Kaleem Aftab

Interview - Mads Mikkelsen

Mad As A Dane

13 Mar 2007

It’s been a little over a decade since Mads Mikkelsen terrorised his way into public consciousness playing the violent enforcer Tonny in Pusher. It was his debut film and the start of a career that now has him commonly touted as the face of Danish…

Amazing Grace

(PG) 118min

13 Mar 2007

Amazing Grace tells the story of how William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) persuaded the House of Commons after a series of attempts to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Alas, the subject matter is far more interesting than the execution. Slavery…

Freedom Writers

28 Feb 2007

A touching performance from Hilary Swank ensures that Freedom Writers is not just another tripe genre movie about a teacher coming into class room to save savages à la Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver and Lean on Me. Set in the aftermath of the 1992…

Inland Empire

(15) 180min

27 Feb 2007

Going into any David Lynch film there is an expectation that you’ll leave the cinema a little confused. As he’s demonstrated with Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, he loves a mystery, especially if it involves doppelgangers, strange…

Glasgow Film Festival - Mira Nair interview (The Namesake)

A tale of two cities

30 Jan 2007

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL After her sojourn into the upper echelons of British society with her adaptation of Vanity Fair, Mira Nair returns to the multicultural themes that established her reputation with The Namesake. It’s a cinematic rendition of…

Dreamgirls

29 Jan 2007

Dreamgirls has made Oscar history and the ceremony hasn’t even taken place yet. It is, allegedly, the first picture to have the most Academy Award nominations in a given year and still not be nominated for Best Picture. And, for once, the Academy seems…

Arthur and the Invisibles

(U) 93min

29 Jan 2007

If Luc Besson (The Big Blue, Leon) is to be believed, this, his tenth film, will also be his last as director. In adapting his own children’s book, Besson mixes live-action and CGI animation with decidedly patchy results. It’s heavy on style but light…

Rocky Balboa

15 Jan 2007

Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) hits the nail on the head when he answers the put down ‘Was that something from the 80s?’ fired by his foe Mason Dixon (real life light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver) with the retort ‘More like the 70s, actually.’ Forget…

Bobby

15 Jan 2007

Writer-director Emilio Estevez has created a hagiography of Bobby Kennedy and posits that his death marked an end of a political dream in the United States. The action takes place at the scene of the crime - the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June…

Infamous

15 Jan 2007

So how does this new film about Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood compare with Bennett Miller’s Oscar-winning Capote? It’s not as good, but this sentiment comes with a massive caveat as writer/director Douglas McGrath has created an entirely different…

The Last King of Scotland

3 Jan 2007

The only similarity that the Nicholas Garrigan of this film has with his namesake in Giles Foden’s book is, indeed, his name. The Garrigan of the book is a dull-witted, slightly ignorant and rather un-endearing Scot, whereas in the movie James McAvoy…

The Pursuit of Happyness

20 Dec 2006

Inspired by a true story (meaning that the central protagonist is portrayed in a far better light than reality), the dour flavour used to show Chris Gardner’s (Will Smith) rags-to riches story makes this flick easier to admire for its unusually abject…

Smokin' Aces

20 Dec 2006

With Narc, director Joe Carnahan made a sterling contribution to the cop genre. Noteworthy for its grim bad cop/bad cop partnership the film was completely different to the usual dross. So it’s even more cringing that Smokin’ Aces is such a poor effort…

Deja Vu

(12A) 126min

11 Dec 2006

SCI FI/ADVENTURE/THRILLER A massive explosion, a slow-mo on our hero arriving on the scene of a terrorist attack, and within the first ten minutes it’s clear that we’ve entered the destructive cinematic world of Tony Scott. But, unlike with the…

Dark Horse

11 Dec 2006

The first hour of Icelander Dagur Kári’s follow up to Nói Albínói is just as good as his quirky debut. Daniel (Jakob Cedergren) is a graffiti artist who makes money by taking commissions to write girls’ names on walls for men who are trying to impress…

Container - profile of Lukas Moodysson

Profile

7 Dec 2006

Name Lukas Moodysson Born Malmo, Sweden, 17 January 1969. Background Moodysson came to prominence with his debut film, Show Me Love (for some reason the much better Swedish title Fucking Amal was not used in the UK). In a country starved of…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

7 Dec 2006

The most daunting task facing director Tom Twyker (Run, Lola, Run, Heaven) when adapting Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume was how to stimulate the olfactory senses onscreen in the scintillating way the author managed on the page. Twyker attempts to give…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - profile of Ben Whishaw

Profile

7 Dec 2006

Name Ben Whishaw Born 14 October 1980, Bedfordshire. Background Whishaw grew up in Bedfordshire where he attended the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre before transferring to RADA. He first started making waves on the London stage, first in His…

Container - review

Container

7 Dec 2006

EXPERIMENTAL DRAMA Lukas Moodysson continues his cinematic journey into the abstract with the beguiling Container. Since his striking debut Show Me Love, his films, Together, Lilya 4-ever and A Hole In My Heart have become less and less centred on a…

Stranger Than Fiction

27 Nov 2006

We’re so used to Will Ferrell playing the crazed maniac that it’s a pleasant surprise to see that he can play the straight guy equally well. He’s Howard Crick, a taxman with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whose life is turned upside down when he hears…

Candy

22 Nov 2006

Split into three parts, entitled ‘Heaven’, ‘Earth’ and ‘Hell’, (a nod to Dante’s Inferno, Candy details the episodic descent of wannabe poet and intravenous heroin user Dan (Heath Ledger) after he falls in love with aspiring artist Candy (Abbie…

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny - review

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny

13 Nov 2006

COMEDY/MUSICAL Jack Black and Kyle Gass formed rock band Tenacious D a dozen years ago. Noteworthy, mostly, for their wild and profane lyrics, their existence has witnessed a best selling album, a short-lived HBO series, and the movie stardom of lead…

Special

(15) 82min

13 Nov 2006

DRAMA There’s a pantheon of cinema that is fixated on the comic store as a metaphorical character - The Lost Boys, True Romance and the movies of Kevin Smith spring to mind. The comic book store is the centre of their protagonist’s world, the…

Little Children

26 Oct 2006

It’s unusual in contemporary American cinema, or even books, to have a third person narrator. The use of one in Little Children immediately tells us that filmmaker Todd In The Bedroom Field has abandoned the minimalist references to Ozu with which he…

Starter for Ten

26 Oct 2006

Brian (James McAvoy), a geeky student, finds love and fulfils an ambition to appear on University Challenge when he becomes the first member of his family to win a place at university in 1985. Leaving behind his best mates Spencer (Dominic Cooper) and…