Hannah McGill
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This is the End
11 Jun 2013
Star-studded cast play themselves in end of the world film by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
The apocalypse hits during James Franco’s housewarming party. What will the remaining gang of A, B and C-listers (all playing themselves) do to survive? Hard to imagine, isn’t it, how this could be anything other than obnoxious? A bunch of actors…
Stories We Tell
6 Jun 2013
A warm, brave and thought-provoking piece of autobiography by Sarah Polley
The ‘we’ in question is the family of the filmmaker, Canadian performer, director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sarah Polley; the stories being told are the personal and - as it turns out - changeable versions of its own history that exist within and…
Interview: Joss Whedon on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
4 Jun 2013
From commandeering superheroes in The Avengers to a low-key adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing
To those with knowledge of both Shakespeare and Joss Whedon, it won’t seem like a culture clash for the man behind Firefly, Buffy and The Avengers to take on Much Ado About Nothing. Rapid-fire repartee, gender warfare and even the odd rhyming couplet…
The Cannes award winners are soon to be announced, but what really happens in the jury room?
24 May 2013
Hannah McGill provides an insight into the inner workings of film festival juries
Film festival juries are variable beasts: some rigorously regulated, some sloppy; some amicable and some fiery as all hell. A few of my own experiences on juries around the world follow... 1. Festival 1. A fellow juror is a very elderly…
Opinion: does the Royal Lyceum's new season display a gender bias?
17 May 2013
Critic Hannah McGill takes a look at the theatre's 2013 programme and finds it lacking
Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, Scotland’s largest producing theatre, just announced its 2013–14 programme. Artistic Director Mark Thomson is proud to have mounted ‘in tough times… a season of work that celebrates the inspiration of great thinkers…
The Stoker (Kochegar)
17 May 2013
A strange, dark and clever Russian black comedy with an unexpectedly forceful moral message
Edinburgh’s beloved Filmhouse cinema has chosen an unusual and intriguing curio for its first release as a distributor. Directed by the prolific Alexey Balabanov - known for his unflinching but darkly comic fables of the Russian criminal underworld…
Cannes Film Festival 2013 highlights
25 Apr 2013
Hannah McGill tells us what's worth caring about in this year's Cannes Film Festival line up
What is the Cannes film festival, apart from a beach resort shindig where starlets model frocks, Lars Von Trier winds people up, and headline writers are driven to terrible Cannes/can puns? The film festival was set up in 1946 as a free world rival to…
Director Hal Hartley discusses the legacy of his 1990s indie masterpieces
18 Apr 2013
His early films Amateur, The Unbelievable Truth and Simple Men are set for DVD and Blu-ray release
To those who recognise it, the influence of Hal Hartley can be discerned in the work of many a current filmmaker who came to maturity in the 90s, from mainstream comedies through arty Oscar-baiters to the indiest of hipster indies. Though Hartley is too…
Bernie
18 Apr 2013
Jack Black and Shirley Maclaine star in this nicely-mounted but ultimately oddly bloodless comedy
We’re all familiar with the clear-cut outrage that follows a heinous crime perpetrated by a dark, twisted monster against a dewy innocent – but what if it’s the other way round? What if someone hugely popular does something terrible to someone widely…
Dead by Dawn 2013 director Adele Hartley gives us an insight into Scotland's Horror Festival
16 Apr 2013
Hartley talks us through the festival highlights, as well as trends and misogyny in the horror genre
What can you say about this year’s programme? Surprises, favourites, screenings about which you are particularly excited? Super-excited about showing Modus Anomali which is one of those gorgeous, mind-melt movies that demands an extra pint in the bar…
Everybody Has a Plan
16 Apr 2013
Viggo Mortensen stars in this schlocky-but-solemn, slow-paced Argentine noir
Not necessarily a good plan, though, eh? Viggo Mortensen here plays Agustin, a classy Argentinian paediatrician who, frustrated by his bourgeois life and his wife’s attempts to further pin him down by adopting a child, takes advantage of an unexpected…
A Late Quartet
26 Feb 2013
Unlikable characters blight this grown-up drama starring Christopher Walken
As befits an unapologetically grown-up and classy film about posh people who have loads of money and play in a string quartet, this drama has some supremely elegant, subtle and well-turned scenes. It also has moments of preciousness choking enough to…
Welcome to the Punch
