Eddie Harrison
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The Great Gatsby
15 May 2013
Baz Luhrmann’s lavish adaptation of Fitzgerald’s novel finally arrives
A far cry from the drab pastel shades and muffled emotion of the 1974 Robert Redford/Mia Farrow film, Baz Luhrmann’s new version of The Great Gatsby aims to put the ‘great’ back into F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. Many have tried and failed to…
Deadfall
10 May 2013
Contrived thriller from the director of The Counterfeiters
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s concentration camp drama The Counterfeiters won him an Oscar and promised to spring the Austrian director through the ranks of directorial talent. Strangely, it’s taken him five years to make his English language debut, and despite a…
The Eye of the Storm
30 Apr 2013
Adaptation of Patrick White's 'unfilmable' novel starring Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush
He may have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, but Australian novelist Patrick White has not has much impact cinematically beyond his screenplay for 1978’s The Night, the Prowler. His novel The Eye of The Storm has often been described as…
Broken
19 Mar 2013
Wildly melodramatic and stereotypical issue-based drama, starring Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth
Single parent families, sexually aware teenagers, people with mental health issues; they’re all just short-fused firecrackers ready to explode in director Rufus Norris’s frustratingly issue-based drama. Funded by the BBC and the British Film Council…
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
13 Mar 2013
Laughs are lacking in this tale of rival Vegas magicians, starring Steve Carell and Jim Carrey
After competing dramas about competing magicians (The Prestige and The Illusionist) comes the same idea played for broad laughs. Given that Vegas-style showmanship is ridiculously campy anyway, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has a large…
Identity Thief
12 Mar 2013
Solid comedy road movie with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman
‘You follow the rules? How’s that workin’ out for you?’ bawls Melissa McCarthy’s shameless criminal when straight-laced accountant Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) catches up with her free-spending ways with his money. Seth Gordon’s follow up to…
Compliance
12 Mar 2013
Frustrating drama reconstructing the infamous Mount Washington strip-search incident
Writer/director Craig Zobel’s indie drama is a low-key reconstruction of the infamous Mount Washington McDonald’s strip-search incident, one of a series attributed to an anonymous prank-caller. Zobel makes a bold decision not to address any wider…
The Place Beyond the Pines
5 Mar 2013
Ambitious thriller from the director of Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper
Reteaming Ryan Gosling with his Blue Valentine writer/director Derek Cianfrance, The Place Beyond the Pines is a thriller with a higher pedigree than most, with impressive support from Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne and Ray Liotta. The result is…
The Guilt Trip
4 Mar 2013
Heartfelt mother-son road trip movie starring Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen
Teaming Barbra Streisand with Seth Rogen promises a road trip worth avoiding; setting the diva who produced and starred in a slew of vanity projects including The Prince of Tides and The Mirror As Two Faces opposite the shambolic stoner from Knocked Up…
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 2)
26 Feb 2013
Highly entertaining second part of the vibrant Bollywood gangster drama
The second half of Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster epic picks up immediately where its predecessor ended; with the marketplace murder of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) by a gang of masked motorcyclists. Despite his initial reluctance, Sardar’s son Faizal…
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1)
26 Feb 2013
Epic Bollywood gangster saga influenced by The Godfather
Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster saga is a considerable undertaking; split into two parts of over 160 minutes each, it follows the fortunes of a criminal dynasty with exhaustive attention to detail. The model is clearly Francis Ford Coppola’s study of…
Neighbouring Sounds
26 Feb 2013
A clever and original social drama from Brazil directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho
The current resurgence in Brazilian cinema throws up a major work in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds, an allegorical tale of class conflict set in a Recife condominium. From the opening scene, in which young mother Bia (Maeve Jinkings) hides…
Thérèse Desqueyroux
26 Feb 2013
Claude Miller's final film is an adaptation of Francois Mauriac's book starring Audrey Tautou
