Eddie Harrison

Paul Brannigan, star of Ken Loach's The Angels' Share - profile

The actor is also set to appear with Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin

23 May 2012

Born 1987, Glasgow, Scotland Background After working as a football coach in the Barrowfield community in Glasgow and helping to tackle knife crime as part of a Strathclyde Police initiative, Paul Brannigan was spotted by screenwriter Paul Laverty…

What To Expect When You’re Expecting

A witless and bland work based on the pregnancy self-help book

23 May 2012

‘You don’t know what love is until you’ve wiped someone’s ass,’ offers one of the many baby-boomers in Kirk (Waking Ned, Everybody’s Fine) Jones’ multi-stranded adaptation of the bestselling self-help book about the dos and don’ts of pregnancy.

The Apocalypse Archives - Nikolaj Arcel

Screenwriter of original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

22 May 2012

Screenwriter of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie and director of new Danish drama A Royal Affair, Nikolaj Arcel, picks five films he’d rescue in the face of the apocalypse. 1. Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) ‘Just to show I’m…

Casa de mi Padre

Will Ferrell's Spanish-language comedy is at once unfunny and too silly to take seriously

11 May 2012

Funnyman Will Ferrell as a tough rancher in a violent Spanish-language Western? It could only be a joke, and that’s exactly what Case de mi Padre is, a ragged, silly spoof in the Airplane/Naked Gun mode. Unfortunately, as jokes go, it’s a not…

The Pact

An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension

11 May 2012

The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…

A Royal Affair

A skillfully delivered but coldly aloof period drama from the Swedish Dragon Tattoo team

11 May 2012

Reuniting the writing team behind the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair is a welcome break from the current plethora of morbid Scandinavian thrillers; instead, Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel have co-adapted an unfamiliar but…

Red Tails

George Lucas pet WWII project suffers from thin characterization, cliché and crude simplification

11 May 2012

Star Wars creator George Lucas used clips from his favourite aviation dramas to stand in for battle scenes in the original rough-cut of Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that several decades later, Lucas has invested some of his personal wealth in an…

Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy

An agonisingly watered-down imitation of Welsh's short story

19 Apr 2012

Nothing dates faster than drug culture, and writer-director Rob Heydon’s Irvine Welsh adaptation arrives nearly two decades after the era of the dedicated pill-popper. Taken from Welsh’s story 'The Undefeated', part of the 1996 compilation that provides…

666: The Prophecy

By-the-numbers horror from Darren Lynn Bousman, inspired by calendar numerology

18 Apr 2012

(15) 90mins The current public appetite for horror barely excuses the eventual, much delayed release of 666: The Prophecy, which was opportunistically released in the US in November last year on the date (and under the title) 11-11-11. The idea that…

Outside Bet

Low-budget British horse-racing comedy falls at the first hurdle

18 Apr 2012

(12A) 101mins The cinematic equivalent of the clumps of horse dung that characters repeatedly step into for the cheapest of laughs, Outside Bet is strictly a non-runner in terms of light entertainment. In this painfully naïve British comedy, Bob…

The Raid

A short, tough, pumped-up flick for die-hard action fans

17 Apr 2012

(18) 101min ‘1 ruthless crime lord. 20 elite cops. 80 floors of chaos.’ The advertising sets exactly the right proficient tone; crunching the numbers as well as bones, The Raid features a small group of policemen taking on a vertically stacked army of…

Silent House

A ponderously slow psychological drama packaged as a horror film

17 Apr 2012

(18) 85min With Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen proved herself to be a young actress with great potential by persuasively playing a refugee haunted by her experiences with a murderous cult. Silent House features her in a disappointingly…

StreetDance 2

A sequel of so-so dances, hackneyed plotting and wooden performances

2 Apr 2012

(PG) 85mins The ‘kids dancing their way out of the ghetto’ trope has been a staple of cinema since the 1950s but taking inspiration from recent US products like Step Up and Stomp the Yard, StreetDance 3D inexplicably became the UK’s most popular…

Act of Valour

Impressive technique and verisimilitude delivered at the expense of plot and characterisation

