Film

Death Weekend set for Roxy Art House

Edinburgh venue marks Hallowe'en with themed weekend

27 Oct 2010

The Roxy Art House get right into the spooky swing of things with this subtly-named collection of morbid events celebrating Hallowe’en. There’s a literary reading from satirical sci-fi guy Steve Aylett; experimental art from Alex Hetherington; live…

Flower of Flesh and Blood, Guinea Pig and August Underground on DVD

The List’s guide to banned horror films, we watched them so you don’t have to

22 Oct 2010

For this Hallowe’en special we step into the outer reaches of horror and examine some of the films that have been refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Of course it’s impossible to have a discussion on banned movies in the…

Carlos

22 Oct 2010

(15) 333min/165min The release of French director Olivier Assayas’ Carlos – an exhilarating epic chronicling the career of ‘superstar terrorist’ Carlos the Jackal – is one of the cinematic events of 2010. Made in three parts for French television…

Andrzej Zulawski's cult horror hybrid Possession released on DVD

22 Oct 2010

It certainly ranks as one of the most surreal moments in my life. I’m sitting in a Polish restaurant, having dinner (before a scheduled Q&A at the Filmhouse) with one of my all time favourite film directors, who is standing behind me, giving me a…

The Arbor

22 Oct 2010

(15) 94min Writer-director Clio Barnard’s The Arbor takes its title from a semi-autobiographical play written by the late Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar, who grew up on the deprived Buttershaw estate in Bradford. Dunbar was just fifteen when she…

The Kids Are All Right

22 Oct 2010

(15) 106min High Art director Lisa Cholodenko has made one of the funniest films of the year by taking aspects of her own life — most notably the use of a sperm donor to father a child — and turning it into a comedy of social dilemmas. Woody Allen…

Burke and Hare

22 Oct 2010

100min A darkly comic retelling of the tale of Edinburgh’s most notorious murderous residents, Williams Burke (Simon Pegg) and Hare (Andy Serkis), and their quest to supply doctors with fresh bodies for their experiments, from director John Landis…

Document 8 and Africa in Motion

Two spirited local film festivals

22 Oct 2010

The term ‘human rights cinema’ may sound too much like hard work for the average cinemagoer. But for the last seven years Document, the Glasgow-based International Human Rights Film Festival, has been demonstrating that films about human rights simply…

Easy A

22 Oct 2010

(15) 92min Hollywood is going gaga for Emma Stone at the moment, and on the strength of her performance in this hit American teen comedy, it’s easy to see why. Stone channels Molly Ringwald in her heyday, playing a gauche outsider teen desiring…

Africa United

22 Oct 2010

(PG) 85min The 2010 World Cup is already a fading memory but the event’s afterglow is almost sufficient to cast a spell over the simplistic, feel good road movie Africa United. The film’s mood is eternally sunny, the approach is hectic and bustling…

Involuntary

22 Oct 2010

(15) 98min In contrast to recent high drama hits from Sweden (Let the Right One In, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Ruben Östlund’s quiet and thoughtful film Involuntary concentrates on the small conflicts of everyday life. Five unconnected…

Legend of The Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

22 Oct 2010

(PG) 90min Recommended to anyone keen to see a bunch of cartoon owls knocking lumps out of each other, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole marks the animated debut of Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). Combining a talent better known for violent…

Ramona and Beezus

22 Oct 2010

(U) 104min Adapted from Beverly Cleary’s popular children’s books, Ramona Quimby is a highly imaginative nine-year-old girl with a penchant for getting into mischief. In Elizabeth Allen’s feature, Ramona (Joey King) has to deal with that most…

Alpha and Omega

22 Oct 2010

(U) 88min Improbably dedicated to the late Hollywood wild man Dennis Hopper, who provides the voice of pack leader Tony, Alpha and Omega is a cutesy animation for toddlers only. Sultry alpha wolf Kate (Hayden Panettiere) is expected by her pack’s…

Dead Cert

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Two of modern cinema’s most over used clichés collide when vampires meet cock-er-ney gangsters in this tired Brit flick as Romanian bloodsuckers try to muscle in on an East End strip club owned by Craig Fairbrass. What could…

Night of the Demons

22 Oct 2010

(18) 96 mins (Kaleidoscope) Hollywood’s unquenchable appetite for remakes means even near-forgotten schlock horror cheapies are getting the remake treatment. Night of the Demons was a lurid, gory, late-night favourite from 1988 and this updated…

