Film and Paul Dale

Piranha 3D

16 Aug 2010

Alexandre Aja, the gifted French filmmaker who has so far had the cajones to tackle remakes of Wes Craven’s 1977 wilderness horror The Hills Have Eyes and feted J-horror Mirrors, finally tackles the big one – Joe Dante and John Sayles’ 1978 frat comedy…

The Edge of Love

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 110min Dylan Thomas, he of the milk wood, once remarked that: ‘When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.’ The Edge of Love is the story of how the great Welsh poet burnt a very big bridge, one that connected him to an…

Apocalypto

(18) 138min

3 Jan 2007

Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is about to go…

The best film websites

21 Jan 2010

If you work in an office and, like us, you love great movies you probably spend your lunch hour on any number of film-specific websites. So, after a totally unscientific survey of the cinema obsessives at The List, here’s our guide to what’s good and…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Stanley Kubrick & Rainer Werner Fassbinder

5 Mar 2009

This month two monsters of cinema meet in the central belt. As German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s takes over the Glasgow Film Theatre (courtesy of Goethe Institut) with a small selection of his better known films (Fear Eats the Soul, Effi Brest…

Hunger

Protest picture

30 Oct 2008

'Were you out last night my friend?' 'Is it that obvious?' I say pulling down a wrinkled lower eyelid to expose an eye as bloodshot as those of the two men opposite me. They are hot young actor Michael Fassbender - all fair brown hair, blue eyes, slight…

Jules et Jim

3 Jul 2008

French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut’s third film, made in 1962, was undoubtedly his masterpiece. Set in the 1910s and 20s it is the story of a freewheeling love triangle between alpha female Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), Austrian Jules (Oskar…

Document 9 film festival highlights

The documentary film fest celebrates a 'year of protest' theme

12 Oct 2011

Boasting one of their best film line ups in years, the Document 9 human rights festival takes the theme of protest as its mascot this year. The festival opens with Andrea Roggon's Soy Libre (I am Free) about life and hope in modern day Havana. The next…

David Fincher remakes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Here are five reasons to expect great things from the Fight Club and The Social Network director

3 Jan 2011

Fight Club and The Social Network director David Fincher returns with the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the end of 2011, starring Rooney Mara. Here are five reasons to expect great things 1: Daniel Craig With the new James…

Winter's Bone

7 Sep 2010

(15) 100min With its all too familiar theme of familial collapse and undercurrents of social disgrace and fear of the local customs, Debra Granik’s excellent second feature film could be a British colonial horror from a distant age, and in some ways…

Samuel Maoz' Lebanon and New York, I Love You among GFF first week highlights

Glasgow Film Festival blog

26 Feb 2010

Hello good people, Paul Gallagher has taken a well-earned rest from the film festival and I will be filling in for him for the next few days. I can’t promise to be as reasoned, intelligent or as enthusiastic as Paul -- being the embittered old hack I am…

The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band)

4 Nov 2009

(15) 143min Writer/director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Hidden) mainlines the sentiments of fellow Austrians Alfred Adler (the psychiatrist who first formulated ideas of the inferiority complex) and novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach (who…

Profile - Riz Ahmed

16 Apr 2009

Born 1 December 1982 Background London Riz Ahmed graduated from Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics before training as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He came to prominence playing Shafiq Rasul, a member…

Films for Valentine’s Day

5 Feb 2009

If you want to go and see a film with your beloved this Valentine’s Day you can chose between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s lovely 1945 Highland flit I Know Where I’m Going, a couple of Audrey Hepburn films (Funny Face and Sabrina) and four…

Lakeview Terrace

27 Nov 2008

THRILLER (15) 110min What could be safer than living next door to a cop? Well just about anything if that cop happens to be played by one of America’s leading black actors. Smug young marrieds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) move…

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

15 Aug 2011

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Takeshi Miike's 13 Assassins strikes a balance between measured character development and violent brutality

25 Apr 2011

(15) 126min Prolific to the point of insanity, unpredictable and blatantly controversial, Takeshi Miike is not your average Japanese filmmaker. His notorious body of work which includes loads of straight to video fare, the Dead or Alive trilogy, Ichi…

Step Up 3D

Other film releases, August 2010

3 Aug 2010

A group of underground street dancers from New York City team up with freshman Moose (Adam G Sevani) and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a life-changing showdown. Silly but euphoric and enjoyable street dance flick. If…

The Railway Children screening to mark death of director Lionel Jeffries

31 Mar 2010

Fortieth anniversary screenings of this digitally restored print of Lionel Jeffries’ richly iconic 1970 family film starring Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins and a youthful Jenny Agutter. The film’s great and often (shamefully) overlooked writer…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

23 Aug 2009

(15) 104min (Sony DVD retail) Very welcome reissue of Peter Medak’s 1972 film adaptation of Peter Nichols’ hit West End play is a reminder that bad taste and suburban schadenfreude did not begin with Family Guy. Alan Bates and Janet Suzman are Bri…

Antichrist

23 Jul 2009

Danish Dogme pack leader Lars Von Trier conjures up a slice of unbridled and unpleasant pantheistic horror that’s underlined by themes of grief and guilt. When middle class couple Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe’s son dies in a freak accident…

The Hot 100 2008

11 Dec 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

Salo

18 Sep 2008

DVD (18) 112min (BFI DVD retail) Pier Paolo Pasolini’s loose 1975 adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom gets an excellent two disc DVD (and Blu-ray) makeover with a ton of fantastic extras. Pasolini transposed De Sade’s tale…

The Banishment

4 Sep 2008

Fledgling master Russian filmmaker Andrei The Return Zvyagintsev’s flawed second feature is a nonetheless interesting fusion of British gangster flick Sexy Beast, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and (thematically at least) Scenes from a Marriage as created by…