Paul Gallagher

Crispian Mills on A Fantastic Fear of Everything - interview

The ex-Kula Shaker frontman has directed a black comedy starring Simon Pegg

22 May 2012

Fearless The frontman of Kula Shaker directing a film? Given Crispian Mills’ family heritage it’s not such a surprise after all, discovers Paul Gallagher. Received wisdom might suggest that rock stars who try their hands at filmmaking are essentially…

If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle

Drama depicting tensions of prison society from Romanian director

18 May 2012

18-year-old Silviu (George Pistereanu) has nine days left to serve of what has been an uneventful, well-behaved prison sentence. When an unexpected visit from his younger brother brings some unwelcome news, Silviu’s previously-held composure begins to…

Angèle and Tony

Beguiling and slow-moving story charting unlikely romance in remote Normandy fishing village

4 May 2012

A beguiling and slow-moving story about an unlikely romance in a remote Normandy fishing village, director Alix Delaporte’s debut feature film certainly doesn’t force its way into audiences’ attentions. But for cinemagoers looking for some considered…

The Monk director Dominik Moll - interview

The French director discusses his dark and beautiful adaptation of Matthew Lewis’ Gothic horror

26 Apr 2012

'Film has a lot to do with dreams and nightmares,' says Dominik Moll, 'and what I like about making films is that they allow you to show a surface and also what’s underneath. I’m attracted to this double-layer idea.' The German-born French filmmaker…

Amara Karan, star of All in Good Time - profile

The actress is also set to star alongside Simon Pegg in A Fantastic Fear of Everything

17 Apr 2012

Born 29 March, 1984, London Background Oxford-educated Karan spent two years working as an investment banker before plucking up the courage to pursue her interest in acting. Her audition tape was enough to impress revered director Wes Anderson, who…

All in Good Time

Sweet-natured culture clash comedy starring Amara Karan and Meera Syal

17 Apr 2012

(12A) 93min Originally a 1965 play and subsequently a film by Irish writer Bill Naughton, this sweet-natured comedy became a theatre hit again in 2007 when East is East writer Ayub Khan-Din adapted it into a present-day British-Asian setting. The…

Cafe de Flore

An objectionable, distasteful and ultimately pointless exercise in parallel plotting

17 Apr 2012

(tbc) 120 min In crisply-shot present-day Montreal, celebrity DJ Antoine (Kevin Parent) has recently left his wife Carole (Hélène Florent) and set up a home with their two children and his new girlfriend, Rose (Evelyne Brochu). In dull and dingy Paris…

Return

A fine example of independent filmmaking, despite familiar subject matter

3 Apr 2012

American filmmaker Liza Johnson is by no means the first to take a crack at the ‘soldier comes home from war’ story, and she certainly won’t be the last, but Return is a worthwhile addition to the genre. It’s a focused, unshowy character study, light on…

Babycall

Noomi Rapace stars in creepy thriller that loses focus

23 Mar 2012

(15) 96min Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, whose fearless performance as Lisbeth Salander was the best thing about the original Millenium trilogy, gets a chance to stretch her acting muscles again in this creepy thriller. Rapace plays Anna, a young…

Wild Bill

Dexter Fletcher debut is a mature and funny comedy

19 Mar 2012

(15) 98min There are many aspects of Wild Bill that could cause a discerning cinemagoer to give it a wide berth – its lack of recognisable stars; its done-to-death London gangster milieu; its debuting writer/director Dexter Fletcher’s connections to…

Apocalypse Archives: Dexter Fletcher

Actor turned director Dexter Fletcher picks 5 films he’d save in an impending apocalypse

19 Mar 2012

The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) ‘It’s a great film about London at a particular time, and there’s something so deeply emotionally impacting about it. I’d have to have it in there, irrespective of my own appearance in it! There’s some great…

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt quirky comedy romance is insubstantial muddle

19 Mar 2012

(12A) 107min This adaptation of Paul Torday’s 2007 novel is another to add to the list of ‘books that didn’t work as films’. The story of a nerdish Scottish fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) and a sophisticated legal aide (Emily Blunt) selected by a…

Glasgow Film Festival: Dexter Fletcher, Wild Bill and All in Good Time

Highlights including Trishna, The Monk and This Must Be The Place

24 Feb 2012

Glasgow Film Festival is at its halfway point already, and I’ve only caught a small slice from the exploding smorgasbord that is this year’s programme (more than 200 films: your move, EIFF). But in that slice there’s been a few that are definitely worth…