26 Feb 2013
James McAvoy and Andrea Riseborough star in this showy action flick from the director of Shifty
There is something distinctly hypocritical and pernicious about the way this homegrown thriller gestures towards a moral stance on gun violence, only to itself locate firearms as not only an absolutely critical element in effective policing, but also…
The Look of Love
26 Feb 2013
Michael Winterbottom's biopic of soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never finds its tone
Despite juicy subject matter and a promising cast, this biopic of the British strip club and soft porn tycoon Paul Raymond never quite finds its tone. In its first half, it deploys a weak end-of-the-pier comic mode which might fit its tasselled, trashy…
Much Ado About Nothing
26 Feb 2013
This lo-fi project from Joss Whedon is an elegant adaptation of the Shakespearean play
It’s not classed as one of Shakespeare's hard-to-categorise 'problem plays', but there’s plenty that’s problematic in this mid-period comedy. The traducement, rejection and humiliation of the innocent Hero, for instance – and her capitulation thereto…
Oscars live blog - the 2013 award ceremony as it happened
25 Feb 2013
A blow-by-blow account of film, fashion and faux pas highlights from Hannah McGill
11.15 No-one famous is on the red carpet yet except, befuddlingly, for Jessica Chastain, who is REALLY famous, and yet has arrived earlier than the rest of her kind, either to prove that she is better than them, or because the clock’s wrong on her phone…
Cloud Atlas
18 Feb 2013
Breathtaking action, profound emotion, dark sense of fun and sheer deranged brilliance
A time-trotting, globe-encircling, multi-strand plot; wigs, false noses and flamboyant accents; grandiose theories about the fate-shifting power of romantic love... Cloud Atlas has an unavoidable hint of the Mad Folly about it. One recalls Thomas…
Shell
18 Feb 2013
Impressive feature debut set in Highlands by Scottish writer-director Scott Graham
Shot with a raw eloquence that displays a deep understanding of its Highland setting, and performed with sensitivity and directness, Shell is an impressive debut by Scottish writer-director Scott Graham. Chloe Pirrie quietly but confidently holds the…
Broken City
11 Feb 2013
A flawed but watchable political noir starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe
Allen Hughes, who along with his brother Albert, made such bold, flawed, feisty works as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents and From Hell, makes his first solo fiction outing with this over-complicated but sporadically effective contemporary…
I Give it a Year
4 Feb 2013
Abysmal, humourless newlyweds comedy starring Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall and Anna Faris
Nat (Rose Byrne) is a shallow, uptight career girl. Josh (Rafe Spall) is an insensitive, laddish boor. For reasons we don’t glean, since it all happens during the opening credits, they get married, and proceed to be vile to one another, until, within…
Profile: Brandon Cronenberg, director of Antiviral
21 Jan 2013
Debut feature from son of David Cronenberg explores celebrity obsession and illness
Born: Toronto, Canada, 1985. Background: The son of a director you might have heard of called David and his wife Carolyn Zeifman, who have been married since 1979, Brandon Cronenberg premiered his debut feature as a writer/director at last year’s Cannes…
Bullhead
21 Jan 2013
Rust and Bone's Matthias Schoenaerts shines in this slightly muddled Belgian crime drama
Fans of Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone will be keen to see that film’s impressive male lead Matthias Schoenaerts again, and this Belgian drama (its homeland’s Oscar entry) gives him plenty to chew on. As Jacky, an underworld hustler and supplier of…
Why do we love romantic comedies?
18 Jan 2013
The best of the modern rom com genre, and what makes it so irresistible, despite its flaws
Did you and your partner meet a) at a friend’s dinner party, b) smoking outside a pub or c) when the heartless multinational company they work for bulldozed your cosy little wedding dress shop to make way for a heartless multinational office block?
Antiviral
18 Jan 2013
Brandon Cronenberg finds sadness and squalor of celebrity obsession in impressive surreal debut
It would be nice, and respectful, to review this impressive debut by Brandon Cronenberg without making reference to the director’s parentage, but it’s near-impossible. When David Lynch met Isabella Rossellini, he supposedly told her that she could be…
Wreck It Ralph
18 Jan 2013
Witty and cleverly-targeted family romp from Disney with video game theme
Number one with a bullet on its recent American release, this cleverly-targeted family romp marks a step up both commercially and artistically for the non-Pixar side of Disney’s animation offering. Indeed, on a script level it’s substantially superior…