2 Apr 2012

(15) 110min The on-screen pursuit of combat verisimilitude is the driving force behind Act of Valour, an anti-terrorist action flick which aims to make a virtue of casting real life Navy SEALs (United States Navy's Sea, Air, and Land Teams) as…

John Carter

Visually impressive epic adventure suffers by prepping for sequels

8 Mar 2012

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 creation finally hits the screen after 79 years of development hell, with pre-production on an animated feature originally scheduled for 1931. Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, has…

The Devil Inside

Skimpy, poorly shot and incoherent entry in the exorcism stakes

22 Feb 2012

(15)83min Horror has a new home in the ‘found footage’ genre that spawned The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, with The Devil Inside the latest low-budget effort to conjure up huge box office returns with the aid of heavy studio marketing…

Contraband

Bland, low-key but solid and watchable action film

22 Feb 2012

(15) 109min ‘This is world-class smuggling!’ enthuses a member of Mark Wahlberg’s crew in Contaband, a terse US remake of 2008 Icelandic thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam. Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, an ex-smuggler whose attempts to go straight with…

Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema 2012

Programme includes The First Born, Another Fine Mess, The Black Pirate and Safety Last!

17 Feb 2012

Shhh...! Whisper it quietly, but it’s fair to say that 2012 is likely to be the biggest year in silent cinema for nearly eight decades. The global success of Michel Hazanavicius’ glowing tribute The Artist means that silent films currently have their…

GFF 2012 - Death Watch

Bertrand Tavernier’s remarkable Glasgow-shot film foresaw the coming of voyeuristic TV

2 Feb 2012

It’s arguably the best film ever shot in Scotland, but chances are you’ve never seen it. Directed in 1979 by French auteur Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country, Round Midnight) and set in the near future, Death Watch is a Glasgow-set sci-fi drama…

The Muppets

Old-school bonhomie and well-calculated cameos in affectionate reboot

1 Feb 2012

(U) 103min Long before there were computer generated characters, fuzz, felt and puppetry launched talking animals onto our television and cinema screens, and few were as well loved as Jim Henson’s Muppets. A bona fide pop-culture phenomenon, Kermit…

Best Laid Plans

Predictable grim Northern tale that fails despite Stephen Graham's great central performance

1 Feb 2012

(15) 108min Positive arguments for the public financing of UK films will not be encouraged by the release of Best Laid Plans, a dreary miserablist fable haplessly reconfiguring John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men into the world of Northern…

Jack and Jill

Mirthless comedy atrocity sets a new low for all concerned

1 Feb 2012

(PG) 91min Adam Sandler’s run of popular low-brow comedies has rarely hit the charming heights of The Wedding Singer, but even fans of Don’t Mess With the Zohan or I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will choke on their popcorn when confronted by his…

Girl Model

Clinical expose of the modeling industry

27 Jan 2012

(tbc) 78min Far from the fairy-tale fiction of America’s Top Model is Girl Model, a clinical, disturbing industry expose by documentary makers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Mardi Gras: Made in China). Ashley Arbaugh is an ex-model and now a…

Oscars 2012 - predictions

Some of The List's film critics give their predictions on who'll win what at the Oscars

25 Jan 2012

Best Picture. The Artist; simplicity is the reason that is soars above the other Oscar bait. The Artist probably will win, as it has won pretty much everything else going. It deserves it - when was the last time a film came along that made everyone fall…

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…

W.E.

Occasionally perceptive but overall flat second movie from Madonna

5 Jan 2012

(15) 119min Madonna’s second film as director after the forgotten comedy Filth and Wisdom aims considerably higher. The initials W.E. refer to the joint signature of American divorcee Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, whose relationship shook the…

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 Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Mara and Fincher elevate a populist novel into a compelling drama of bleakness and corruption

13 Dec 2011

David Fincher directs a version of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy – revenge thrillers don’t come with more high-powered credentials than that. While Steven Zaillian’s script sticks a little too closely to the labyrinthine plotting of the original…

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - The story so far

Background on David Fincher adaptation on Stieg Larsson novels

12 Dec 2011

The imminent release of David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the first in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, is a bona-fide global pop culture event. Larsson’s books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide, and have spawned…