François Mauriac’s 1927 novel is one of the cornerstones of French literature, but is less familiar to non-Gallic audiences. Casting comely Amelie star Audrey Tautou as the repressed wife who impulsively seeks revenge on her domineering husband suggests…
BA Roberston discusses his first acting role in Living Apart Together
22 Feb 2013
The 1982 film, soon to be given a new lease of life, is screening at the Glasgow Film Festival
Glasgow Film Festival annually revives a classic film made in Scotland, with previous galas including Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl and Bertrand Tavernier’s Death Watch. This year it’s writer/director Charlie Gormley’s 1982 film Living Apart Together…
Before Dawn
21 Feb 2013
Uneven low-budget zombie drama with unexpected final act
The public’s interest in all things connected with zombies shows little signs of passing away quietly, with micro-budget feature Before Dawn arriving on the heels of the somewhat higher profile Warm Bodies. The common ground is that both attempt to…
Living Apart Together
20 Feb 2013
Restored 80s lost drama about a Glaswegian pop star starring singer-songwriter BA Robertson
Made for fledgling network-broadcaster Channel 4 in 1982, writer/director Charlie Gormley’s film might seem like an odd choice for restoration; this clearly isn’t a masterpiece in disrepair, but a humble homegrown proposition. Yet after several decades…
Stoker
18 Feb 2013
Unusually intense slice of American Gothic adds something fresh to the thriller genre
Despite director Park Chan-wook’s previous involvement with vampires (Thirst), his American debut has nothing to do with Dracula writer Bram Stoker. Instead India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is a teenage girl mourning the death of her father Richard (Dermot…
Safe Haven
18 Feb 2013
A bland, 'vanilla' film about true love conquering all, starring Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel
The Nicholas Sparks novel-to-screen hit-machine shows no sign of slowing down; A Walk To Remember, The Notebook, The Lucky One, and The Last Song have all delighted teenage girls worldwide. Director Lasse Hallström previously paired Amanda Seyfried and…
Reign of Assassins
11 Feb 2013
Deft martial art flick starring Michelle Yeoh and produced by John Woo
The worldwide sensation of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon seemed to promise that the martial arts styling of the ‘wuxia’ would spawn an internationally popular sub-genre. But after an initial flurry including House of Flying Daggers and Hero…
Sammy’s Great Escape
11 Feb 2013
Limp animation sequel to 2010's A Turtle's Tale
Sammy’s Painfully Long Incarceration would be a better title for this sequel to 2010’s A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures. With a sequel to Pixar’s Finding Nemo still several years away, there’s presumably a wide-open market for aquatic animations, but…
I Wish
4 Feb 2013
Hirokazu Koreeda's childhood fable is a small, poignant film that fulfils its humble ambitions
Somewhere between the cheery naturalism of Wong Kar-wai’s Chunking Express and the warm whimsy of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda’s I Wish delivers a slight, but powerful story about growing up. No Hollywood-style…
Won’t Back Down
29 Jan 2013
Glib drama about two single mothers fighting to improve teaching at their local school
Oscar-nominated turns in Doubt and The Help have given Viola Davis the kind of clout where studios trust her to carry a film, but she’ll have to make better choices than Won’t Back Down, a manipulative drama pairing her with Maggie Gyllenhaal as single…
Interview: Park Chan-wook - Korean director on his Hitchcockian thriller Stoker
18 Jan 2013
Latest film from director of Oldboy stars Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman
The Korean director of Oldboy turned down Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and The Evil Dead remake to direct Stoker, which was written by Prison Break star Wentworth Miller. Taken from the annual Black List of the best, unproduced scripts and produced by…
Bullet to the Head
18 Jan 2013
Commendable attempt to reset Stallone persona in more down-to-earth cop thriller
Returning as the prodigal son of the hard-boiled thriller, director Walter Hill’s first film in ten years is a tough-guy vehicle for Sylvester Stallone. While the star’s recent output has been verging on self-parody in the Rocky, Rambo and Expendables…
This is 40
18 Jan 2013
Judd Apatow’s self-seeking self-analysis aims for blunt honesty, but is simply dull
Writer/director Judd Apatow’s reign as the modern king of comedy comes to an abrupt end with the bland miscalculation of *3This is 40*2, a self-seeking slice of self-analysis which verges on self-abuse. Setting itself up as a ‘sort-of sequel’ to Knocked…
