Film and Miles Fielder

Free Men

A Prophet's Tahar Rahim stars in worthy but flawed WWII espionage drama

11 May 2012

Loosely based on real events, this espionage drama set during World War II focuses on the largely overlooked cooperation between Arabic immigrants and the French Resistance. Tahar Rahim (who shot to fame in A Prophet) plays a North African worker named…

The Innkeepers

A genuinely involving and disconcerting chiller that thankfully eschews any trendy post-modernism

11 May 2012

Having established his credentials as a serious genre fan with a spot-on homage to 80s horror movies in The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West reaches even further back into the past with this slow-burning thriller. Like all good haunted house…

Le Quai des Brumes

Marcel Carné’s 1938 romantic crime drama gets a well deserved restoration

4 May 2012

One of the definitive examples of the ‘poetic realism’ style of French cinema of the pre-war and wartime years, Marcel Carné’s 1938 romantic crime drama has been treated to a well-deserved state-of-the-art restoration. Thanks to the digital dust-off…

Interview: Whit Stillman on Damsels in Distress

One-time darling of 90s indie cinema returns after 13-year hiatus.

30 Apr 2012

American indie filmmaker Whit Stillman was nominated for an Oscar for the script to his first film, 1990’s Metropolitan. He followed that with Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco, which cemented his reputation as an idiosyncratic talent. Then he didn’t…

Apocalypse archives: Whit Stillman

The Damsels in Distress director picks five films he’d save in an impending apocalypse

17 Apr 2012

That Sinking Feeling (Bill Forsyth, 1980) ‘I wanted to include something Scottish. Aside from how enjoyable Bill Forsyth’s film about kids in rainy Glasgow is, I want to include it for its economy of means. To see how much was done with so little was…

Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman's return to filmmaking features wordy, droll dialogue but often inept direction

17 Apr 2012

(15) 99min Following a 14-year break from filmmaking, American writer-director Whit Stillman returns to the big screen with another highly idiosyncratic comedy, one that audiences are likely to find either delightfully urbane or else utterly…

The Monk

Vincent Cassel stars in Dominik Moll's visually impressive but otherwise inert thriller

17 Apr 2012

(15) 101min It’s been seven years since Dominik Moll’s last film, but the talented filmmaker who made the blackly comic thrillers Harry, He’s Here to Help and Lemming, is back with his most ambitious film yet. Sadly, Moll’s adaptation of Matthew…

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismaki's French language debut is a grimly funny working class drama

19 Mar 2012

(PG) 93min Migrating south to shoot his latest feature in France seems to have lightened the mood of the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, whose brand of deadpan humour has previously proved to be the key in crafting a series of delightfully…

Glasgow Film Festival: Why I love Gene Kelly

Miles Fielder makes a song and dance about the charismatic movie star

3 Feb 2012

For a film lover who hates musicals (this writer), the GFF’s Gene Kelly retrospective ought to be a hard sell. Telling stories through song and dance, Kelly’s forte (the latter of which endeavours earned him a special Oscar in 1951), is anathema to this…

GFF 2012 - 85A presents: Jan Svankmajer

Judd Brucke of 85A discusses the art collective's tribute to the Czech filmmaker

2 Feb 2012

‘One of our comrades was approached by the GFF to do something with the festival,’ says Judd Brucke, a member of the collective of Glasgow-based multi-disciplinary artists that stage weird and wonderful live events under the banner 85A. That something…

Geoff Dyer - Zona

The multi-talented humourist turns his able hand to film criticism

27 Jan 2012

(Canongate) Having previously mashed-up fiction, journalism, essay, biography and travel writing, polymath and humourist Geoff Dyer once more defies genre with a book that’s one part film criticism, one part autobiography and several parts random…

Interview: Michelle Yeoh on filming The Lady

Luc Besson biopic of iconic pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi

21 Dec 2011

Former Malaysian beauty queen Michelle Yeoh started her acting career co-starring with Jackie Chan in the likes of Supercop. She made her English-language debut opposite Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies before returning to China to…

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

The Phantom of the Opera

Unmissable HD restoration of 1925 Rupert Julian version starring horror icon Lon Chaney