Psych 9

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93 mins (indi VISION) Unfortunately, Psych 9 takes itself way too seriously. Roslyn (Sarah Foster) finds temporary employment on the nightshift helping to clear out an abandoned hospital, while a serial killer (dubbed the Night Hawk by local…

Big Tit Zombies 3D

22 Oct 2010

(15) 73min (Terracotta) Where a film like The Horde takes its zombies seriously, this isn't is something you could ever accuse Takao Nakano’s Big Tit Zombies of doing. BTZ goes for simple pleasures as a troupe of strippers fight off a plague of the…

The Horde

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Surprsingly France is at the forefront of new extreme horror cinema, and while The Horde isn’t as subversive as Frontier(s), Martyrs or Inside it’s a wildly entertaining mix of La Haine and Dawn of the Dead (unfortunately we…

RED

22 Oct 2010

(12A) 111min Action romcom adapted from Warren Ellis' graphic novel as a bunch of old duffers (Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox) are called back from retirement (RED stands for Retired Extremely Dangerous) for…

Paranormal Activity 2

22 Oct 2010

(15) 91min Hasty sequel to the ‘found footage’ horror phenomenon of 2009. This time a family set up surveillance equipment after what appears to be a series of break-ins, but soon realise something far nastier is lurking in the shadows. General…

Saw 3D

22 Oct 2010

(18) min The seventh and supposedly final instalment of the series that defined ‘torture porn’. Expect blood, guts and more intricate terror traps as Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) reeks his final revenge from beyond the grave in goretastic 3D. General…

Chasing Legends

22 Oct 2010

94min Gripping documentary following the HTC-Columbia Team through the grueling 2009 Tour De France. Odeon Braehead; Showcase Paisley, Glasgow, 21 Oct.

Pink Flamingos and Prayers for Bobby among of Glasgay! 2010 film highlights

Stonewall Uprising, Assume Nothing and Orlando also screening

8 Oct 2010

The Stonewall riots of summer 1969 have been the subject of a feature film and numerous documentaries, but the new historical documentary, Stonewall Uprising, gives more information than any other film to date, telling the birth of Gay Liberation…

Police, Adjective - Corneliu Porumboiu profile

Romanian filmmaker leading movement committed to realism and use of black humour

6 Oct 2010

Name Corneliu Porumboiu Born Vaslui, Romania, 1974. Background Porumboiu studied film at the National University of Drama and Film in Bucharest. He first received acclaim for his short film A Trip to the City (2003). This was followed by…

Despicable Me

6 Oct 2010

(U) 94min Universal have finally hit back big in the animation stakes with Despicable Me, a good-humoured, accessible comedy that never quite reaches the classic heights of Pixar’s Up!, or even DreamWorks’ equally brilliant How To Train Your Dragon…

A Town Called Panic (Panique Au Village)

6 Oct 2010

(PG) 77min This insane Belgium animated feature is the big screen spin-off of the popular 2003 television series of the same name created by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar. Its UK release is being championed by Hammer & Tongs, the pop…

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…

New York, I Love You

6 Oct 2010

(15) 103min The second instalment of the wholly spurious ‘Cities of Love’ franchise produced by Paris, je t’aime creator Emmanuel Benbihy, New York, I Love You feels about as fresh as a piss-stained Pan Am flight bag. It’s a collection of eleven…

Restrepo

6 Oct 2010

(15) 93min Filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger present a gripping insight into the experiences of a US platoon in their award-winning documentary Restrepo. The film, shot over the course of one year, follows the group of soldiers as they…

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

6 Oct 2010

(U) 105min Taking its title from the biblical story of Lilith, this idiosyncratic documentary from Sophie Fiennes immerses us in the work of German artist Anselm Keifer. Back in the early 1990s the latter left his native country and took over a…

Digitally restored print of The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)

Luchino Visconti's 1963 epic adaptation

6 Oct 2010

Don’t miss this brief chance to see the digitally restored print of Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti’s 1963 epic adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel about the decline of one noble family at the time of the Italian reunification in the…

Morag McKinnon makes black comedy Donkeys

Directorial debut is second from Scottish/Danish project behind Red Road

5 Oct 2010

The degree of international acclaim generated by Andrea Arnold’s Cannes and BAFTA prize-winning Red Road rather clouded the fact that it was the first of three films to be co-produced under the Scottish/Danish project The Advance Party. Four years…