Arthur Christmas

Jolly enough, but lacking usual Aardman Animation wit and charm

14 Nov 2011

(U) 97mins In over two decades since Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out, Aardman Animation have become a byword for family entertainment, but Arthur Christmas, their latest attempt at a blockbuster, never reaches the same lovable heights. As he…

Another Earth

Indie hit with science fiction premise explores complexities of flawed human interaction

9 Nov 2011

(12A) 92min Indie hit Another Earth belongs to a microscopic subgenre of love stories revolving around parallel universes; in this case, a planet hidden by the sun which is an exact mirror image of our own planet, right down to the names of the…

The Thing

'Prequel' to John Carpenter's 1981 classic is a shapeless mess of a rip-off

9 Nov 2011

(15) 103min Despite confusingly sharing the same title, debutante director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s film is a prequel rather than a remake of John Carpenter’s 1981 horror classic, which was itself a remake of Howard Hawks’s 1951 version of John…

Puss in Boots

Shrek spin-off offers more fun than should be expected

8 Nov 2011

(U) 90min Given that the quality of the Shrek franchise dropped off dramatically with parts 3 and 4, it’s something of a surprise that Puss In Boots, a spin-off featuring the big-eyed cat voiced by Antonio Banderas, should turn out to be one of the…

Dream House

Inert film that united Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz lacks genuine horror

8 Nov 2011

(15) 92min Fated only to be remembered as the long shelved horror-thriller during the making of which Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz discovered their mutual attraction, Dream House sees both stars plus director Jim Sheridan and co-star Naomi Watts all…

Jack Goes Boating

Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut owes a lot to his theatre background

12 Oct 2011

(15) 90min Philip Seymour Hoffman goes back to his theatrical roots for his directorial debut, reprising the central role he played on stage in Bob Glaudini’s 2007 off-Broadway hit. Hoffman plays the titular Jack, a shy and withdrawn New York limo…

Contagion

Starry but shallow epidemic disaster movie from Steven Soderbergh

12 Oct 2011

(12A) 106min Steven Soderbergh revives the all-star disaster movie last seen in the 1970s with Contagion, a sober account of a deadly virus which threatens the world’s population. Nimbly flitting around the globe in the style of the same director’s…

Monte Carlo

Flat romcom vehicle for Justin Bieber's paramour Selena Gomez

12 Oct 2011

(PG) 108min The star of tween drama Wizards of Waverly Place, but better known as the current squeeze of Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez is being relentlessly packaged for fame. Her previous venture, last year’s Ramona and Beezus sank like a stone, and…

Straw Dogs

Risible remake of Peckinpah's 1970s revenge thriller

12 Oct 2011

(18) 109min An early star vehicle for Dustin Hoffman, Sam Peckinpah’s film of Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm was one of the high (or low) watermarks of early 1970s brutalism – a moody, nihilistic polemic that equated violence…

World War Z wraps up in Glasgow; where does that leave the Cinema City?

What next for the west coast filming hotspot?

19 Sep 2011

The production of World War Z, an adaptation of Max Brooks’s best-selling account of a zombie apocalypse, brought parts of Glasgow to a well-documented standstill last month. With the City Chambers standing in Philadelphia’s City Hall, Glasgow finally…

The Debt

Sober-minded spy movie with Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington

14 Sep 2011

(15) 113min The Debt has languished on the distributor’s shelf for a year since screening in Toronto last September, betraying a lack of studio confidence in the commercial prospects for John Madden’s sober-minded remake of 2007 Israeli espionage…

Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Unimaginitive reboot of 70s cult horror film

13 Sep 2011

(15) 99min Looming large in the childhood memories of many US pop culture aficionados, the original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was a minor but effective 1973 TV movie in which Jim Hutton and Kim Darby played a couple menaced by demonic creatures in…

Friends with Benefits

Sappy rom-com fails to deflate clichés of the genre

19 Aug 2011

(15) 109min The rom-com has been a moribund genre for years now, excepting Marc Webb’s acerbic and adventurous (500) Days of Summer. Despite promising a similarly caustic examination of the gap between real-life relationships and romantic clichés…