12 Dec 2011

(PG) 77/114min There have been several adaptations of novelist Gaston Leroux’s classic macabre horror romance, among them the original 1916 silent German version, the 1943 Hollywood version with Claude Rains, the racier 1962 Hammer offering, Brian…

Black Pond

Smartly observed and cleverly constructed British comedy drama is something special

15 Nov 2011

(15) 83min This low budget British comedy drama is something special. Smartly observed and cleverly constructed, it’s at once funny and tragic and lyrical, and the deadpan humour is perfectly pitched with nicely underplayed performances from the…

You’ve Been Trumped

Controversial doc on Donald Trump's Scottish golf course plan a triumph

22 Sep 2011

(12) 95min Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ll no doubt be aware of American tycoon Donald Trump’s controversial plans to build a golf course and hotel complex in an area of outstanding natural beauty and…

Life and Debt

Heartbreaking and pertinent documentary about Jamaica's economic misfortunes

22 Sep 2011

Made the year after the launch of the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel third world debt at the beginning of the new millennium, Stephanie Black’s agitprop documentary looks at the case of Jamaica. In 1977, fifteen years after achieving independence from…

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

Director of Donald Trump doc on being shunned by Scottish film bodies

22 Sep 2011

‘I live in Montrose and it’s 40 miles south of the Menie Estate, where Donald Trump was planning to build his golf course resort. I read the newspapers every day and I was surprised that the coverage was so one-sided. The other side of the story, as I…

Perfect Sense

Dark yet sentimental romance set in an apocalyptic world

14 Sep 2011

(15) 92min David Mackenzie’s seventh feature is, superficially, his most disturbing yet. That’s saying something given the Scottish filmmaker introduced himself and his penchant for dark psychosexual drama with his grim and gritty adaptation of…

Interview: David Mackenzie on Perfect Sense and You Instead

Director returns from Hollywood to Glasgow to make two films back-to-back

24 Aug 2011

Having made his Hollywood debut with his last film, Spread, a gorgeously sun-drenched but beguilingly bleak sex romp-cum-romance starring Ashton Kutcher that comes across like a modern-day American Gigolo, Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie was set to…

Captain America: The First Avenger

Despite a clumsy second half, the Cap sets the stage well for 2012's Avengers

4 Aug 2011

(12A) 124 min Captain America might be subtitled The First Avenger, but he is, in fact, the last of the Marvel Comics superheroes to receive blockbuster movie treatment before he assembles alongside Hulk, Iron Man and Thor in next year’s superhero…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

The boy-wizard franchise goes out on a high

18 Jul 2011

(12A) 130min It gives this critic great pleasure to confirm that the final film in the franchise adapted from JK Rowling’s boy wizard publishing phenomenon is among the top three of the eight-part series. Since the series hit the ground running ten…

Green Lantern

Intergalactic special effects spectacle

1 Jul 2011

(12A) 114min So many adaptations of superhero comic books have received the blockbuster treatment it’s now safe to say we have seen the best of them. And its questionable what more or different there is that can be done with the super-powered…

Julia's Eyes

A very well made chiller in the stalk ‘n’ slash tradition

1 Jul 2011

(15) 112min In addition to directing visionary adult horror-fantasies (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) and outstanding Hollywood blockbusters (Hellboy and its sequel), Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is also carving a second career for…

X-Men: First Class

Latest in franchise makes clever use of Cold War-era setting

30 Jun 2011

(12A) 132min The novelty of the Hollywood franchise reboot has worn thin, but this re-launch of the initially excellent adaptations of the Marvel comic book benefits from a canny central concept that takes the mutant superhero team back to their…

Outside The Law (Hors La Loi)

Forceful thriller about 1950s Algerian freedom fighters

29 Jun 2011

(15) 138min Franco-Algerian writer-director Rachid Bouchareb follows his hard-hitting Palme d’Or nominated WWII adventure Days of Glory with this similarly forceful thriller about Algerian freedom fighters in the 1950s. Like its predecessor, this…