Howard Marks biopic Mr Nice - Rhys Ifans interview

Actor Rhys Ifans chats about what it’s like to portray his old friend and hero Howard Marks in Mr Ni

5 Oct 2010

‘I wasn’t born to play anything really, but for a plethora of reasons this is a very important moment for me as an actor. Howard Marks is a great friend and a great Welshman. We got to know each other in 1995/96 through a band called the Super Furry…

The Social Network

5 Oct 2010

(12A) 120min David Fincher’s The Social Network, aka ‘the Facebook movie’, is a film about smart people that arrives with the intelligence to match. Based on a script by Aaron The West Wing Sorkin and inspired by Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental…

Mr Nice

5 Oct 2010

The popularity of Welsh marijuana dealer and international criminal mastermind Howard Marks’ mischievous, salty and funny 1997 autobiography was due mainly to Marks’ admirable balancing act between outlaw mythology and Lord Byron’s assertion that ‘the…

How seven key figures in Scottish culture have fared over 25 years

25 years of The List

23 Sep 2010

Didn’t they do well? Scotland has more than its fair share of talent, finds Kirstin Innes, as she chronicles the highs and lows of some of our finest exports over 25 years, including Peter Capaldi, Carol Ann Duffy, Ian Rankin, Douglas Gordon, Tilda…

Looking back on 25 years of commentary on Scottish culture

25 years of The List

23 Sep 2010

A lot has happened in 25 years of Scottish culture. Niki Boyle gives a blow-by-blow account of the major events

Take One Action film festival showcases best in political cinema

Budrus, Nero’s Guests and Sweet Crude among highlights of 2010

23 Sep 2010

Take One Action! should have enough films in their 2010 programme to get the most politically slothful citizen socially activated. The film Budrus focuses on small actions leading to big results, with villagers in the little titular town taking things…

Take One Action, Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival and Africa in Motion set for 2010

23 Sep 2010

Festival-ed out post Edinburgh? If you’re a red carpet junkie, worry not, 2010 still has plenty to offer the discerning cineaste. But forget Venice, Toronto and London, what about film festivals a bit closer to home? The Scottish arts calendar is…

Mad about town - Jon Hamm interview

Mad Men's Don Draper stars in Ben Affleck's Town

22 Sep 2010

Jon Hamm says that there is only one downside to playing TV’s best known advertising executive, Don Draper, on Mad Men. ‘Part of the fun of being an actor is that you get to do different things, and that’s the one downside of working in television…

Made In Dagenham - Rosamund Pike interview

22 Sep 2010

Name Rosamund Pike Born 28 January 1979, London Background Unusually for an actress who was relatively unknown before being cast as a ‘Bond girl’, Pike’s career took off after playing MI6 agent Miranda Frost in Die Another Day (a role…

Take One Action Film Festival 2010

Sweet Crude, Climate Refugees and Budrus among highlights

22 Sep 2010

Now in its third year, the Take One Action! Film Festival offers a rare opportunity to watch activist documentaries and politically-orientated films at the cinema. This excellent festival concentrates on the agenda-setting and eco-documentary sub-genres…

Julia Bacha's Budrus screens at Take One Action Film Festival

Middle East documentary

22 Sep 2010

Name Julia Bacha Born Rio de Janeiro, 1980. Background Bacha studied Middle Eastern history and politics at Columbia University. She worked as co-writer and editor on the 2004 multi award-winning documentary about Al Jazeera, Control Room…

The Pope, The Royal Channel and Beyonce on YouTube

22 Sep 2010

The Pope has been and gone, but how best can you stay in touch with the pontiff when he’s out of town? Like any 21st-century boy, the Pope and the Vatican have their own YouTube channel, with an impressive 787 uploaded videos. He’s not the only…

Made in Dagenham

22 Sep 2010

(15) 112min This entertaining crowd-pleaser, made in the mould of British comic dramas such as Calendar Girls (and directed by that film’s maker Nigel Cole), dramatises the true story of the industrial dispute between the female work force and the…

Buried

22 Sep 2010

(15) 94min The prospect of a thriller featuring rom-com favourite Ryan Reynolds as the only actor on screen is not exactly enticing, but it’s time to throw all those prejudices away, as Reynolds gives a fantastic performance in a very fine…