We Bought a Zoo

Dishearteningly average movie from Cameron Crowe

22 Feb 2012

(PG)124min Disappointingly, after Elizabethtown, writer/director Cameron Crowe is just as bogged down in the valley of mediocrity with his new offering. The story of Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), a recently widowed father-of-two who gives up his…

Hunky Dory

Musical drama set amid teenage life in 1970s rural Wales

22 Feb 2012

(15) 110min The turbulent lives of working class teenagers in 1970s Britain have hardly been underrepresented on our cinema screens in recent years, with Cemetery Junction, Soulboy and Neds all recreating the era, each offering varying degrees of…

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

By-the-numbers old age comedy drama

10 Feb 2012

Early in this by-the-numbers comedy drama, a young salesperson eagerly enthuses to retiring couple Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) that 'the grey pound is very strong at the moment'. We’re quite clearly supposed to see this…

Young Adult

A fiercely dark comedy from Juno writer-director team Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman

2 Feb 2012

(15) 94min This reteaming of Juno director (Jason Reitman) and writer (Diablo Cody) is a fiercely dark character comedy that once again demonstrates the pair’s refusal to be limited by genre conventions, no matter how sacred. The set-up is…

A Dangerous Method

Cronenberg's cerebral study of psychoanalysis, starring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender

27 Jan 2012

(15) 99min David Cronenberg’s new film is a change of pace for the seldom gore-shy director of The Fly and A History of Violence, being a talky period drama about the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. But while the body-horror…

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 Descendants

Star performances from George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in Alexander Payne's latest comedy drama

5 Jan 2012

(15) 115m In Alexander Payne’s first film since his 2004 critical darling Sideways, George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii-based businessman and heir to a hugely valuable piece of Hawaiian land. On the eve of him signing a deal to sell the land and…

Haywire

Steven Soderbergh's fast-paced chase movie stars Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas

5 Jan 2012

(15) 93min While other directors talk endlessly about the next great movie they are going to make, Steven Soderbergh keeps on quietly making films at a frequent rate, never repeating himself (Ocean’s sequels notwithstanding), and consistently…

War Horse

Unashamedly sentimental cinema from Spielberg

5 Jan 2012

(12A) 146m As War Horse begins, with soaring shots of rolling English hills and a sweeping John Williams overture, director Steven Spielberg sends a clear message: settle down for some large-canvas, unashamedly romanticised, old-fashioned big-screen…

Ralph Fiennes, star and director of Coriolanus - profile

Man behind the modernised Shakespeare adap has Bardic pedigree

5 Jan 2012

Name Ralph Fiennes Born Ipswich, Suffolk, 22 December, 1962 Background Initially a star onstage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fiennes gained international film recognition for his Oscar-nominated performance as Nazi Commander Amon Göth in…

The Iron Lady

Meryl Streep shines in a film that avoids tackling Thatcher's politics

5 Jan 2012

(12A) 105min In The Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) and writer Abi Morgan (Shame) take arguably the most significant British politician in living memory as their subject, and perversely evade questioning her policies. The result is a…

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…

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Slight but entertaining sequel from Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law

13 Dec 2011

Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes was considerably better than could reasonably have been expected from the fading and formerly feted Lock, Stock director. Ritchie and his writers successfully pulled off a tough balancing act, rooting the character in…

Interview: Jon Foreman of US band Switchfoot

Lead singer of San Diego rock band on music, faith and progress

17 Nov 2011

In their native USA, San Diego rock band Switchfoot have been a household name since 2003, when their major-label debut The Beautiful Letdown became a multi-million-selling hit. In the UK they’re a much less familiar proposition, but have built up a…

Sound It Out

Funny and surprisingly moving documentary on Teeside record shop

11 Nov 2011

The tagline for this affectionate record store documentary is ‘High Fidelity with a Northern accent’, and it is a rare case of the marketing being bang on the money. A labour of love for director Jeanie Findlay, who also produced the film and did most…

Oslo, August 31st

Film of visual beauty full of melancholy, intimacy and humanity

8 Nov 2011

(15) 95min Films set over a single 24-hour period are seldom as naturalistic and affecting as this poignant drama from Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. Less intensely stylish than his 2006 debut Reprise, this is a very good, slow-paced film, full…

30 Minutes or Less

Funny and silly diversion from director of Zombieland

22 Sep 2011

Reuniting Ruben Fleischer and Jesse Eisenberg, director and star of the hit comedy Zombieland (2009), this funny and silly diversion just about matches the previous film in terms of laughs, although it lacks the mix of invention and unique…

Red State

Uneven political horror-thriller from Kevin Smith

14 Sep 2011

(18) 88min Outspoken filmmaker Kevin Smith hit a creative and commercial low with his last studio-backed production, the Bruce Willis-starring flop Cop Out, but before that film was even released Smith had shifted focus to this long-gestating…