The highs and lows of Harry Potter’s outrageous fortunes

An evaluation of each of the films from the Harry Potter series

28 Jun 2011

Having earned £6 billion worldwide, Harry Potter is the highest grossing film franchise of all time. And while the critical reception hasn’t always matched the commercial one (no Academy Awards yet), the films have been as successful as JK Rowling’s…

Senna

Fast-paced documentary on life and death of Formula One racing driver

28 Jun 2011

(12A) 106min This fast-paced documentary about the life and death of the legendary Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna plays more like a dramatic biopic than a feature-length doc. Taking his lead from and building upon dramatic documentaries such…

Hobo With A Shotgun

Rutger Hauer stars in second feature spawned from Grindhouse homage

21 Jun 2011

(18) 82min This blood-splattered Canadian shlocker is, following Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, the second film to be expanded from one of the handful of tantalising fake trailers inspired by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation movie homage…

Kim Cattrall, star of Sex and the City, discusses her new film Meet Monica Velour

Indie comedy about an aging porn star is set to screen at the EIFF

27 May 2011

‘To have a role like this in your fifties is quite extraordinary,’ says Kim Cattrall, who is 53 and has made a virtue of playing sexy older women in a business that refuses to equate the one with the other. ‘When Meet Monica Velour showed at the Tribeca…

Incendies

Franco-Canadian drama is a deserving award-winner

23 May 2011

(15) 130min This commendable and impressive Franco-Canadian drama arrives fresh from scooping of seven Genies (Canada’s Oscars). Set in the Middle East and dramatising an endless cycle of violence and retribution, it’s an unashamedly didactic piece…

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Not as bad as the second two, but still not a touch on the first

18 May 2011

(12A) tbc mins The fourth instalment of the supernatural swashbuckler originally based on a Disney fairground ride gets underway with a new storyline that throws overboard the sprawling plot of the previous two bloated sequels. It also ditches many…

My Dog Tulip is a witty alternative to the generally mawkish Hollywood 'animal movies'

20 Apr 2011

(PG) 82min In complete contrast to Marley and Me, that miserable master-and-mutt movie which managed to be both cutesy and mawkish and yet still picture life with a pooch as utterly abhorrent, this animated feature is witty, wistful, honest and…

Sucker Punch holds together pretty well under its own crazy internal logic

300 director babes with blades fantasy is a guilty pleasure

29 Mar 2011

(12A) 109min At first glance Sucker Punch might be Zack Snyder’s female-focused flipside of his swords and sandals testosterone workout, 300. The co-writer and director has suggested as much, and, indeed, this babes-with-blades (and higher-tech…

Bo’ness Festival of Silent Cinema - Neil Brand interview

Screening highlights include films by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd

6 Mar 2011

One imagines the two women who dreamed up The Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema must have kept quiet about it until they launched it. Scotland’s first silent film festival in Scotland’s first purpose-built cinema? That idea’s so good it’s a wonder no…

Edinburgh International Film Festival curators revealed

Sara Driver, Jim Jarmusch, Clint Mansell and more are confirmed - but what will they do at EIFF?

2 Mar 2011

The EIFF hopes to screen You Are Not I, the film Sara Driver made the year after she began working on partner Jim Jarmusch’s films in 1980. Given the cool aesthetic of their collaborations, less is more might inform their curatorial choices. A new one…

The Insatiable Moon

New Zealand romance with mental illness themes can't quite reach the Cuckoo's Nest

2 Mar 2011

(15) 100min It’s no surprise that this uplifting comic drama from New Zealand, which is set in a home for the mentally ill, features a charismatic but unstable protagonist and mixes social realism with religious parable, has been proclaimed One Flew…

In Our Name director Brian Welsh - profile

Film charts female soldier returning home from Iraq to Newcastle

17 Feb 2011

Name? Brian Welsh. Born? Falkirk, 10 August 1981. Background? Having left school with what he describes as ‘pitiful formal qualifications’, Welsh worked variously as a waiter, bartender and gas man while developing ideas for films. His…

Brighton Rock remake actress Andrea Riseborough - Profile

From Made in Dagenham to starring opposite Guy Pearce

17 Feb 2011

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

17 Feb 2011

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

11 Feb 2011

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

2 Feb 2011

(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

2 Feb 2011

(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

2 Feb 2011

(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

2 Feb 2011

(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

12 Jan 2011

(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

12 Jan 2011

(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 Jan 2011

(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

14 Dec 2010

(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

14 Dec 2010

(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

14 Dec 2010

(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

30 Nov 2010

(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.'