Buried - Ryan Reynolds profile

22 Sep 2010

Name Ryan Reynolds Born 23 October 1976, Vancouver, Canada Background The Canadian actor’s first prominent acting gig was when he appeared in the Nickelodeon series Fifteen between 1991 and1993. Five years of bad Canadian TV movies later…

Eat Pray Love

22 Sep 2010

(PG) 139min From Nip/Tuck to Glee, director Ryan Murphy has the golden touch when it comes to television. Not so, however, with film. His 2006 adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ memoir Running With Scissors was a middle-of-the-road misfire and much…

Frozen

22 Sep 2010

(15) 93min Despite travelling the same well-worn path of several other man-against-nature thrillers, writer/director Adam Green’s take on the survivalist genre manages a few icy frissons of its own, as well as a withering (if unnecessary) indictment…

Police, Adjective (Politist, Adjectiv)

22 Sep 2010

(12A) 114min Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to 12:08 East of Bucharest is a deliberately paced and deceptively simple police procedural, which unfolds in the dreary streets of the filmmaker’s provincial home town of Vasilu.

The Town

22 Sep 2010

(15) 124min Say what you like about Ben Affleck the actor, as a director and screenwriter he is more than competent. As with his overlooked directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Affleck has adapted another Boston-set crime novel (Prince of Thieves by…

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 Special Relationship

22 Sep 2010

(15) 88min (Optimum) The third part of writer Peter Morgan’s excellent ‘Blair trilogy’ focuses on the relationship between the former PM and US president Bill Clinton. While Blair will probably be primarily remembered for what many perceive to have…

I'm Still Here

22 Sep 2010

(15) 107min When Joaquin Phoenix announced that he was retiring as an actor to become a rap star and that his attempts to change career would be filmed by his brother-in-law Casey Affleck, sceptics immediately screamed hoax, which Affleck has now…

37 Uses For A Dead Sheep

22 Sep 2010

(E) 84min (Cornerstone) For the last three decades the Pamir Kirghiz have lived in exile in Turkey. In 2005, British filmmaker Ben Hopkins (Simon Magus, The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz) and a film crew arrived in their village and asked the diaspora…

Tears For Sale

22 Sep 2010

(18) 86min (Icon) Reportedly the most expensive Serbian film ever made, this darkly comic fantasy is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gloriously eccentric flights of fancy. It certainly boasts the requisite visual imagination…

While The City Sleeps

22 Sep 2010

(PG) 100min (Exposure Cinema) Legendary Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang’s 1956 newspaper world set thriller was his penultimate American film. Lang, whose mighty filmography (both sides of the Atlantic) included stellar masterworks Metropolis…

Resident Evil: Afterlife (3D)

22 Sep 2010

(15) 96min In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, Alice (Milla Jovovich) continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety, while her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new…

The Maid (La Nana)

22 Sep 2010

(15) 94min Chilean black comedy about a long-serving housemaid who begins to go a bit mental. Writer/director Sebastián Silva’s carefully empathetic screenplay and gutsy direction and an all-dominating performance by Catalina Saavedra make this well…

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

17 Sep 2010

(12A) 132min There is something comfortingly old school about Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. It has all the fancy moves, dazzling montage sequences and polish of a classic Hollywood melodrama. This could be one of those…

Enter The Void

17 Sep 2010

(18) 142min Argentine/French filmmaker Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone, Irreversible) has proven both his amazing vision and his impoverished sensibility with his past forays into feature filmmaking. His latest is a metaphysical movie offered from the…

The Secret of Kells

17 Sep 2010

(PG) 78min Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey’s luscious animated film takes inspiration from The Book of Kells, a key work in Irish medieval history. But rather than the three-dimensional style currently favoured by Pixar and DreamWorks, Moore and Twomey…

Takers

17 Sep 2010

(12A) 106min From its unsophisticated title onwards, Takers is a most basic heist movie. Frenetic action, headache-inducing score, minimal characterisation and a napkin-sized plot, if you’re looking for the new Heat then this certainly isn’t it.

Welcome to 3D hell - upcoming 3D films

The latest films unable to say no to the film technology

16 Sep 2010

Jackass 3-D The third documentary feature outing for Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of aging masochists is, you guessed it, in 3D. Why and to what effect remains a mystery. Out 5 Nov. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 & 2 The…

I’m Still Here

16 Sep 2010

(15) 108min Joaquin Phoenix meltdown documentary. Selected release, Fri 17 Sep.

