Eddie Harrison

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…

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…

The Meerkats

30 Jul 2009

There’s something about meerkats. Maybe it’s their little beady eyes, or their curiously stiff, upright posture that makes them appear to be striving to be human. Whatever that quality is, the camera clearly loves them, making the humble meerkat an…

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…

The Last Song

29 Apr 2010

(PG) 107min The meteoric rise to tween fame of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana has paralleled the rising popularity of writer Nicholas Sparks (A Walk To Remember, The Notebook), so having Sparks create a vehicle specifically for Billy Ray’s daughter must…

Tales from Earthsea

1 Aug 2007

The familiar Studio Ghibli look is there, but Tales From Earthsea, based on the books by writer of speculative fiction Ursula K Le Guin, is directed not by the great Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son Goro.

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…

The best things to do in Glasgow

22 Apr 2010

Where to … … take a walk Dumbarton Road is Mecca for enthusiastic charity shoppers (tip: start off at the Salvation Army near Byres Road) – make a day of it by wandering round the junk and vintage shops of nearby Ruthven Lane first. (Kirstin…

My Best Friend’s Girl

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min From Howard Deutch, the auteur behind the seminal teen movie Pretty in Pink starring Molly Ringwald, My Best Friend’s Girl is a 1980s throwback rom-com, updated with scatological language. Dane Cook, so disagreeable in last year’s Good…

The Last House on the Left

11 Jun 2009

Given the repellent nature of Wes Craven’s scuzzy little 1972 rape and revenge shocker, it’s a relief to find this glossy remake straying somewhat from the original’s sleazy path. Craven and original producer Sean S Cunningham steer the hand of Dennis…

Ponyo (Gake No Ue No Ponyo)

28 Jan 2010

(U) 101min An animated feature about a five-year-old boy who falls for a goldfish princess may not sound like a hot ticket, but the delightful content of Ponyo will be no surprise to anyone already in thrall to the Studio Ghibli brand. After Hayao…

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…

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…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

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.

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…

Hachi: A Dog's Story

2 Mar 2010

(PG) 93min Lasse Hallstrom, director of My Life As A Dog, returns to his canine roots with Hachi: A Dog’s Story, an unashamedly sentimental version of the story most Scots would recognise as Greyfriars Bobby. The cited real-life inspiration for…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

5 Feb 2009

MYSTERY/ROMANCE What would it be like to live in reverse? Born as an old man only to die as an infant, the Benjamin Button character created by F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1922 short-story gets the full ‘prestige picture’ treatment in David Fincher’s…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

1 Day

29 Oct 2009

(15) 101min Billed as ‘Britain’s first hip-hop musical, on paper 1 Day sounds like a do-gooder Guardian-reader’s community play, dramatising social issues to a soundtrack of urban beats and songs delivered in a semi-operatic style. That the result…

Morning Light

3 Sep 2009

(PG) 97min The Morning Light is a boat owned by Roy Disney, nephew of Mouse-house king Walt, and for Mark Monroe’s feature-length documentary, 15 youngsters chosen for their sailing prowess (and good looks) duke it out to be one of the 11 who sail…