Kaleem Aftab

GFF 2012 - Director Lynn Shelton on Your Sister’s Sister

Mumblecore icon on her film which opens 2012 Glasgow Film Festival

10 Feb 2012

Seattle-based filmmaker Lynn Shelton has specialised in revelling in the foibles of her characters across each of her four movies, so it’s no surprise to hear her say, 'People are flawed, that’s what I love about them... I want people to like characters…

Red Dog

Hilarious and tearjerking scenes of human folly played as classic comedy

1 Feb 2012

(PG) 92min 2012 is turning into the year of the dog for cinema fans. After Uggie stole the show in The Artist comes this wonderful tale of canine tomfoolery. Told in a zippy boy’s own adventure style, this ‘inspired by a true story’ tale is set in…

Profile: Jason Reitman, director of Young Adult

CV includes Thank You For Smoking, Juno and Up In the Air

1 Feb 2012

Name Jason Reitman Born 19 October, 1977. Background Born in Montreal, Quebec, his old man is Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman. Since graduating from the University of South California, where he was an English major, he’s taken on various…

Black Gold

Cliched, desert-set action adventure starring Mark Strong, Antonio Banderas and Tahar Rahim

27 Jan 2012

(12A) 130min The financial muscle of the Middle East has had a major impact on many spheres in recent years. Now that money is being directed towards movies. Bankrolled by the Doha Film Institute this action-adventure is set at the turn of the 20th…

Mother and Child

A strong but plodding triptych starring Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Kerry Washington

5 Jan 2012

(15) 126min Mexican cinema’s love affair with the triptych continues with Mother and Child. Executive produced by Babel director Alexandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, the latest film from Nine Lives helmsman Rodrigo Garcia stars Annette Bening as a nursing…

The Lady

Aung San Suu Kyi biopic does nothing to alleviate Luc Besson's downward course

9 Dec 2011

(TBC) tbcmin Luc Besson is best known for his action adventures such as The Fifth Element, The Big Blue and Leon. The French director’s career has been in decline in recent years and this jump into serious drama has done nothing to alleviate this…

50/50

Comedy about cancer one of the funniest and most human films of the year

9 Nov 2011

(15) 100min Not since Roberto Benigni won Oscars for Life is Beautiful – a holocaust movie played for laughs – has there been a comedy with such a seemingly poor premise that scores so high on the laughter scale. 50/50 is a comedy about cancer. Get…

Moneyball

Star-studded baseball film mired in clichés and with scenes that fall flat

8 Nov 2011

(12A) 133min Moneyball is a baseball movie that aims for universal appeal by casting Brad Pitt as a maverick general manager, having climactic scenes revolving around a strained father/daughter relationship, and in its strongest moments, being about…

Wuthering Heights

Andrea Arnold's retelling of Brontë’s novel lacks an emphasis on story

20 Oct 2011

(15) 129min Andrea Arnold hit home runs with her first two films, Red Road and Fish Tank. Her new film, an attempt at adapting Emily Brontë’s seminal novel, gets bogged down in the Yorkshire Moors. The director seems more concerned with paying…

The Ides of March

Clooney's effective if by-the-numbers dissection of America’s political system

17 Oct 2011

(15) 101min George Clooney – more salt than pepper, more actor than director. Like Good Night, and Good Luck, his fourth feature directorial effort dissects America’s political system and surmises that it is fuelled of corruption and greed. The…

Interview: Carey Mulligan on Drive

Recent work includes roles in Drive, Shame and The Great Gatsby

22 Sep 2011

For a film that she thought no one would see, An Education did a remarkable job of changing Carey Mulligan’s life. The 26-year-old star was immediately snapped up to star in A-list movies such as Never Let Me Go and Wall Street 2. Perhaps sensing burn…

The Art of Getting By

22 Aug 2011

(12A) 83min ‘110 billion humans have walked the planet since the dawn of time, and none of them have made it.’ So begins schoolboy George Zinavoy’s narration in this melancholic teen comedy with heavy echoes of Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything. George…