Simon Pegg stars in film adaptation of Burke and Hare story

Edinburgh-set horror-comedy released this Hallowe’en - Simon Pegg interview

10 Sep 2010

William Burke and William Hare were two 19th-century serial killers – not grave robbers, as widely believed – who made a living selling off their victims’ bodies to the Edinburgh Medical College. This might not scream ‘comedy’ to the average passer-by…

Student Film Guide 2010

What's coming out when

10 Sep 2010

From mainstream classics to art school gems, film critic Miles Fielder offers a rundown on the movies you cannot afford to miss

Know your cinemas

A round-up of all the best screens

10 Sep 2010

Niki Boyle takes you through the cities finest silver screen haunts

Corin Sworn: The Lens Prism

10 Sep 2010

A man steps into the spotlight of a theatre, hangs up his jacket, takes a sip of water and begins the narration. A series of vignettes will weave together autobiographical anecdote with history, and past events with present day interpretation. Corin…

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival 2010

Bill Douglas Trilogy screening and premiere of David Greig’s Monsters in the Hall

10 Sep 2010

If there’s one thing that Scotland has in spades, it’s a proliferation of some mighty fine smaller scale festivals, and the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (now in its 4th year) has more than earned the credibility to rub shoulders with…

Burke and Hare

Set in ye ol' Edinburgh

10 Sep 2010

If you want to see an old school Edinburgh, look out for it on the silver screen this Autumn says Miles Fielder

Bang for your buck

Stretch your film budget further

10 Sep 2010

When it comes to concessions for the silver screen, some of the cities’ finest have ensured you’ll still have plenty of popcorn money in reserve.

Debra Granik's Winter’s Bone explores American mountain people

Adaptation of Daniel Woodrell novel

7 Sep 2010

The American film writer-director Debra Granik has just returned from visiting this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival and she’s recalling the films she managed to cram in between her promotional duties. ‘I loved Thundersoul, a documentary about an…

Alamar

7 Sep 2010

(U) 73min An artful fusion of documentary and fiction in which the non-professional cast play versions of themselves, Mexican filmmaker Pedro González-Rubio’s Alamar begins with a couple separating. Roberta (Roberta Palombini) has returned to her…

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

7 Sep 2010

(15) 93min Inspired by true events, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done tells the story of Brad Macallum (Michael Shannon), an aspiring actor who commits the crime he is to enact in a Greek tragedy in which he is performing. So here it is. The…

Going The Distance

7 Sep 2010

(15) 102min Whisper it quietly, but Drew Barrymore is beginning to lose her touch. Her early likeable films Never Been Kissed and The Wedding Singer meant we cut her a lot of slack as the girl-next-door. But after Music and Lyrics, 50 First Dates…

The Other Guys

7 Sep 2010

(12A) 107min The action/comedy genre gets a welcome boost with Adam McKay’s crowd-pleaser The Other Guys teaming Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz, an oddly-matched couple of New York cops. After years in the shadows of…

Cyrus

7 Sep 2010

(15) 90min Sibling writer/directors Mark and Jay Duplass are figureheads of the Mumblecore movement – ultra-low budget, largely improvised films featuring non-professional actors – and after earning praise on the American indie circuit for their…

The Runaways

7 Sep 2010

(15) 106min For all its rock’n’roll rebellion and punk power, there’s something quite conventional about music promo director Floria Sigismondi’s biopic about The Runaways, the ’70s all-girl group that gave the world the Joan Jett. Perhaps it’s that…

The Hole

7 Sep 2010

1980s wunderkind Joe Dante will forever have his name associated with hits Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins and Innerspace, but he’s been missing in action cinematically since 2003’s flop Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Fantasy adventure The Hole returns…

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…

Frontier Blues

7 Sep 2010

(12A) 97min British-Iranian director Babak Jalali captures the absurdist details and quiet tragedies of life in a remote Iranian border town in his debut feature Frontier Blues. Through long, static shots and slow-pacing, Jalali details the lives…

The Kid

7 Sep 2010

(15) 100min Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels alumnus Nick Moran has been quietly building himself a respectable second career as a writer, producer and director. His adaptation of the Kevin Lewis misery memoir The Kid is told with great energy and…

