Film, Miles Fielder

Brighton Rock remake actress Andrea Riseborough - Profile

From Made in Dagenham to starring opposite Guy Pearce

Name Andrea Riseborough Born 27 October 1981, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Background She was Sally Hawkins’ mate in Happy-Go-Lucky, Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk to Finchley, English Civil War-era crumpet in The Devil’s Whore and busty Brenda…

DVD: The Flying Scotsman

1929 Romantic comedy thriller is silent film with dialogue added

Classic 1929 action-romance set on the titular train, with amazing stunts and future Oscar-winner Ray Milland.

Confessions - Dark drama of murder and revenge in the classroom

Japan’s contender for Best Foreign Language Film at 2011 Oscars

Japan’s contender for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards is a real departure for its director, Tetsuya Nakashima, whose candy coloured comedy Kamikaze Girls and musical Memories of Matsuko previously brought him international…

The Fighter stars Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg as boxing half-brothers

Comparisons with The Wrestler are inevitable and not unfair

(15) 115min All the best boxing movies are as much about what goes on outside the ring as what happens inside the ropes. Despite this biopic, scripted by Scott Silver (8 Mile) and five other writers, being based on the lives of not one but two…

Brighton Rock resurrects religious theme of Graham Greene’s source novel

2011 film adaptation also highlights grubby sexual and violent content

(15) 111min Remaking a seminal British crime film might seem like madness, but then writer-director Rowan Joffe has ignored the 1947 original and instead gone back to Graham Greene’s source novel. And having done that, he’s ditched its 1938 setting…

1964 version of The Thin Red Line is a workmanlike war movie

Original film bludgeons home madness of war message of James Jones' novel

(12) 95min (Optimum) The central message of James Jones’ source novel – war is insane and it turns soldiers into mad men – was somewhat lost amid the seemingly endless scenes of marines wading through long grass in Terrence Malick’s quasi-mystical…

K-20: The Legend of the Black Mask

Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials boasts evocative steampunk setting

(12) 137min (Manga Entertainment) Forget about the duff Green Hornet, this Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials – The Shadow, The Rocketeer, The Phantom et al – is far more entertaining. The year is 1949, but it’s an alternate reality in…

Wetherby

Intriguing and engrossing 1984 mystery drama with to-die-for cast

(15) 99min (Park Circus) National treasure David Hare remains best known for his award-feted plays (Plenty, The Blue Room) and his screenwriting (The Hours, The Reader), but he’s also an assured director, as is evidenced by this intriguing and…

F

British ‘hoody horror’ thriller in which a group of teachers defend themselves from schoolkids

(18) 78min F is the latest in a line of peculiarly British ‘hoody horror’ films that also include Eden Lake and Heartless. English writer/director Johannes Roberts’ effort is the best yet thanks to his smart script, crisp direction and a fine…

Freakonomics

‘Blockbuster documentary’ adapting bestselling book on human nature not quite substantial enough

(12) 90min (Optimum) This ‘blockbuster documentary’, which pools the talents of six well-established doc directors to adapt the bestselling book by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner that examined various aspects of human nature, doesn’t quite add…

Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti)

Enjoyable gay rom-com-cum-family soap by Turkish/Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek

(12A) 112min This gay rom-com-cum-family soap by Turkish/Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek is as enjoyable as his winning 1996 debut, Hamam (The Turkish Bath). And over the 14 years since that international success introduced a bright new talent to…

Down Terrace

Alternately nasty and hilarious UK kitchen sink gangster film

(15) 89min (Metrodome) Not another facking Brit gangster flick?! Well, yes, but this alternately nasty and hilarious little gem is a world away from the mockney posturing of Guy Ritchie and co. Set in the suburban backstreets of Southern England’s…

Kicks

Lindy Heymann’s dark drama dramatises crisis of Britain’s celebrity culture

(15) 82min (Drakes Avenue) The third and final film to be made under Liverpool and Northwest’s excellent micro-budget scheme, Digital Departures, director Lindy Heymann’s dark drama is very different from its predecessors, Terence Davies…

Monsters

Astonishing science fiction thriller betters both Cloverfield and District 9

(12A) 94min Young British filmmaker Gareth Edwards’ astonishing science fiction thriller combines the immersive excitement of Cloverfield with the astute political allegory of Distrtict 9, and, far from being a rip-off, is actually a much better film…

Robinson in Ruins offers playful commentary on state of the nation - Patrick Keiller profile

'As the 2008 banking crisis unfolded, the film gained a very specific context.'

Name Patrick Keiller. Born Blackpool, England, 1950 Background A graduate of art and architecture, Keiller was inspired to make films by Chris Marker’s unconventional art doc, La Jetée. Keiller’s films, beginning with the 1981 short…

50th anniversary re-release of Peeping Tom - Anna Massey profile

'Peeping Tom wasn’t cosy; it was very ugly'

Name Anna Massey Born 11 August 1937, Thakeham, West Sussex Background In the second volume of his autobiography A Life in Movies, the great British filmmaker Michael Powell recalled why he wanted the then inexperienced and unknown (in…

Outcast

Dreadful script and cack-handed direction renders film unintelligible despite strong cast

This Scottish/Irish co-production shot in Edinburgh and Galway boasts an intriguing premise and a great cast, but its grim supernatural subject matter comes across as, at best, tedious, at worst, laughable. That’s a real shame given there’s plenty of…

Shogun Assassin

(18) 85min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Heavily cut by the British Board of Film Censorship for its original cinema release and subsequently banned as a video nasty, this bloodthirsty 1980 martial arts flick has since become a chanabara (samurai…

Sweet Karma

(18) 85min (Anchor Bay) There are echoes of female vigilante benchmarks Ms 45 (aka Angel of Vengeance) and the Kill Bills in this femme fatale revenge thriller in as much as it features a gorgeous girl (model-turned-actress Shera Bechard) brutally…

Chaplin at Keystone

(U) 561min (BFI) Before he became an international star and acclaimed filmmaker, Charlie Chaplin learned to make movies at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company. Spotted in Fred Karno’s touring vaudeville troupe, Chaplin was snapped up by the silent…

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

(U) 89min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Frank Tashlin’s wacky 1957 advertising world romp has got to be a contender for the fastest comedy ever made. Tashlin, the Hollywood animator-turned-filmmaker, even gets in a gag before the film’s opening…

Metropolis

(PG) 150min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) The reconstruction, restoration and re-release of classic films is now becoming a regular occurrence (happily enough), but the reissue of Fritz Lang’s visionary 1927 science fiction film is something altogether…

Chico & Rita

(15) 93min This Spanish-made, English-language, feature-length animation joins the ever-growing list of highly unconventional, beautifully realised, adult-oriented cartoons made outside of America that also includes The Illusionist, Waltz with Bashir…

The Ballroom

Brazilian comic drama enlists former dance kings and ageing beauties

(15) 95min (Matchbox) Brazilian director Lais Bodanzky’s charming but cheeky comic drama takes place over one night in an old school ballroom (or ‘gafieira’) in Sao Paulo, where the ageing locals teach a handful of young newcomers a thing or three…

A Town Called Panic (Panique Au Village)

(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…