Jane Eyre

Gothic yet modern adaptation helped by excellent performances

19 Aug 2011

(PG) 120min The latest adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic book demonstrates that great texts can have many different interpretations. Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) dumps the childhood chapters, makes insinuations as to the cruel…

Kill List

Genre-schizophrenic crime spree lacks clarity

19 Aug 2011

(18) 95min Down Terrace director Ben Wheatley second feature is another tale of crime, skullduggery and mystery. Kill List is one of those movies that starts off in one genre (kitchen sink drama) and turns into another (horror). Robert Rodriguez…

The Devil's Double

Rambunctious romp with career changing performance from Dominic Cooper

9 Aug 2011

(18) 106min Subtlety is not in director Lee Tamahori’s repertoire. His excellent 1994 debut, Maori drama Once Were Warriors was full of well caught masculine bravado and tearful repercussions but the director’s career went wayward and reached its…

The Taqwacores

Exploration of identity set within American Muslim punk scene

9 Aug 2011

(15) 83min Eyad Zahra’s adaptation of Michael Muhammed Knight’s novel set in the American Muslim punk scene is in the tradition of early 80s music scene movies such as Penelope Spheeris’ Surburbia and Edo Bertoglio’s Downtown 81. First generation…

The Beaver - Jodie Foster interview

The director on working with Mel Gibson on comedy drama

1 Jul 2011

The Beaver is the third directorial effort from the iconic Jodie Foster. The 48-year-old actress burst onto the international scene as a child star in 1976 with films such as Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone and Freaky Friday. Lauded as a teenager for her…

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

27 May 2011

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

The Big Picture

Romain Duris turns out an excellent performance in French drama

23 May 2011

(tbc) 114min This adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel relocates the setting from New York and Montana to Paris and the Adriatic Coast. Its plot involves murder, identity theft and abandonment but this is not so much a thriller as an investigation…

Passenger Side is a witty road movie about sibling rivalries

Matt Bissonnette's comedy stars Joel Bissonnette and Adam Scott

28 Mar 2011

(12A) 85min Before the road movie was carjacked by the American gross-out comedy, Easy Rider and its offspring helped establish a genre of American outsider cinema, with its portraits of the big country beyond the confines of the Hollywood system.

Profile: Matt Bissonnette, director of Passenger Side

Canadian director's third feature earning critical praise

24 Mar 2011

Name Matt Bissonnette Born Montreal, Quebec, November 2 1965. Background Bissonnette is an autodidact at the school of Alfred Hitchcock, Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater. He studied English and film at Concordia University and read law at…

Drive Angry 3D - review

Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard and William Fichtner star in off-the-wall hellbound actioner

9 Mar 2011

(18) 104min More than any other actor, Nicolas Cage has the ability to move from the sublime to the ridiculous. For every Moonstruck, Leaving Las Vegas and Kick-Ass, there is a Ghost Rider, Bangkok Dangerous or World Trade Centre. Whereas his…

Unknown

Mistaken identity thriller starring Liam Neeson, January Jones and Diane Kruger

2 Mar 2011

(12A) 113min Liam Neeson has had a career revival as the star of mid-budget action thrillers in which he growls his way through various preposterous situations, while remaining muscularly watchable. Though comparable to his reactionary turn in…

James Franco stars in Ginsberg biopic Howl - interview

We speak to the multi-disciplined actor about what he wants from life

17 Feb 2011

Author, filmmaker, Oscars host and star of 127 Hours, Howl and Spiderman James Franco discusses his work.