Colombiana

Photocopy action film features unconvincing super-soldier hit-woman

19 Aug 2011

(12A) 107min After her breakthrough role as the doe-eyed alien love-interest in James Cameron’s Avatar, and as a sexed-up Uhura in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek reboot, Zoe Saldana clearly has the international profile to get almost any picture made. Almost…

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…

Arrietty

Studio Ghibli takes on The Borrowers and delivers charming results

13 Jul 2011

(U) 94min Over three decades, the Studio Ghibli brand of animated storytelling has become a worldwide phenomenon through beloved classics My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and the recent Ponyo. Although not directed by the studio’s co-founder Hayao…

Horrible Bosses

Seth Gordon's comedy rides high with the titular bosses, but is let down by their minions

13 Jul 2011

(15) 97min The blunt title of Seth Gordon’s star-packed comedy might lack finesse but it is certainly accurate: Horrible Bosses features three utterly repulsive Los Angeles-based line managers as its villains. Dr Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) is…

Cars 2

Uninspired sequel fails to keep the Pixar engine running

13 Jul 2011

(U) 112min After 25 years of animation production and a run of critical and commercial smash-hits, the super-smooth Pixar production line finally blows a gasket with Cars 2, a colourful but overstuffed, noisy and heartless sequel that feels more like…

The Conspirator

Mixed results from Robert Redford courtroom drama on shooting of Abraham Lincoln

17 Jun 2011

(12A) 122min Have you ever wondered about the true story of Mary Surratt, the woman charged alongside John Wilkes Booth – the man who shot Abraham Lincoln – and his co-conspirators in 1865? Robert Redford’s courtroom drama supposes that you have and…

Profile: Jim Mickle, director of vampire horror Stake Land

Director turnes hometown into a post-apocalyptic wasteland

23 May 2011

Name Jim Mickle Born Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 1977 Background After graduating from New York University’s filmmaking programme, Mickle worked in the camera department for features Transamerica, Shortbus and Pride and Glory. The experience gave him…

The First Grader

Biographical drama has good intentions, but lacks purpose

23 May 2011

(12A) 102min The importance of free education may be a perennial political hot potato, but films like Justin Chadwick’s The First Grader add little to the debate other than good intentions. Based on a true story, Chadwick’s film seeks to inspire and…

Mother's Day

Rebecca De Mornay stars in rare example of a horror remake done well

23 May 2011

(18) 112min Following on the heels of bloodless remakes of cherished 1980s slasher flicks like The Stepfather and Prom Night, Mother’s Day is a nastier but more accomplished beast. This home invasion drama is a reboot of the 1980 Troma original, and…

Prom

Disney comedy is bland and generic tween fluff, starring Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell

23 May 2011

(U) 103min After the huge success of the High School Musical franchise, Disney have been quick to cash in on the teen genre, and Prom is based on another event from the school calendar upon which it hangs a familiar story. But despite the assured…

Stake Land

Jim Mickle's post-apocalyptic vampire horror shows the monsters still have bite post-Twilight

23 May 2011

(15) 98min Moving on from his impressive 2006 horror debut Mulberry Street, writer/director Jim Mickle scores a breakout hit with Stake Land, which fuses the post-apocalyptic journey scenario familiar from The Road or Zombieland with the current…

Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton star in Faster

9 Mar 2011

(15) 97min ‘That’s some pea-shooter you’ve got there,’ comments one of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s victims in director George Tillman Jr’s tough but clichéd melodrama. Since The Scorpion King made him a bankable star, Johnson has struggled to find a…

The Eagle

Kevin Macdonald's historical drama/war movie, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell

2 Mar 2011

Following on from State of Play, Kevin Macdonald has created a new adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s adventure The Eagle of the Ninth, which was also the subject of a fondly remembered BBC TV series. After his success with The Last King of…

The Tempest

Helen Mirren, Tom Conti, David Strathairn, Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming star in Shakespeare adap

2 Mar 2011

(PG) 109min After her baroque but static stab at Titus Andronicus, Julie Taymor turns her attention to Shakespeare’s final play, with Helen Mirren centre-stage as not Prospero but Propera, the island-bound magician who toys with a group of…