30 Nov 2010

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'

30 Nov 2010

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

30 Nov 2010

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

30 Nov 2010

(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

30 Nov 2010

(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

30 Nov 2010

(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?

22 Nov 2010

(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

16 Nov 2010

(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

16 Nov 2010

(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

2 Nov 2010

(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)

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

22 Bullets (L'Immortel)

22 Aug 2010

(18) 117min Twenty-two being the number of slugs retired gangster don Charly Matteï (Jean Reno) is plugged with at point-blank range during the striking opening of this glossy French crime movie. Improbably, Matteï survives the assassination attempt…

The Gold Rush

Both versions of the Chaplin classic with lots of features

17 Aug 2010

Given that The Gold Rush was his most ambitious production, and that it was the film he wanted to be remembered for, it’s unsurprising that Chaplin should have returned to it 17 years after he made it in 1925 to re-edit, score and add narration.

The Passion Within

Period detail and good-looking actors in an unremarkable film

17 Aug 2010

‘You f**k like a boy’, reads the message that an actress leaves smeared in red lipstick across the bedroom mirror of a famous bullfighter in this 1940s Spain-set biopic that focuses on the tempestuous romance between Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz) and…

The Valdez Horses

Bronson stars in solid western from director of The Magnificent Seven

12 Aug 2010

(15) 93min (Optimum) Though not generally thought of as being a spaghetti western, this US/Italian/Spanish co-production from 1976 fits the bill. Directed by Hollywood veteran John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral), produced…

The Shock Doctrine

Second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s capitalism analysis

23 Jul 2010

(E) 79min (Dogwoof) Not to be confused with Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s 2007 short, this second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s chilling book about the evils of modern capitalism is the full-length 2009 documentary co-directed by Michael…

Landfall

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 85min (Optimum) This watchable 1949 adaptation of a novel by Nevil Shute casts handsome Michael Denison (Angels One Five) as a cheeky chappy who takes his wartime commission as a coastal command pilot very much more seriously than he does his…

The Silent Invasion

7 Jul 2010

(U) 66min (Optimum) This British drama made in 1962 and set in an occupied French village during the early years of World War II feels like an episode of a television show – and well it might, given it was written by small screen legend Brian…

Hierro

24 Jun 2010

(12A) 88min Like the Spanish supernatural chiller The Orphanage, this psychological thriller directed by adman Gabe Ibáñez also revolves around a mother’s search for a missing child. And like its predecessor, Hierro also benefits from being…

Sammy Going South

21 Jun 2010

(PG) 118min (Optimum) A welcome DVD premiere for this lesser known, handsomely mounted and now digitally restored Alexander Mackendrick film from 1963, his first directorial credit after Sweet Smell of Success. Based on a novel by WH Canaway (who…

The Illusionist opens EIFF 2010 - Sylvain Chomet interview

9 Jun 2010

The year after French animator Sylvain Chomet knocked out cinema-goers at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival with his wildly eccentric and utterly charming double-Oscar nominated debut feature, Belleville Rendez-vous (aka The Triplets of…

The Night My Number Came Up

18 May 2010

(PG) 91min (Optimum) Forget Final Destination, this is the original fateful flight film. Produced by Ealing Studios in 1955, it’s based on a supposedly true story via an article by Victor Goddard as adapted by RC Sherriff (who also wrote that same…

Salvage

28 Apr 2010

(18) 81min (Revolver) This, the second of three films made under the micro-budget Digital Departures scheme initiated in 2008 during Liverpool’s year as City of Culture, couldn’t be more different from its predecessor, Terence Davies’ documentary…