Sanctum is an enjoyable if formulaic James Cameron-affiliated film

Inventive despite slunky dialogue and sentimental father-son aspects

2 Feb 2011

(15) 108min Unsurprisingly, executive producer James Cameron gets above-the-title billing for this Australia-set action/adventure which brings together the Avatar director’s obsession with 3D technology and his fascination with underwater adventures…

Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance - profile

Director spent a decade rewriting over 60 drafts of Blue Valentine

12 Jan 2011

Born 1974 Background Cianfrance first picked up a movie camera at the age of 13. He studied film production at the University of Colorado under avant-garde filmmakers Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon. He wrote, directed and edited his first…

Abel

3 Jan 2011

(15) 82min Mexican actor Diego Luna’s first fictional feature film (he previously directed a documentary on the legendary Latino boxer Chavez) is a curious mix of poignant and bizarre. Nine-year-old Abel (Christopher Ruíz-Esparza) returns home after…

Burlesque

Ill-advised directorial debut is dross, despite effort from Christina Aguilera and Cher

23 Dec 2010

(12A) 119min Burlesque is the type of film that made musicals go out of fashion. It plays up the kitsch in order to cover its many deficiencies. At best the film has curiosity value as it features the acting debut of Christina Aguilera, who also…

Profile: The Way Back director Peter Weir

Australian director of Gallipoli, Witness and Dead Poet’s Society

16 Dec 2010

There is an argument to be made that Weir is one of the most underrated directors working today. The stats in his favour include having directed five Oscar nominated performances, from luminaries such as Linda Hunt (who won), Rosie Perez, Harrison Ford…

The Way Back

Heavy on pretty spectacle but light on character development

10 Dec 2010

(12A) 133min Australian filmmaker Peter Weir (Master and Commander, The Truman Show) defies most prison escape movie conventions to make a film that is heavy on pretty Lawrence of Arabia-type spectacle but light on significant character development.

Chatroom

10 Dec 2010

(15) 97min Young British acting talent is out in force in this drama set in an alternative cyber reality. Aaron Johnson, Imogen Poots, Matthew Beard, Hannah Murray and Daniel Kaluuya are the rising Brit stars who meet in a chatroom that has been…

Miral

Meandering narrative and clunky dialogue spoil visually disappointing potted history

30 Nov 2010

(12A) 112min Artist Julian Schnabel has made a habit of turning real life subjects into difficult, provocative films. At his best, Schnabel is able to entwine the neo-expressionist aesthetic of his gallery work with cinematic narratives to stunning…

Machete - Robert Rodriguez interview

The prolific filmmaker on tricks with nudity, budgets and being Tex Mex

16 Nov 2010

Machete first came to the attention of the public as one of the eclectic trailers that appeared in the middle of Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s homage to the 70s cinema experience. Although Grindhouse flopped at the box office…

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1

16 Nov 2010

(12A) 145min The decision to split the final adaptation of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books into two episodes will mostly pay dividends at the accounting office of Warner Brothers, as on-screen the latest wizard tale, the seventh in the series, lacks…

Let Me In

2 Nov 2010

(15) 116min Just two years after the adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Let the Right One In was turned into a hit Swedish film by Tomas Alfredson comes the American take on the story and it’s a striking if mildly uneven adaptation. Matt…

The Kids Are All Right

22 Oct 2010

(15) 106min High Art director Lisa Cholodenko has made one of the funniest films of the year by taking aspects of her own life — most notably the use of a sperm donor to father a child — and turning it into a comedy of social dilemmas. Woody Allen…

Easy A

22 Oct 2010

(15) 92min Hollywood is going gaga for Emma Stone at the moment, and on the strength of her performance in this hit American teen comedy, it’s easy to see why. Stone channels Molly Ringwald in her heyday, playing a gauche outsider teen desiring…

Buried

22 Sep 2010

(15) 94min The prospect of a thriller featuring rom-com favourite Ryan Reynolds as the only actor on screen is not exactly enticing, but it’s time to throw all those prejudices away, as Reynolds gives a fantastic performance in a very fine…

The Town

22 Sep 2010

(15) 124min Say what you like about Ben Affleck the actor, as a director and screenwriter he is more than competent. As with his overlooked directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Affleck has adapted another Boston-set crime novel (Prince of Thieves by…