The Rite - Demonic possession thriller bogged down by script

Anthony Hopkins, Rutger Hauer and Colin O'Donoghue fail to escape The Exorcist's shadow

18 Feb 2011

(15) 113min ‘What did you expect, spinning heads and pea-soup?’ asks Vatican-approved exorcist Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) in Mikael Håfström’s demonic possession thriller, which initially offers a sober take on a horror genre that usually…

No Strings Attached - Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher in casual sexual relationship

Ivan Reitman's sweet-and-sour confection coasts by on personable leads

18 Feb 2011

(15) 107min The moribund romcom genre emits a shrill death-rattle in No Strings Attached, in which Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play friends who find themselves in a casual sexual relationship, only to find that there are always strings…

Whatever happened to the Edinburgh International Film Festival?

The champagne party may be over, but the EIFF may yet rise again

8 Feb 2011

Back in 2008, the EIFF seemed to be in good shape. A new June slot, a fresh artistic director in the form of Hannah McGill, and a whopping £1.88 million lottery cash investment from the Film Council, in addition to financial support from Scottish Screen…

Coen brothers' True Grit reunites a great text with its original meaning

A stirring poem to corrupt, bygone society of the Old West

2 Feb 2011

(15) 110min Henry Hathaway’s 1969 adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel was a rousing Hollywood crowd-pleaser, with the role of Marshal Rooster Cogburn allowing the unfashionable John Wayne an unexpected comeback. In the hands of the Coen Brothers, the…

Playlist - Cutting-edge, Scottish short films

Modern Times, Swedish For Hello and Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date With Destiny

2 Feb 2011

If your 2011 diet of cinema has thus far been confined to dumpster-bound turkeys and stale awards ceremony regurgitations masquerading as fresh product, get ready for some healthier fare. What you really want is some tasty, cutting-edge, local…

Yogi Bear is a bizarre live-action/animation television cartoon reboot

'Smart-juice was clearly scarce on the set of Eric Brevig’s witless, flat production'

2 Feb 2011

(U) 80min ‘What bears do in the woods …’ would be a perfect description of this bizarre live-action/animation television cartoon reboot along the lines of Scooby Doo and Alvin and the Chipmunks. Yogi Bear’s adventure takes place in Jellystone Park, a…

Peter Mullan's Neds - A disturbing and deeply felt account of social betrayal

1970s Glasgow juvenile delinquency tale argues that society should shoulder blame

18 Jan 2011

(18) 123min Never one to shirk a controversial subject, Peter Mullan follows up his attack on hypocrisy and abuse in the Catholic Church in The Magdalene Sisters. Casting a similarly caustic eye over the perennial problem of juvenile delinquency…

Black Swan - A taut psychological backstage thriller

Darren Aronofsky's intense and involving companion piece to The Wrestler

18 Jan 2011

(15) 108min Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to The Wrestler is a similarly intense and involving companion piece. Parallels can be drawn between the struggles of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson at the end of his working life with the more immediate drama of…

Hereafter - A load of sentimental hogwash despite strong Matt Damon performance

Clint Eastwood-directed, Peter Morgan-written intertwining tale

18 Jan 2011

(12A) 129min Matt Damon brings his earnest charm to bear as George Lonegan, a shy medium whose gift for contacting the dead destroys any chance of romance. After his relationship flops with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) and he’s made redundant from…

The King's Speech

23 Dec 2010

(12A) 118min The speech in question was a crucial one: a broadcast to the nation by King George VI on the eve of World War Two. In director Tom Hooper’s hands, the story of the difficulties faced by George (Colin Firth) in overcoming a speech…

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…

Tron Legacy

State-of-the-art, but with dialogue that only a motherboard could love

10 Dec 2010

(PG) 125min ‘The game has changed,’ announces the poster for Disney’s blockbuster offering for 2010, but despite 3D and innumerable upgrades, Tron-Legacy remains a very similar proposition to 1982’s super-culty box-office flop. With dialogue that…

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Finnish off-the-wall horror fantasy explores wild side of St Nicholas folklore

30 Nov 2010

(15) 82min From Finland comes this bizarre Christmas tale, an off-the-wall horror fantasy pitched halfway between The Polar Express and Let the Right One In. Evil Father Christmases are a rarely mined cinematic seam, but not since Edmund Purdom…