Warrior

Unfulfilling sports drama starring Nick Nolte, Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton

14 Sep 2011

(12A) 139min The underdog fighter with family issues is back in a big way this year. First came David O. Russell’s Oscar-winner The Fighter, and now writer/director Gavin O’Connor (Pride and Glory) delivers his challenger, a two-hour-plus…

Profile - Sebastian Koch

German star of coming-of-age Brit comedy Albatross

13 Sep 2011

Name Sebastian Koch Born Karlsruhe, Germany, May 31 1962 Background Koch has worked solidly in European films and TV for over 25 years, but it was his terrific performance in The Lives of Others (2006) that made him recognisable to cinema…

Albatross

Well-balanced coming-of-age comedy starring Downtown Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay

13 Sep 2011

This British coming-of-age comedy drama from debut director Niall MacCormick retreads familiar ground with its story but, thanks to a very funny script and a combustible lead performance from newcomer Jessica Brown Findlay, it’s never dull. Findlay…

Profile: Andre Ovredal

Writer and director of Troll Hunter

24 Aug 2011

Born 1973, Norway Background After studying at Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute, where he made his first film, Future Murder (2001), Ovredal established himself as a successful director of commercials in Norway. What’s he up to now? He’s written and…

The Troll Hunter

'Found footage' mock doc ends up somewhere between horror and comedy

24 Aug 2011

This monster movie was an unqualified box office hit in its native Norway, and has picked up dozens of rave reviews on the worldwide festival circuit, but aside from a couple of good jokes and a handful of impressive visual effects sequences, there’s…

Tomboy

Childhood gender identity struggle handled subtly and beautifully

19 Aug 2011

(U) 82min As the title suggests, this quietly beautiful film is about a little girl who wants to look and act like a boy. But given that indicator, audiences may still be surprised when writer/director Celine Sciamma reveals that the character…

Weekender

Brazenly shallow ode to the do-it-yourself 90s rave scene

19 Aug 2011

(15) 89min The do-it-yourself rave explosion in ‘90s Manchester is a moment of recent history ripe with storytelling potential – Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People demonstrated that wonderfully – but Weekender, Karl Golden’s...

You Instead

Poor dialogue lets down an otherwise whimsical love story

19 Aug 2011

(15) 80min This breathless mismatched love story, filmed entirely over two days at T in the Park 2010, is the first of two new Scottish films from David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe), the second being next month’s Glasgow-set sci-fi Perfect…

Project Nim

Excellent ape project documentary a complex meditation on human nature

9 Aug 2011

(12A) 99min It’s not surprising that director James Marsh has chosen to follow his Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man On Wire by taking an approach often favoured by bands following up a hit album: don’t mess with the formula, just try and do the…

Profile: Chris Weitz, director of A Better Life

Director known for American Pie, About a Boy and The Golden Compass

18 Jul 2011

Name Chris Weitz Born 30 November 1969, New York City Background Weitz began his career co-directing the hit teen comedy American Pie (1999) with his brother Paul. After another successful collaboration, 2002’s About A Boy, Weitz’s first solo…

How should the EIFF move forward?

Reflections on Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011

27 Jun 2011

When the lights came up on The Guard, this year’s opening film, my overriding thought was, 'that was fine'. It was quite funny and had a good cast, but was entirely unadventurous filmmaking. Fine, but nothing more. As a tone-setter for the 'reinvented…

Weekender - Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jack O’Connell interview

Film charting 1990s British rave scene

25 Jun 2011

“We’re a bit like a double-act”, quips Jack O’Connell, referring to himself and his co-star Henry Lloyd-Hughes, and it proves true as they talk to me. They’re ostensibly discussing Weekender, which has it’s World Premiere at this year’s Festival, but…

Troll Hunter - André Øvredal interview

Director of the Norwegian moc doc taking film festivals by storm

23 Jun 2011

Something that’s pretty thin on the ground at Edinburgh this year are genuine ‘festival finds’; films from unknown filmmakers that seem to come out of nowhere and really impress audiences. TrollHunter is perhaps the closest thing to that in this year’s…

Project Nim - James Marsh interview

Man on Wire director charts 1970s chimp experiment in extraordinary film

21 Jun 2011

‘I’m here bleary-eyed straight from four weeks of shooting a feature film in Dublin!’ So claims Project Nim director James Marsh when I meet him, but you wouldn’t know it from the espresso-fuelled 30 minutes of rapid discussion that follows, in which…

