Film

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Gloria Swanson and Baby Peggy to feature in Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema

27 Feb 2013

The silent film stars are part of a programme that includes music from Minima and The Dodge Brothers

Gloria Swanson is for many people the epitome of the silent film star. She is remembered not just for her many roles in early cinema (Male and Female, Why Change Your Wife) but also as ageing silent screen actress Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s sublime…

The Lords of Salem

26 Feb 20133 stars

Rob Zombie's ambitious witch horror screened as part of FrightFest at Glasgow Film Festival 2013

Before the UK premiere of Rob Zombie’s latest feature we got a look at the first episode of Norwegian TV series Hellfjord, packed with gags and plenty of weirdness it went down incredibly well with the FrightFest audience. Zombie’s movies have all…

Byzantium

26 Feb 20133 stars

Neil Jordan's vampire flick screened as part of FrightFest at the Glasgow Film Festival 2013

Neil Jordan’s return to the world of vampires was another much anticipated UK premiere, particularly as Jordan, producer Stephen Woolley and stars Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan were in attendance. This is a modern urban vampire story playing out in a…

Blancanieves

26 Feb 20134 stars

1920s set silent take on the Snow White story, with seven bullfighting dwarves

It’s going to be difficult to get through a review of Blancanieves without mentioning The Artist, so let’s get it out of the way now. Both films are European, black and white, reduced format silent films in romanticised 20th century period settings.

A Late Quartet

26 Feb 20133 stars

Unlikable characters blight this grown-up drama starring Christopher Walken

As befits an unapologetically grown-up and classy film about posh people who have loads of money and play in a string quartet, this drama has some supremely elegant, subtle and well-turned scenes. It also has moments of preciousness choking enough to…

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Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 2)

26 Feb 20133 stars

Highly entertaining second part of the vibrant Bollywood gangster drama

The second half of Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster epic picks up immediately where its predecessor ended; with the marketplace murder of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) by a gang of masked motorcyclists. Despite his initial reluctance, Sardar’s son Faizal…

Welcome to the Punch

26 Feb 20133 stars

James McAvoy and Andrea Riseborough star in this showy action flick from the director of Shifty

There is something distinctly hypocritical and pernicious about the way this homegrown thriller gestures towards a moral stance on gun violence, only to itself locate firearms as not only an absolutely critical element in effective policing, but also…

The Look of Love

26 Feb 20132 stars

Michael Winterbottom's biopic of soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never finds its tone

Despite juicy subject matter and a promising cast, this biopic of the British strip club and soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never quite finds its tone. In its first half, it deploys a weak end-of-the-pier comic mode which might fit its tasselled, trashy…

Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1)

26 Feb 20134 stars

Epic Bollywood gangster saga influenced by The Godfather

Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster saga is a considerable undertaking; split into two parts of over 160 minutes each, it follows the fortunes of a criminal dynasty with exhaustive attention to detail. The model is clearly Francis Ford Coppola’s study of…

Much Ado About Nothing

26 Feb 20134 stars

This lo-fi project from Joss Whedon is an elegant adaptation of the Shakespearean play

It’s not classed as one of Shakespeare's hard-to-categorise 'problem plays', but there’s plenty that’s problematic in this mid-period comedy. The traducement, rejection and humiliation of the innocent Hero, for instance – and her capitulation thereto…

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Hi-So

26 Feb 20132 stars

Inert Thai drama about a directionless twenty-something in Bangkok

Form follows content in this tediously inert Thai drama about a young man caught between eastern and western cultures and suffering from emotional paralysis. Emotional paralysis is quite possibly the state writer-director Aditya Assarat’s film will…

Neighbouring Sounds

26 Feb 20134 stars

A clever and original social drama from Brazil directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho

The current resurgence in Brazilian cinema throws up a major work in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds, an allegorical tale of class conflict set in a Recife condominium. From the opening scene, in which young mother Bia (Maeve Jinkings) hides…

Thérèse Desqueyroux

26 Feb 20133 stars

Claude Miller's final film is an adaptation of Francois Mauriac's book starring Audrey Tautou

François Mauriac’s 1927 novel is one of the cornerstones of French literature, but is less familiar to non-Gallic audiences. Casting comely Amelie star Audrey Tautou as the repressed wife who impulsively seeks revenge on her domineering husband suggests…