Megamind

DreamWorks' latest sports parent-pleasing rock tunes but let down by 2D characters

30 Nov 2010

(PG) 95min Following on from this year’s other super-villain cartoon Despicable Me, DreamWorks’ Megamind does at least boasts an original premise and it is this: what would happen if Lex Luthor actually succeeded in killing off Superman? Or rather…

Secretariat

30 Nov 2010

(U) 117min The tried and tested Disney formula for heart-warming stories about inspirational animals finds an ideal subject in the true story of Secretariat, a horse who improbably won the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing back in 1973. Given…

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (Luftslottet Som Sprangdes)

16 Nov 2010

(15) 146min ‘It’s like a Greek tragedy’ comments one of the minor characters in the third thriller adapted from the late Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy. There’s certainly something mythic about Lisbeth Salander’s baroquely rendered…

Machete

16 Nov 2010

(18) 104min Originally positioned as an intermission in Grindhouse, the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino homage to 70s exploitation movies, Machete’s trailer encapsulated the Mex-ploitation genre with extra cajones, with man-mountain Danny Trejo…

Unstoppable

16 Nov 2010

(12A) 98min Director Tony Scott clearly hasn’t had enough of Denzel Washington and locomotives; after their half-hearted remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, Unstoppable puts both director and star back on the tracks for a slick action film about a…

Mary and Max

2 Nov 2010

(12A) 92min So who’s up for an Australian claymation feature dealing with loneliness, bullying, obesity, suicide and mental illness? No? Well, that’s a crying shame, as writer/director Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar for short Harvie Crumpet in 2003…

We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay)

2 Nov 2010

(15) 89min Mexican writer/director Jorge Michel Grau’s raw horror about a family of human flesh-eaters mines from the cannibalistic, allegorical and political seam that David Cronenberg and George A Romero explored in the 1970s. Set in the grimly…

You Again

2 Nov 2010

(U) 105min Wedding chaos comedies are a Hollywood staple and they get a middling reworking in Andy Fickman’s You Again, with just enough catfights and frocks to appeal to the 27 Dresses crowd. Back in 2002, poor high school loser Marni (Forgetting…

Legend of The Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

22 Oct 2010

(PG) 90min Recommended to anyone keen to see a bunch of cartoon owls knocking lumps out of each other, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole marks the animated debut of Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). Combining a talent better known for violent…

Ramona and Beezus

22 Oct 2010

(U) 104min Adapted from Beverly Cleary’s popular children’s books, Ramona Quimby is a highly imaginative nine-year-old girl with a penchant for getting into mischief. In Elizabeth Allen’s feature, Ramona (Joey King) has to deal with that most…

Alpha and Omega

22 Oct 2010

(U) 88min Improbably dedicated to the late Hollywood wild man Dennis Hopper, who provides the voice of pack leader Tony, Alpha and Omega is a cutesy animation for toddlers only. Sultry alpha wolf Kate (Hayden Panettiere) is expected by her pack’s…

Despicable Me

6 Oct 2010

(U) 94min Universal have finally hit back big in the animation stakes with Despicable Me, a good-humoured, accessible comedy that never quite reaches the classic heights of Pixar’s Up!, or even DreamWorks’ equally brilliant How To Train Your Dragon…

The Pope, The Royal Channel and Beyonce on YouTube

22 Sep 2010

The Pope has been and gone, but how best can you stay in touch with the pontiff when he’s out of town? Like any 21st-century boy, the Pope and the Vatican have their own YouTube channel, with an impressive 787 uploaded videos. He’s not the only…

Frozen

22 Sep 2010

(15) 93min Despite travelling the same well-worn path of several other man-against-nature thrillers, writer/director Adam Green’s take on the survivalist genre manages a few icy frissons of its own, as well as a withering (if unnecessary) indictment…

The Secret of Kells

17 Sep 2010

(PG) 78min Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey’s luscious animated film takes inspiration from The Book of Kells, a key work in Irish medieval history. But rather than the three-dimensional style currently favoured by Pixar and DreamWorks, Moore and Twomey…