The Kid

28 Apr 2010

(U) 60min (Park Circus) By the time he made The Kid, Charlie Chaplin was an international movie star whose films had begun to earn a million bucks apiece. And although he’d been behind the camera since 1914, writing, directing, producing, editing…

The High Command

15 Apr 2010

(PG) 84min (Optimum) This the first of the nine features made by the brilliant but undervalued British filmmaker Thorold Dickinson may not be a patch on his masterpieces, Gaslight and The Queen of Spades, but this 1936 drama set in colonial West…

The Clouded Yellow

15 Apr 2010

(PG) 90min (Optimum) This gripping, fast-paced British thriller from 1950 follows the man-and-woman-on-the-run formula popularised elsewhere by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on a witty screenplay by Janet Green (who later went on the write Victim), it…

Brendan Gleeson has roles in both Perrier’s Bounty and Green Zone

31 Mar 2010

Name Brendan Gleeson Born 29 March, 1955, Dublin, Ireland Background The lazy line to take on this scene-stealing character actor is he was a maths teacher for ten years before he decided to become and actor, and got his big break playing…

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde

29 Mar 2010

(15) 94min (Optimum) By the turn of the sexploitastic 1970s Hammer Films were upping the erotic content of their already titillating takes on horror classics with this transgender spin on Stevenson’s evil alter-ego tale of terror. Released in 1971…

Bernard Rose: Russian Studies

18 Mar 2010

London-born, Los Angeles-resident filmmaker Bernard Rose talks to Miles Fielder about Russian authors, classical music and drug dealing...

The Kreutzer Sonata

18 Mar 2010

(18) 99min Having discarded cumbersome period trappings for his superb, stripped down, contemporary Los Angeles-set Tolstoy adaptation Ivansxtc, writer/director Bernard Rose does the same with another story by the Russian master, the second in a…

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

2 Mar 2010

(U) 92min (Oracle) Premiering on DVD to coincide with the release of Hollywood goth Tim Burton’s take on the Lewis Carroll classic, this 1972 British musical version can certainly be described as both lavish and faithful to its much-loved source.

The Bargee

2 Mar 2010

(PG) 102min (Optimum) Forty years before Ewan McGregor shagged his way up and down the Edinburgh to Glasgow canal, Harry H Corbett was doing the same thing between Hertfordshire and Middlesex (oo-er). Corbett’s handsome Hemel Pike is a scruffy…

Motherhood

2 Mar 2010

(15) 90min (Metrodome) Released in time for Mother’s Day, this comic drama about a day in the life of a harassed middle-class New York married mom of two sets hard about eliciting the sympathy of maternals everywhere. In an unlikely role…

Legacy brings The Wire's Stringer to the big screen - Idris Elba interview

17 Feb 2010

Miles Fielder checks in with The Wire’s Idris Elba, who closes this year’s festival in Glasgow-produced film Legacy

Tower of London

17 Feb 2010

(15) 92min (Optimum) This long unavailable (on DVD), deliciously nasty historical horror made in 1939 is all dungeons, manacles, torture and beheadings. But it’s also fairly classy stuff, boasting a fine cast headed by Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff…

An Inspector Calls

17 Feb 2010

(PG) 77min (Optimum) Edinburgh’s famous son Alistair Sim leads the quality cast in this excellent 1954 adaptation of JB Priestly’s celebrated play. Set in small town England in 1912, it opens with the interruption of a dinner party at the home of a…

Chaw

17 Feb 2010

(15) 117min (Optimum) This blackly comic South Korean horror film arrives on the back of the success of the Asian monster movie The Host. Like that film, Chaw (pronounced ‘chow’, meaning animal trap, but probably intended to invoke Jaws) is at once…

The Constant Husband

17 Feb 2010

(U) 85min (Optimum) A man wakes up in a strange country with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. Enlisting the assistance of a local psychiatrist, the dazed chap begins to piece together his life and discovers to his mortification that…

In The Electric Mist

1 Feb 2010

(15) 117min (High Fliers) The real mystery surrounding this adaptation of James Lee Burke’s bestselling crime novel In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead is why a perfectly respectable Hollywood movie boasting such an impressive cast and…