Film

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Epic

22 May 20132 stars

A celebrity cast including Beyonce Knowles and Colin Farrell can't save this rather wet adventure

The title of the latest animated film from Ice Age and Rio creators Blue Sky Studios refers to the scale; although offering a sweeping story of huge armies, arduous journeys, lost princesses and aerial assaults, the action never travels beyond the…

Fast & Furious 6

17 May 20133 stars

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 Moth Diaries

22 May 20132 stars

Suspense-less boarding school vampire thriller starring Sarah Bolger, Sarah Gadon and Lily Cole

Arriving a week before Neil Jordan’s vampire tale Byzantium, you have to wonder if those releasing The Moth Diaries were hoping to steal a march on Jordan’s film. They needn’t have bothered. A pale shadow of Byzantium, it doesn’t even hold a candle to…

The Great Gatsby

15 May 20133 stars

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…

Director Neil Jordan and actor Gemma Arterton talk vampire feminism in Byzantium

17 May 2013

The thriller is 'a continuation' of Jordan's earlier Interview with the Vampire

‘There have been too many vampire films lately,’ laughs Neil Jordan, perched on a chair in London’s Soho Hotel. You might say the director of Interview With the Vampire only has himself to blame. Without his 1994 take on Anne Rice’s novel, starring Tom…

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The Stone Roses: Made of Stone

17 May 20133 stars

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…

Vehicle 19

10 May 20132 stars

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…

The Iceman

17 May 20134 stars

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…

Disney Pixar’s Monsters University announced for Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013

16 May 2013

The family film will screen at the festival three weeks before release in the rest of the UK

Edinburgh International Film Festival audiences will be among the first in the UK to see Disney Pixar’s latest offering, Monsters University. The Family Gala 3D screening will take place on Sun 23 Jun in the Festival Theatre, with an exclusive schools…

The Stoker (Kochegar)

17 May 20134 stars

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…

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Neil Young: Journeys

16 May 20134 stars

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…

The Liability

10 May 20133 stars

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…

Star Trek Into Darkness

9 May 20133 stars

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…

Deadfall

10 May 20132 stars

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…

Julie Brook's made, unmade

15 May 20134 stars

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…

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Profile: Olivier Assayas, director of Something in the Air

17 May 2013

The writer-director specialises in period pieces that don't slide into nostalgia

Born 1955, Paris Background The son of a screenwriter father and a painter mother, Assayas worked as a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, before making his directorial debut in 1986 with Disorder. A writer-director with an impressive ability to work…

Directors Lee Hardcastle and Jake West on horror anthology The ABCs of Death

16 May 2013

The film also features short, sharp shocks from Ben Wheatley, Xavier Gens and Ti West

‘It’s a horror film anthology made up of 26 chapters, each directed by a separate director. Each segment is represented by a letter of the alphabet; the letter of the alphabet stands for a word which is relevant to that segment and that death.’ Lee…

Nothing but the Truth

16 May 20133 stars

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…

Something in the Air

10 May 20134 stars

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…

Five reasons to head to the Southside Film Festival

17 May 2013

The Glasgow film fest does a great line in Scottish films and site-specific screenings

You can discover forgotten former cinemas Glasgow’s Southside may be lacking in cinemas today but that hasn’t always been the case. Take a meander around the area’s architecturally-diverse former picturehouses on a walking tour with the knowledgeable…

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The King Of Marvin Gardens

10 May 20134 stars

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…

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

10 May 20133 stars

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…

The Village at the End of the World

10 May 20133 stars

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’.

UK Green Film Festival 2013 - Glasgow screenings

10 May 2013

Programme highlights include More than Honey, Promised Land and Trashed

Feed your conscience.So you’ve spent the whole winter with the central heating on full, the TV showing back-to-back Game of Thrones and the fridge stuffed with fruit flown in from Kenya. Necessary for survival, right? Perhaps not. Undo your ungreen…

Top 5... time manipulation movies

15 May 2013

Inspired by the trailer for About Time, we recount the 5 best chronologically-challenged movies

The trailer for writer-director Richard Curtis’ new time travel rom-com, About Time, was recently released, giving us first look at the love story between the chronologically gifted Tim (Black Mirror’s Domhnall Gleeson) and the object of his affections…