The Other Guys

7 Sep 2010

(12A) 107min The action/comedy genre gets a welcome boost with Adam McKay’s crowd-pleaser The Other Guys teaming Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz, an oddly-matched couple of New York cops. After years in the shadows of…

The Hole

7 Sep 2010

1980s wunderkind Joe Dante will forever have his name associated with hits Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins and Innerspace, but he’s been missing in action cinematically since 2003’s flop Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Fantasy adventure The Hole returns…

Just Wright

7 Sep 2010

(PG) 100min Future definitions of the word ‘mawkish’ may well include a synopsis of Just Wright, a truly lame sporting rom-com in which the romance is as tepid as the comedy. The usually personable Queen Latifah (Chicago) plays lovelorn…

Jonah Hex

22 Aug 2010

(15) 81min Clint Eastwood’s iconic Man With No Name is the inspiration for Jonah Hex, a vengeful cowboy in director Jimmy Hayward’s adaptation of the popular DC Comics character. Scarred and angry, Hex wanders the post civil war landscape…

Jack Bond's movies stand the test of time

3 Aug 2010

In 1965, Jack Bond, a young director freshly fired from the BBC for faking letters to Points of View, managed to persuade Salvador Dali to make a feature film with him. The result Dali In New York, screens on the art-house circuit to this day, and this…

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

3 Aug 2010

The combination of big-budget producer Jerry Bruckheimer and deep-pocketed studio Disney bore attractive if banal fruit with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but the muddle-headed fantasy The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is more likely to make audiences…

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz star in Knight and Day

3 Aug 2010

‘I’m the guy!’ smirks madcap assassin Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) to mousey June Havens (Cameron Diaz) as he kidnaps her at gunpoint from a Boston cafe. Sadly, on the evidence of James Mangold’s pumped-up spy thriller, Cruise has little to be so cocky about…

The A-Team

23 Jul 2010

(12A) 118min ‘I love it when a plan comes together’ opines cigar-chewing black-ops manager Col John ‘Hannibal’ Smith (Liam Neeson) several times in Joe Smokin’ Aces Carnahan’s revamp of the 1980’s action series. Unfortunately Carnahan’s plan, which…

The Karate Kid

23 Jul 2010

(PG) 139min Rocky director John G Avildsen’s 1984 hit The Karate Kid was no masterpiece, so the prospect of a two hour plus remake directed by Harald Zwart (Agent Cody Banks, The Pink Panther 2) and featuring Will Smith’s son Jaden promises as much…

Toy Story 3

Pixar's third instalment reaches satisfying resolution

23 Jul 2010

(U) 108min Sooner or later, everyone grows out of their toys. It’s been over a decade since the world fell for Pixar’s much loved Toy Story and the superior Toy Story 2, so a third instalment, arriving long after its audience has grown up, seems, at…

Playlist: Scottish arts on screen throughout history

7 Jul 2010

With the recent launch of Creative Scotland, the new body responsible for nurturing and promoting Scottish arts and culture, your latest Playlist column is taking a look at how Scottish arts have been represented in years gone by. If you’re an artist…

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

2 Jul 2010

A mere eight months after the previous installment hit cinemas, Eclipse, the third episode in the teenage Twilight franchise, continues the series’ tradition of breathless, toothless romance. After a spate of killings in Seattle, Bella (Kristen…

Shrek Forever After

21 Jun 2010

(U) 93min After the patience-sapping Shrek the Third, DreamWorks’s animation department offer a fourth and final instalment, rebooting the flagging franchise with a new alternate-reality twist. This year’s monster hit How To Train Your Dragon…

Get Him To The Greek

21 Jun 2010

(15) 108min Russell Brand proved a big hit Stateside with his role as debauched pop-star Aldous Snow in Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. For this spin-off, writer Segel and director Stoller use the tried-and-tested format…

When in Rome

21 Jun 2010

(PG) 87min A potentially fluffy romantic fantasy is stretched far beyond breaking point in Ghost Rider writer/director Mark Steven Johnson’s When In Rome, in which career-fixated, romantically unlucky New Yorker Beth (Kristen Bell) picks four coins…