Holy Rollers

Formulaic coming-of-age drama saved by understated Jesse Eisenberg performance

21 Jun 2011

(15) 88min Released over a year ago in the US, this true-life drama about naïve young Hasidic Jews unwittingly smuggling Ecstasy into Brooklyn in the late 90s would probably have skipped UK cinemas entirely if not for the presence of Jesse…

Perfect Sense an ambitious film that demands a lot from audience

David Mackenzie’s feature thought-provoking and quietly moving

20 Jun 2011

The weekend saw one of the biggest events of this year’s EIFF programme, as the massive Festival Theatre played host to the European premiere of David Mackenzie’s new film, the Glasgow-set sci-fi romance Perfect Sense, on Saturday night. I interviewed…

Reel Science events programme among highlights of Edinburgh Film Festival

Tomboy, My Brothers and Project Nim among film highlights

17 Jun 2011

After my fearless leader’s less-than-generous appraisal of this aged Festival’s opening night, I’m hoping to bring a little bit of love for EIFF back to these web pages. Admittedly, the pared-down nature of this year’s Festival is most noticeable in the…

Bridesmaids

Kristen Wiig writes and stars in sharp Apatow comedy

23 May 2011

(15) 125min Kristen Wiig (Adventureland, Whip It!) comes close to grasping the comedy crown from her Saturday Night Live colleague Tina Fey with this hilarious reinvigoration of the chick flick. As co-writer and star, Wiig disposes of traditional…

Life in a Day

Kevin Macdonald's documentary is an ambitious global undertaking

23 May 2011

(12A) 94min This film is the result of a massive YouTube project, directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott, that asked people around the world to make a film of their life on a specific day, 24 July 2010. From the 80,000 videos…

Attack the Block - Joe Cornish interview

First time director on turning the hoodie horror genre on its head

28 Apr 2011

These are interesting times for British film comedy. Last year Chris Morris’ suicide bomber farce Four Lions presented an intelligent reflection on a thorny problem, while earlier this year Richard Ayoade’s Submarine proved that British comedy could…

Attack the Block

Plays for scares more than laughs, and succeeds admirably

25 Apr 2011

(15) 87min Coming from the same production team as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, this confident debut from Joe Cornish (one half of duo Adam and Joe) is much less a comedy than might have been expected. Rather it’s a…

Your Highness starring Danny McBride is a load of fantasy rubbish

James Franco, Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman fail to improve it

14 Apr 2011

(15) 102min Before Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy heralded a resurgence of the ‘fantasy quest’ movie, this much-derided genre enjoyed a kind of golden age in the late 1980s, when Labyrinth, The Princess Bride and Willow captured the…

Profile: Richard Ayoade

Boosh, IT Crowd and Darkplace star directs Joe Dunthorne adap Submarine

2 Mar 2011

Name Richard Ayoade Born 12 June 1977, Whipp’s Cross, London Background Best known for playing Moss in Graham Linehan ’s hit TV comedy The IT Crowd, Ayoade first came to the notice of cult comedy fans as writer, director and co-star of spoof…

Submarine

British coming of age tale, directed by Richard Ayoade

2 Mar 2011

(15) 98min Here is a rare thing: a British comedy debut that’s surprising, witty, hugely accomplished and fully capable of finding an audience worldwide. Richard Ayoade, previously best known for his TV roles in The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh…

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami's novel is transferred to the screen by Anh Hung Tran

2 Mar 2011

(15) 133min Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has a unique voice in contemporary fiction, both hugely imaginative and intensely intimate. But with this adaptation of one of his most popular books, French-Vietnamese filmmaker Anh Hung Tran fails to…

Dark Australian crime thriller Animal Kingdom

James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver and Guy Pearce star in David Michôd's crime flick

18 Feb 2011

(15) 113min This dark Australian crime thriller has had critics lining up to heap praises upon it since its prize-winning debut at Sundance last January, and it arrives on these shores fresh from a deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting…

West is West an uninspired and unrewarding sequel to East is East

Andy DeEmmony's plodding, bland drama stars Om Puri and Aqib Khan

18 Feb 2011

(15) 103min East is East was one of the British box office successes of the late 90s, and found an even bigger audience on video and DVD, but it’s hard to believe that there is much, if any, anticipation for this belated sequel. That is probably for…

Never Let Me Go is an inspiring call to catch love while you can

Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation akin to science fiction in bleak tone and existential theme

2 Feb 2011

(12A) 103min The students of Hailsham boarding school are special: set apart from normal society, they are being prepared for an unspecified purpose. No further details are apparent, to them or us, as this story begins, and to divulge more would take…

