough questions

Mark Womack and John Bishop in Paul Laverty-penned Iraq drama

10 Mar 2011

(15) 104min You can almost feel Ken Loach and Paul Laverty bracing themselves for another critical onslaught by the establishment. It happened to the director/screenwriter duo with their Irish civil war drama The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and it’s…

Series 1 of Gary Tank Commander released on DVD

Greg McHugh' slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher

2 Feb 2011

(15) 180min (2entertain) The idea of a slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher in the armed services sounds like it has the potential to be either massively offensive or a spot-on critique of military politics. The ultimately affectionate Gary Tank…

Limmy's Show

The series which brought credibility to BBC Scotland comedy roster

22 Nov 2010

(15) 180min (2entertain) A stoned loner notices peculiar inconsistencies on TV adverts at 4am. A bushy-eyebrowed executive plots his excuses before the local constabulary show up at his office. A paranoid ex-junkie takes offence at the most…

Army of the Dead

Character clichés wheeled out in this torpid affair

22 Nov 2010

(18) 89min (Kaleidoscope) Of all the legions of scary monsters and super creeps, walking skeletons have to be the most rubbish. Ray Harryhausen managed to make them pretty threatening in Jason and the Argonauts and the bony ghouls from Pirates of…

31 North 62 East

Ham-fisted and unwise affair

2 Nov 2010

(15) 99min (Kaleidoscope) Would you trust a Prime Minister who is a cross between John Prescott and Boris Yeltsin? This and several other lumpen creations are offered up in a ham-fisted attempt to point the finger at government agencies who…

Jaguar Lives!

22 Sep 2010

(12) 87min (Arrow) Some movies are deemed so bad as to be actually good. Others are simply plain old bad bad. Jaguar Lives! bends the rules, rewrites the book and creates its very own category of god-awful. The Jaguar (Joe Lewis) is a globetrotting…

The Perfect Sleep

24 Aug 2010

(15) 101min (Icon) Had the makers of this movie concentrated more on the main product and less on an amusing viral campaign, The Perfect Sleep might not have wound up such a yawnsome affair. Gary Oldman and Bono were both filmed advising people, in…

Newsmakers

Siege thriller keeps action and outrage flowing

23 Jul 2010

(18) 105min (Showbox) Based on Johnnie To’s 2004 Hong Kong action thriller, this Russian remake (from Swedish director Anders Banke) is an admirable effort. As a bunch of ruthless gangsters go on the rampage across the country, Russian law…

Life on Mars

18 May 2010

(12) 710min (Fox) Transplanting a classic British show into a US setting has more often than not borne rotten fruit. The Office and Queer as Folk are two that never quite lived up to the UK original. Remaking Life on Mars proved so tough that the…

American: The Bill Hicks Story

12 May 2010

(15) 106min When Bill Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in February 1994, he left a void which the American stand-up world has found impossible to fill. The son of Southern Baptists, this comedy preacher succumbed to his addictions at the age of 32…

The Level

28 Apr 2010

(18) 87min (Brightspark) Quentin Tarantino might have an awful lot to answer for, but perhaps even he can’t be blamed for the appalling effort that is The Level. ‘Written’ and ‘directed’ by the Crook Brothers (Josh and Jeff), it contains some of the…

My Father My Lord

28 Apr 2010

(12) 76min (Artificial Eye) From the opening frame of an Orthodox Haredic Rabbi in torment about some as yet unknown personal and spiritual agony, you know you’re in for a tough ride. The painful finale questions everything that this tunnel-visioned…

Attack On Leningrad

29 Mar 2010

(15) 116min With Mora Sorvino donning a milky English accent and Gabriel Byrne sleepwalking through his role as a veteran war reporter, this turgid retelling of a tragic chapter in European history actually puts you off finding out more rather than…

Bernard and Doris

17 Feb 2010

(15) 103min (HBO) During the DVD extra in which director Bob Balaban discusses the vastly wealthy life of socialite heiress Doris Duke, he reveals that she was investigated for a fatal accident on her property and had a couple of camels living at…

Taking Chance

1 Feb 2010

(PG) 78min (HBO) There’s something to be said about a movie which doesn’t take the knee-jerk sensationalist route to making its point. And with a sensitive subject, such as the war in Iraq, you can see why Taking Chance would opt not to ramp up the…

Glorious 39

13 Nov 2009

(12A) 122mins Ten minutes in to Glorious 39 and you are left in no doubt that this is a Stephen Poliakoff production. There’s the stately country pile, the lavish aristo picnic, the soaring score, a sensational cast of British talent (Christopher…

Inside

A rare French gorefest

2 Oct 2009

During the filming of Inside, Béatrice Dalle would hide herself under a hoodie, so upset was she that people would deign to look at her when not looking her best. OK, the character she plays (‘The Woman’) has just had half her face blasted away during…

The Corner

25 Jun 2009

Long before The Wire became every two-bit critic’s all-time favourite show (be afraid people, even George Osborne is a fan) David Simon gave us The Corner, a relentlessly bleak mini-series which fleshed out the painful lives of West Baltimore’s most…

F**k

28 May 2009

(18) 93min The word ‘fuck’ is uttered some 800 times over the course of this US documentary from 2005. In doing so, it boringly negates the central point: that the f-word continues to wield an inherently volcanic power. Yet, as Drew Carey remarks at…

The Adventures of White Tuft

16 Apr 2009

(PG) 75min ‘Beavers in peril’ might sound like an unsavoury adult movie franchise, but it could in fact have worked as a neat subtitle for this documentary which aims for cuddly cutesy in one scene, bloody terrifying in the next. Clearly attempting…

Driftwood

2 Apr 2009

THRILLER Wrestling man mountain Diamond Dallas Page might not seem like the kind of brute you’d want to mess with, but in films like Driftwood, the big guy always falls that bit harder. And in this movie Goliath is taken on by little David Forrester…

Operation Valkyrie

2 Apr 2009

DOCUMENTARY Just when you thought it was safe to dispel the image of an eye-patched Tom Cruise from your mind; here comes the documentary story of the doomed plot to kill Hitler in 1944. Set to an inappropriately throbbing soundtrack which could best…

Incendiary

2 Apr 2009

DRAMA The tale of a guilt-ridden mother losing her young son and husband to a suicide bomb attack should make for unbearably emotional viewing. Instead, it’s more likely you’ll be watching through your hands on account of the ham-fisted approach and…