I'm Still Here

22 Sep 2010

(15) 107min When Joaquin Phoenix announced that he was retiring as an actor to become a rap star and that his attempts to change career would be filmed by his brother-in-law Casey Affleck, sceptics immediately screamed hoax, which Affleck has now…

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

15 Aug 2010

(12A) 112min Writer-director Edgar Wright has made a career out of subverting genres, as demonstrated by his collaborations with actor Simon Pegg: TV’s Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. For Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Wright left…

South of the Border - Tariq Ali interview

The historian and commentator on making movies with Oliver Stone

23 Jul 2010

The appearance of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez alongside Oliver Stone at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of documentary South of the Border was one of the most surreal moments on any red carpet in recent memory. In the background making…

Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)

23 Jul 2010

(15) 121min Great songs, beautiful girls, lovely costumes and an artist in a constant state of flux are emphasised in Joann Sfar’s imaginative, beautiful and suitably bizarre musing on the life of Serge Gainsbourg. Starting off in conventional…

South of the Border

23 Jul 2010

(15) 77min When Oliver Stone made a documentary for HBO about Fidel Castro, his American paymasters accused him of going too soft on the Cuban President and ordered him to go and try again. This time Stone stands firm, doesn’t even entertain the idea…

London River

23 Jul 2010

(12A) 88min The 7/7 bombings serve as the backdrop to this clash of cultures tale. Guernsey-based Falklands War widow Elisabeth (Brenda Blethyn) is first seen listening to a church sermon about loving your neighbour. In Africa, Muslim Ousmane…

Leaving

7 Jul 2010

Catalan-born actor Sergi Lopez is making a name for himself as the least likely romantic lead in cinema. After wooing Rinko Kikuchi in Isabel Coixet’s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, he’s now at it again with Kristin Scott Thomas’ well-to-do leading lady.

Women Without Men

2 Jul 2010

Director Sherin Neshat made her name as an artist, mainly in the area of photography, who carefully exploited Islamic gender issues. Women Without Men, her cinematic debut, started life as a visual installation, and the finished product places Neshat…

The Concert

2 Jul 2010

Director Radu Mihaieanu made the beguiling Live and Become, a film that dealt with the difficult integration into Israeli society of the Ethiopean Falasha Jews. Similarly, his latest film also has a strong religious theme, and is based on several…

Tetro - Vincent Gallo interview

24 Jun 2010

‘I’m a person with more flaws than most people because I am maybe a little more ridiculous’ says Vincent Gallo with typical understatement. The man of many clothes – actor, director, painter, singer, songwriter and internet entrepreneur has always been…

Good Hair

24 Jun 2010

(12A) 95min Chris Rock with mouth largely agape enters Louis Theroux presenter territory with this documentary on the relationship between African-American women and their hair. The desire of black Americans to get rid of the kinks in their afro and…

Tetro

21 Jun 2010

(15) 126min The success of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now means it’s easy to forget that director Francis Ford Coppola was once a radical and gifted independently minded screenwriter and director. His return from a decade-long directing hiatus was…

Heartbreaker (L’arnacoeur)

21 Jun 2010

(15) 104min With Heartbreaker, Romain Duris proves again that he is among the best film actors working today. It’s always a good sign of talent when actors shine no matter the genre, and Duris, who wowed in both Christopher Honore’s Dans Paris and…

Michael Winterbottom on The Killer Inside Me

28 May 2010

Born 29 March 1961 Background Born in Blackburn the director has become known for his ability to churn out films and work across genres. He made his first feature film Butterfly Kiss in 1995. What’s he up to now? Winterbottom has adapted…

The Killer Inside Me

28 May 2010

(18) 109min Utilising Jim Thompson’s controversial pulp novel, workaholic filmmaker Michael Winterbottom explodes the myth that the 1950s was a time of innocence. The jaunty music on the credit sequence is more suggestive of family television than a…

Brooklyn's Finest

28 May 2010

(18) 132min The ironic title refers to three police officers that operate within the grey area of the law, where upholding justice and personal interest make uncomfortable bedfellows. Such is the size of Brooklyn’s police force, none of the cops know…

