Film and Miles Fielder

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…

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…

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…

The Children

27 Nov 2008

HORROR The current fad for evil kiddie chillers – see Ils (Them) from France, Eden Lake from the UK and While She Was Out from the US – continues with another British horror flick in which children do diabolical things to disbelieving adults. As the…

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…

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…

In control

Samantha Morton

16 Aug 2007

Samantha Morton is in control. The critically lauded, hard working and in-demand British actress plays the long suffering wife of troubled singer of legendary Manchester band Joy Division in the Ian Curtis movie, Control. Fresh from winning the Best…

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…

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…

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Inspired take on the Dahl classic

16 Oct 2009

Wes Anderson’s animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s much loved book is no straightforward children’s film. Wee ones might enjoy it to a degree, but they won’t get much of the typically arch humour and wanton eccentricities the filmmaker once again…

The Avengers - Series 1 & 2

11 Sep 2009

(PG) 1520min (Optimum DVD retail) What joy! Every surviving episode from all six series of the marvelous cult British television show The Avengers, originally broadcast between 1961 and 1969, are to be released on DVD over the course of the next…

Emily Blunt - Yo majesty!

5 Mar 2009

When people got an eyeful of Emily Blunt’s striking good looks and acting ability in My Summer of Love, winner of the Best New British Feature award following its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004, the general consensus…

Charles Burns - Fear(s) of the Dark

16 Oct 2008

The wildly imaginative and scary animated French portmanteau horror movie Fear(s) of the Dark was made by six European and American cartoonists working with professional animators. The most notable of those cartoonists is Charles Burns, who is a legend…

Tilda Swinton

2 Oct 2008

It says an awful lot about the rise and rise of Tilda Swinton that, during the course of the teaser trailer to one of her forthcoming films (the Coen brothers crime comedy Burn After Reading) three legends are flashed up on the screen: ‘CLOONEY’…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

The devil plays guitar

13 Nov 2006

Tearing modesty a new asshole, Tenacious D describe themselves as ‘the world’s greatest rock band’. The D’s two members, Jack Black (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Kyle Gass (lead guitar and backing vocals), name check among their inspirations Kiss, Dio…

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…

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…

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…

The look of love: Pedro Almodóvar interview

We preview the Spanish filmmaker's Broken Embraces

20 Aug 2009

Pedro Almodóvar, the most famous Spanish filmmaker since his Aragónian idol Luis Buñuel, and one of the most acclaimed auteurs in international cinema, once described his relationship to his chosen medium of expression thus: ‘Cinema has become my life.

The Red Shoes

30 Jul 2009

Martin Scorsese proclaimed Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s masterpiece ‘truly the most beautiful Technicolor film ever made.’ Marty should know, given he oversaw the restoration of the 1948 classic through his Film Foundation and then premiered…

Christine Jeffs interview

25 Jun 2009

Kiwi filmmaker Christine Jeffs (pictured centre right) wasn’t the obvious choice to direct the American indie comedy Sunshine Cleaning. Her previous two features, the New Zealand marital breakdown drama Rain and the British dead poet biopic Sylvia…

The Antichrist

19 Mar 2009

HORROR The Italians wasted no time ripping off the enormous success of The Exorcist, knocking out this dreadful demonic possession horror less than a year after Linda Blair blew green chunks all over Max von Sydow back in 1974. The Antichrist (aka…

Sex Drive

8 Jan 2009

COMEDY Determined not to start college a virgin, semi-nerdy teenager Ian (Josh Zuckerman, best known as Young Dr Evil in the Austin Powers sequel Goldmember) drives across country to bed a red-hot babe he met on the internet named Ms Tasty. Fuelled…

Death Defying Acts

7 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/THRILLER (12A) 97min Freely mixing historical fact with fictionalised biography, this Brit-Aussie co-production turns on a fascinating premise: a battle of wits and wills between world-famous escapist and sceptic of all things supernatural…

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

14 Feb 2008

HORROR (18) 90min Here’s a welcome example of that all too rare thing in American horror movies: a teen slasher that’s actually very good. The simple answer to that conundrum is that appearances can be deceptive: Mandy Lane isn’t simply a teen slasher…