Sam Rockwell

The Sitter

Zippy but unappealing sub-Apatow comedy starring Jonah Hill

5 Jan 2012

(15) 81min After springing to stardom in Superbad, Jonah Hill gets his first lead role in The Sitter, an amiable low-brow comedy from director David Gordon Green which throws Hill’s laid-back slacker persona into a similar underworld of criminal…

Cowboys and Aliens

Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in film rarely rising to cartoonish mayhem title promises

12 Aug 2011

(12A) 118min Comic-book adaptation Cowboys & Aliens is two genre films in one. It mashes up the western with sci-fi – a strategy which worked well in the outer-space frontiers of Star Trek and Star Wars, but creates frustratingly patchy results in…

Conviction

Tony Goldwyn's drama features powerful performances but lacks grit, depth or gravity

23 Dec 2010

(15) 107min True life stories can make for compelling cinema experiences, but Conviction, a torn-from-the-headlines tale of a loving sister’s twenty-year struggle to clear her brother of a murder conviction, is far too plainly manipulative to…

Gentlemen Broncos

28 Apr 2010

(12A) 89min Disappointing new comedy from Jared Hess, the writer/director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. This quirky but condescending and unfunny rites-of-passage comedy follows introverted sci-fi aficionado Benjamin Purvis (Michael…

Everybody's Fine

17 Feb 2010

(12A) 99min Robert De Niro drags his grumpy old man routine into this well-meaning but utterly dull remake of Giuseppe Cinema Paradiso Tornatore’s Stanno Tutti Bene (1990). De Niro has plenty of reason to put on his over-familiar raised eyebrows and…

Also Released - Film

23 Jul 2009

The Blues Brothers (15) 148min John Landis’ enjoyable 1980 musical comedy re-released on digital print in original US edit. Selected release from Fri 24 Jul. G-Force (PG) 90min Comedy adventure about a covertly trained group of guinea pig special…

Moon: interview with director Duncan Jones

9 Jul 2009

Cerebral science fiction thriller Moon heralds the arrival of an impressive new filmmaking talent in Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie. Miles Fielder meets him.

Moon

9 Jul 2009

Cleverly conceived, evenly paced and consistently intriguing, this old-school science fiction thriller is a very welcome repost to the numbing spectacle of what passes for sci-fi these days. Taking his cue from genre classics from the late 1960s through…

EIFF 2009 - Moon

11 Jun 2009

When Duncan Jones, aka Zowie Bowie, David’s son, premiered his film-directing debut, Moon, at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the critical reception to his cerebral science fiction thriller was ecstatic. Reviewers wasted no time in comparing Moon…

Edinburgh International Film Festival announces programme

6 May 2009

The Edinburgh International Film Festival was announced today. The programme Includes 135 features from 33 countries and includes 23 World Premieres. Highlights from the programme include opening film Away We Go from British director Sam Mendes on 17…

Frost/Nixon

22 Jan 2009

DRAMA If you didn’t get a chance to see Michael Grandage’s celebrated and award-winning production of Peter Morgan’s two-hander, which dramatised one of the most famous interviews in the history of television broadcasting, then Ron Howard’s film…

Choke

13 Nov 2008

(18) 92min Unrepentant sex addict Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has always believed that life is about making other people do stuff for you. By day he does as little work as he can at a historical theme park and by night he cons money in restaurants…

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford

29 Nov 2007

WESTERN (15) 159min Arch confederate and violent outlaw Jesse James was and is a gift for dramatists. With numerous appearances in literature, film, theatre and music, American folklore’s Robin Hood seems as unstill in his grave now as he was when…