The Hijacking

26 Feb 20133 stars

Tense Danish thriller about a ship taken over by pirates in the Indian Ocean

Tobias Lindholm’s seafaring thriller explores contrasting claustrophobic environments through the eyes of two protagonists: Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk), the ship’s cook on board a hijacked freighter in the Indian Ocean, and freight firm CEO Peter (Soren…

Sawney: Flesh of Man

26 Feb 20133 stars

The cannibal horror was screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival's 2013 Frightfest strand

There was a sneaky bonus before the screening of Sawney with the world premiere of Spencer Estabrook’s short The Hunt (●●●●), a nicely comedic concise monster movie that begs the question who’s hunting who? Sawney played well to the Scottish crowd.

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Oscars live blog - the 2013 award ceremony as it happened

25 Feb 2013

A blow-by-blow account of film, fashion and faux pas highlights from Hannah McGill

11.15 No-one famous is on the red carpet yet except, befuddlingly, for Jessica Chastain, who is REALLY famous, and yet has arrived earlier than the rest of her kind, either to prove that she is better than them, or because the clock’s wrong on her phone…

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

25 Feb 20132 stars

Unsatisfying horror, comedy and action combo starring Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the dunderheaded English-language debut of Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola (best known for highly entertaining Nazi zom-com Dead Snow). Despite a promisingly (and characteristically) daft concept it's a film that lacks…

BA Roberston discusses his first acting role in Living Apart Together

22 Feb 2013

The 1982 film, soon to be given a new lease of life, is screening at the Glasgow Film Festival

Glasgow Film Festival annually revives a classic film made in Scotland, with previous galas including Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl and Bertrand Tavernier’s Death Watch. This year it’s writer/director Charlie Gormley’s 1982 film Living Apart Together…

Sleep Tight (Mientras Duermes)

22 Feb 20134 stars

Dark Spanish thriller featuring a wonderful, creepy central performance from Luis Tosar

Over the last few years horror fans have been turning to Europe, and in particular Spain, for fresh innovative cinema. And while Sleep Tight is more a dark thriller than a straight horror it inhabits some pretty creepy, twisted territory, and is…

The Gatekeepers

22 Feb 20135 stars

Oscar-nominated documentary about the heads of internal Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet

Shin Bet is the name of Israel's internal anti-terrorist intelligence agency, the identities of its personnel are all top-secret, with the exception of the man in charge. In this remarkable, vital documentary Israeli director Dror Moreh interviews the…

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Spring Breakers

22 Feb 20131 star

Harmony Korine's ludicrously bad drama about four girls gone wild on spring break

Incoherent, brash and self-consciously 'arthouse' in execution, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is an intriguing cinematic spectacle: an awful film that seems aware – nay, aggressively boastful – of its own awfulness. It follows a quartet of…

The History of Future Folk

22 Feb 20133 stars

Charming but slight sci-fi music comedy in the vein of Flight of the Conchords

Cosmic-folk twosome Future Folk started life on the underground New York music scene, playing acoustic guitar-and-banjo tunes with sci-fi lyrics to crowds of bemused punters. The gentle whimsy and a focus on music rather than jokes puts their foot…

White Elephant

22 Feb 20134 stars

Contemplative Argentinian drama about a team of Catholic priests working in Buenos Aires' slums

In this unique and impressive drama Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Trapero (Carancho) invites us into the lives of a team of dedicated Catholic priests, led by Father Julian (Ricardo Darin), who work with and live amongst gang members, drug addicts and…

How to Survive a Plague

22 Feb 20134 stars

Moving, Oscar-nominated documentary about the early days of AIDS campaign group ACT UP

Founded by playwright Larry Kramer and a group of fellow activists in March 1987, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a grassroots group dedicated to influencing US AIDS policy and research. David France’s documentary charts the group’s…

Before Dawn

21 Feb 20132 stars

Uneven low-budget zombie drama with unexpected final act

The public’s interest in all things connected with zombies shows little signs of passing away quietly, with micro-budget feature Before Dawn arriving on the heels of the somewhat higher profile Warm Bodies. The common ground is that both attempt to…