Four Lions

29 Apr 2010

(15) 101min In his feature film directorial debut, Chris Morris drops a hand grenade on the notion that all films about post 9/11 terrorism need to be worthy and sensitive to religious groups. Morris hits the right note by poking fun at individuals…

Hot Tub Time Machine

28 Apr 2010

As with Snakes on a Plane, the best thing about this charmless movie is its title. Director Steve Pink did much to kickstart the cinema bout of 80s nostalgia when he wrote Grosse Point Blank, starring that consummate 80s icon John Cusack. Nonetheless…

The Infidel and Four Lions put UK muslim life on screen

31 Mar 2010

The treatment of Muslims on our screens can sometimes seem to have come full circle in the 30 years since Michael Grade cancelled ITV’s cultural stereotype-derived comedy show Mind Your Language. Now. British directors have once again decided that…

Warwick Thornton's role in Samson and Delilah

29 Mar 2010

Name Warwick Thornton Born Alice Springs, Australia Background Thornton left school unable to read and write, and started working as a radio DJ. He soon graduated to having his own show called Green Room. His infatuation with images led…

The Infidel

29 Mar 2010

(15) 104min The Infidel is a concept movie about a cockney, Spurs-supporting Muslim who discovers that he was adopted at birth and that his father is actually a Jew. The pretty funny idea at the heart of this comedy, written by David Baddiel, is in…

Sons of Cuba

29 Mar 2010

(12A) 88min ‘What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans,” said Cuban Heavyweight Olympic boxing champion Teofilo Stevenson when offered the chance to turn professional and fight Muhammad Ali. Cuba has been one of the…

Storm

18 Mar 2010

(15) 110min Last time out director Hans-Christian Schmid directed the psychological horror Requiem based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a young Catholic epileptic sufferer who believed that she was possessed by demons. Schmid has a long…

Kick-Ass

18 Mar 2010

(15) 117min Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic book series is a hilarious, hip twist on the superhero genre. Gone are the superpowers, the 100 inch chests and holier than thou attitude. Instead our hero is an awkward teenager, Dave…

Exit Through the Gift Shop

2 Mar 2010

(15) 85min Over the past decade one of the big mysteries of the art world has been the identity of Banksy. Now, in his first foray into filmmaking, the mystery man places the issue of identity at the centre of his pseudo documentary on street…

The Lovely Bones

17 Feb 2010

(12A) 135min The problems with Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s popular novel run much deeper than the usual stumbling block of having a macabre subject matter. The casting of Mark Wahlberg as the grieving dad is seriously misjudged…

Everybody's Fine

17 Feb 2010

(12A) 99min Robert De Niro drags his grumpy old man routine into this well-meaning but utterly dull remake of Giuseppe Cinema Paradiso Tornatore’s Stanno Tutti Bene (1990). De Niro has plenty of reason to put on his over-familiar raised eyebrows and…

A Prophet - Tahar Rahim interview

20 Jan 2010

Tahar Rahim looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights. We are on a hotel roof overlooking the sea at Cannes and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet has just had its world premiere. In 150 exhilarating minutes, the 28 year-old has gone from unknown to the…

Precious

15 Jan 2010

(15) 109min The Sundance and Toronto film festivals’ top prizewinner, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, arrives in the UK with a big reputation which is entirely justified. The opening quote from Ken Keynes Jr states ‘Everything is a gift of the…

Breathless

15 Jan 2010

(18) 130min It’s often the most violent films from South East Asia that make it to international cinemas and that’s true of Yang Ik-joon’s Breathless. Whereas the films of Park Chan-wook, John Woo and to a lesser extent Takeshi Kitano are often so…

The Road - John Hillcoat interview

6 Jan 2010

John Hillcoat says his favourite road traverses the Simpson Desert in the outback in Australia. Not such a surprise given that he was born in Queensland in 1961 and that both his previous directing efforts – prison drama Ghosts... of the Civil Dead…