Ivul

7 Sep 2010

(15) 100min Artist, writer and occasional filmmaker Andrew Kötting (Galivant, This Filthy Earth) returns to cinema with Ivul, the story of Alex who is caught by his father playing a sexualised game with his sister. In a state of rage the father sends…

Tamara Drewe

7 Sep 2010

(15) 109min Just because a film is based on a newspaper comic strip does it have to feel like a crass pantomime? If you happen to be usually dependable British director Stephen Frears, apparently so. His relentlessly jaunty adaptation of Posy…

Just Wright

7 Sep 2010

(PG) 100min Future definitions of the word ‘mawkish’ may well include a synopsis of Just Wright, a truly lame sporting rom-com in which the romance is as tepid as the comedy. The usually personable Queen Latifah (Chicago) plays lovelorn…

The Faber Book of New South American Cinema - Demetrios Matheou

1 Sep 2010

“This book is very much concerned with personal filmmaking”, Demetrios Matheou insists in the introduction to New South American Cinema, a book of interviews with various filmmakers from the region. But South American film seems as close to the Korean…

Bent and Brother to Brother get DVD release

LGTB DVD Round-Up

1 Sep 2010

Director Rodney Evans’ intelligent, engaging Brother to Brother ●●●● (Peccadillo Pictures), a sleeper hit at the Sundance festival in 2004, explores the gay and lesbian subcultures of the Harlem Renaissance through the friendship between a young gay…

Scott Pilgrim offers a glimpse into a subculture where being geeky is OK

If life were a video game it would go something like this

27 Aug 2010

Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old guy from Toronto with no job. He shares a one-room-one-bed-no-couch apartment with his 'cool gay roommate' Wallace Wells. He's in a band called Sex Bob-omb with Stephen Stills - The Talent - and Kim Pine - Scott's first…

Bonded By Blood

Solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick

25 Aug 2010

(15) 100min Second attempt (see 2000’s Essex Boys) to dramatise the events that led up to the murders of drug dealers Tony Tucker, Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe in 1995 in Rettendon in Essex. Decent, solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick.

Profile: Jean Van Hamme

24 Aug 2010

Name Jean Van Hamme Born Brussels, Belgium, January 6 1939 Background Van Hamme studied business at university before becoming and journalist and a marketer, but from 1968 he began his professional writing career working around his day…

The 7th Dimension

24 Aug 2010

(15) 90min (Kaleidoscope) ‘The whole universe in one room,’ a character pronounces in Brad Watson’s low budget sci-fi. Clearly envisaged as the kind of cerebral sci-fi thriller that makes up for its lack of economic clout with ingenuity of thought…

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…

Sus

24 Aug 2010

(15) 96min (4Digi) On the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 landslide election victory a black man (Clint Dyer) is picked up off the streets of Brixton under the notorious suspicion law and interrogated by two white police officers (Ralph Brown and…

The Mother of Invention

24 Aug 2010

(12) 98min (Kaleidoscope) Despite an amusing cameo by Mark Boone Jr as protagonist Vincent’s dishevelled dad and a couple of wryly amusing moments from Kevin Corrigan playing Vincent’s relatively wise, melancholic buddy, this is a mockumentary…

Cinema as Poetry: Frantisek Vlácil season at Filmhouse

Historical tapestries of blood, sex, sadism and primitive faith

24 Aug 2010

Of all the brilliant artists and filmmakers to emerge from the Czech and Slovak film studios in the 1960s Vlácil was arguably the most gifted. With some exceptions, Vlácil’s films are historical tapestries mixing blood, sex, sadism and primitive faith…

Screening Surrealism film programme

Films by Luis Buñuel, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Maya Deren and Hans Richter

24 Aug 2010

This terrific season of big and small films by inspirational lights of experimental cinema – Luis Buñuel, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Maya Deren, and Hans Richter among many others – is showing in conjunction with the National Galleries of…

Why Did I Get Married Too?

24 Aug 2010

(12A) 121min Thought-provoking if occasionally lame sequel to actor and director and one man film industry Tyler Perry’s 2007 drama Why Did I Get Married? It’s a similar formula where close couples bond, divide and regroup in the face of a less smug…

No Impact Man

24 Aug 2010

(15) 93min Compelling if mildly conceited documentary about a middle class Manhattan couple who spend a year massively reducing their carbon footprint by going without toilet paper, TV, coffee, a refrigerator and much more. This is a Take One Action…