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

6 Jan 2010

(18) 113 min Michael Winterbottom protégé Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo, The Shock Doctrine) shows a previously unseen penchant for the spectacular in this amusing biopic of Ian Drury. Whitecross sets up the story as a vaudeville act fronted…

The Road

5 Jan 2010

(15) 111min As far as apocalyptic movies go, this is a lot better than sitting through Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow. And yet, John Hillcoat’s largely faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s text proves unsatisfying. Hillcoat and…

Nine

17 Dec 2009

(12A) 120min Federico Fellini always made such extravagant films that it’s no surprise that they’ve proved ripe for song. Nights of the Cabiria was the first to be reinvented, becoming the Broadway hit Sweet Charity, before the legendary Bob Cabaret…

Paa

17 Dec 2009

(12A) 140min 67-year-old actor Amitabh Bachchan puts on the prosthetics and reinvents himself as a 12-year-old boy in this tale of lost love and ambition. Auro suffers from a rare genetic defeat known as progeria, which makes people age so fast they…

Me and Orson Welles - Richard Linklater interview

4 Dec 2009

Richard Linklater’s new film uncovers the ambition and talent of young Orson Welles. Kaleem Aftab meets a director with nothing left to prove.

Where The Wild Things Are

1 Dec 2009

Long deemed unfilmmable, Maurice Sendak’s nine-sentence children’s tale about a boy whose bedroom turns into a forest full of huge creatures gets the Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) treatment. To fluff out the story, Jonze employed A…

The Informant!

13 Nov 2009

(15) 108min Sometimes filmmaker Steven Soderbergh conceptual enquiries get the better of him. He shot The Good German using technology only available to filmmakers during World War 2 and now he’s concentrated so hard on making The Informant! look and…

Michael Haneke interview

4 Nov 2009

‘I’m a control freak,’ says Michael Haneke, the current holder of the Palme d’Or. The Cannes prize-winning director is talking in a London hotel room, wearing a black shirt and trousers, German words spouting through his Santa Claus-esque white hair and…

Bright Star

30 Oct 2009

(PG) 118min The thin line between pretentiousness and romantic poetry is not very well trodden in Jane Campion’s luscious looking fictionalised account of poet John Keats’ love affair with Fanny Brawne. The movie takes its title from one of the…

Africa in Motion: Jean-Stéphanie Sauvaire

The French director on Johnny Mad Dog - his take on Liberia's recent civil war

16 Oct 2009

The use of child soldiers is given a realistic and at times horrifying platform in French director Jean-Stéphanie Sauvaire’s depiction of the civil war that ravaged Liberia for over a decade until peace was declared in 2003. Sauvaire was familiar with…

An Education

Lessons in love

16 Oct 2009

Danish director Lone Scherfig is showing something of a liking for making films in Britain. The director of Glasgow-set Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself returns to the UK for this 1960s romantic drama featuring conmen, generation gaps, young love, swinging…

The Horseman

Australian revenge thriller fails to thrill

16 Oct 2009

The template for this Australian murder-revenge drama is clearly Mike Hodges’ classic Get Carter. Writer/director Steven Kastrissios’ film features a tough-as-nails central performance from Peter Marshall as Christian, a revenge-seeking father. The…

Tormented

14 May 2009

(15) 91min Director Jon Wright wants his secondary school comedy horror to be the favourite pupil of Professor Shaun of the Dead and Ms Heathers, but his failure to study film history or show a basic grasp of storytelling ensures that Tormented makes…

Star Trek

30 Apr 2009

ACTION/ADVENTURE Star Trek is something that didn’t appear to need rebooting. The show debuted in 1966 and over the next 40 odd years, we’ve had 79 episodes of William Shatner, several TV spin-off series (The Next Generation and Voyager etc) and ten…

State of Play

16 Apr 2009

(12A) 118min Hollywood has got its hands on the acclaimed 2003 BBC TV series State of Play and done what Hollywood does, namely moved the action to the US, brought in a parliament of A-list stars to replace the British character actors and changed…

Tony Manero

2 Apr 2009

DRAMA As any self-respecting Saturday Night Fever fan will tell you, Tony Manero is the name of the white suit-wearing dancer who made John Travolta a by-word for cool. The premise of Pablo Larrain’s sophomore movie is like a disco nightmare. It’s…

Profile: Pablo Larrain

2 Apr 2009

Name Pablo Larrain Born 19 August 1976, Santiago, Chile Background Pablo Larrain studied film at the UNIACC university in Chile. After working as an assistant director on several films, he started to direct commercials. His debut film Fuga…

Tyson

19 Mar 2009

James Toback’s friendship with Mike Tyson first surfaced publicly when in 1999 the former heavyweight champion of the world made an unintentionally hilarious cameo in the director’s 1999 race drama Black and White. This appearance came a long time after…

Duplicity

19 Mar 2009

THRILLER Bourne trilogy scriptwriter and Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy has proved himself something of a dab hand with espionage tales. His second directorial effort, Duplicity, is his attempt at a Mr & Mrs Smith type crowd pleaser with Clive…

Watchmen

5 Mar 2009

SCI FI/THRILLER Considering that Alan Moore’s Watchmen was believed unfilmmable. Director Zach Snyder has done a sterling job in bringing Moore’s influential graphic novel to the big screen. Snyder worked with comic book scribe Frank Miller on 300…

Flame and Citron

5 Mar 2009

THRILLER World War II is so en vogue right now. Sixty years after the end of the war and the movie world has decided it no longer needs to trot out The Dam Busters line that the allies were all heroes and all Germans were Nazis. Recently we’ve had…

Notorious

5 Feb 2009

BIOPIC Unlike Nick Broomfield’s irascible 2002 documentary expose Biggie and Tupac, this fictionalised account of the fast times of Christopher Wallace/Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious BIG (Jamal Woolard) sheds no new light on the hip hop star’s…

Profile - Dev Patel

22 Jan 2009

Name Dev Patel Born London. April 1990 Background Raised in Harrow, Dev turned to drama when his exuberance got him into trouble at school. He was a natural, performing in a school production of Twelth Night. Indeed, drama was the only subject…

Seven Pounds

8 Jan 2009

DRAMA Will Smith is the most bankable star in America. Last year the mediocre I Am Legend opened with a whopping $77 million in its first weekend. Hancock rang tills this summer to the tune of $62 million. However, both those films operated in strong…

Australia

11 Dec 2008

(12A) 165min Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge) gets more and more ambitious with each film he makes. With it’s sweeping vistas, debt to Gone With the Wind, World War II backdrop and romantic pairing of Nicole…

Che: Part One

11 Dec 2008

(15) 126min At Cannes, Steven Soderbergh’s diptych of films about Che Guevara were shown consecutively, but British audiences are being asked to spend a month pondering The Argentine (original title) before we see Guerrilla (part two) – a wise move…

Role Models

11 Dec 2008

How adults can benefit from relationships with children has been explored cinematically since before Charlie Chaplin met The Kid. One good recent example of this type of story was The School of Rock where Jack Black’s inner-child was flattered by a…

Waltz With Bashir

13 Nov 2008

(18) 90min An animated feature about war, memory displacement and the hideous genocide committed by Christian militiamen on Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila during the 1982 Lebanese War may not sound particularly inviting but, like last…

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

13 Nov 2008

Forget the salacious sounding title, Zack and Miri is a Kevin Smith movie so it was never going to be a Ron Jeremy skin flick. Indeed, it’s an archetypical Smith movie – an over-sentimental tale in which boy knows girl, boy and girl have relationship…

Red or dead

13 Nov 2008

Bernd Eichinger is best known internationally as the writer and producer of Downfall and after having forced the German public to look back at their relationship with Hitler he has now turned his attention to the Red Army Faction (RAF). Whether these…