Paul pairs Simon Pegg and Nick Frost with Superbad director Greg Mottola

UK duo riff on the same notes as Tim and Mike characters from Space

2 Feb 2011

(15) 103min The Shaun of the Dead boys have come a long way. Having followed up Shaun’s critical success with UK box office smash Hot Fuzz, stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and director/co-writer Edgar Wright were firmly established as major British…

Morning Glory - Lightweight comedy pits Harrison Ford against Rachel McAdams

Comic performers cut loose and have fun with a formulaic but enjoyable script

18 Jan 2011

(12A) 107min A few years ago it looked like Harrison Ford had resigned from movie stardom, but putting Indiana Jones’s fedora back on in 2008 seems to have refocused the old curmudgeon. This summer he’s headlining insane sci-fi western Cowboys and…

Barney's Version - Comic murder-mystery that strays into tearjerker territory

A rambling, unfocused but still enjoyable comedy-drama

18 Jan 2011

(15) 133min Memory is a tricky thing, and that appears to be the main point of this rambling, unfocused but still enjoyable comedy-drama. Paul Giamatti plays Barney Panofsky, a slightly nastier version of the cynical schlub that’s become his…

Tangled - Rapunzel tale crowd-pleaser that references the Disney back catalogue

Well animated and funny, although lacking in easy charm and ethical clarity

18 Jan 2011

Disney’s animation wing has undergone a rebirth since Pixar head John Lasseter took the reins, and this is the third film to benefit from his direct input, following Bolt and The Princess and the Frog. Like those two, Tangled is high-quality family…

The Next Three Days

Unremarkable thriller represents a low for writer/director Paul Haggis

23 Dec 2010

(12A) 132min This unremarkable thriller represents a low for writer/director Paul Haggis, who not so long ago was being showered with Oscars for his work (Million Dollar Baby, Crash). It’s a remake of Fred Cavayé’s Anything For Her from 2008, and…

Gulliver's Travels

Jack Black vehicle unfunny and lacking in cohesion

14 Dec 2010

In the ten years since his breakout performance as John Cusack’s slacker workmate in High Fidelity, Jack Black has become a big name movie star, but his CV is surprisingly short of hits. Only Richard Linklater’s family comedy School of Rock has managed…

127 Hours

10 Dec 2010

(15) 94min Is there a more versatile or interesting British filmmaker than Danny Boyle working today? Few of his contemporaries have as varied a filmography, and there is no denying the consistency in quality of his cinematic narratives. Slumdog…

Monsters reclaims visual effects from the blockbusters - Gareth Edwards interview

Paul Gallagher talks to the director and stars of brilliant new sci-fi horror Monsters

30 Nov 2010

‘Doing visual effects for a living is like being a gynaecologist’, says Gareth Edwards, ‘when you do it every day at work, it doesn’t turn you on any more.’ So he decided to stop staring at pixels and pick up a camera. The result is Monsters, one of the…

The American

16 Nov 2010

(15) 104min Photographer-turned film director Anton Corbijn follows his haunting debut, the Ian Curtis biopic Control, with a film that moves him onto a bigger cinematic stage (thanks to its leading man George Clooney) while simultaneously allowing…

Burke and Hare

22 Oct 2010

100min A darkly comic retelling of the tale of Edinburgh’s most notorious murderous residents, Williams Burke (Simon Pegg) and Hare (Andy Serkis), and their quest to supply doctors with fresh bodies for their experiments, from director John Landis…

Document 8 and Africa in Motion

Two spirited local film festivals

22 Oct 2010

The term ‘human rights cinema’ may sound too much like hard work for the average cinemagoer. But for the last seven years Document, the Glasgow-based International Human Rights Film Festival, has been demonstrating that films about human rights simply…

Cyrus

7 Sep 2010

(15) 90min Sibling writer/directors Mark and Jay Duplass are figureheads of the Mumblecore movement – ultra-low budget, largely improvised films featuring non-professional actors – and after earning praise on the American indie circuit for their…

Cherry Tree Lane and The Killer Inside Me follow recent trend for arthouse violence

Is extreme violence an easy option for directors with nothing to say?

22 Aug 2010

Paul Andrew Williams’s Cherry Tree Lane is a real-time enactment of the break-in and torture of a middle class suburban couple by vengeful teenagers. At a mere 77 minutes, it’s still a brutal, unpleasant endurance test, and much of its power comes from…

Soulboy

22 Aug 2010

(12A) 82min Low budget Irish filmmaker Shimmy Marcus makes a bid for the mainstream with this formulaic but crowd-pleasing teen drama. It’s 1974, and bored teenager Joe’s (Martin Compston) life is transformed when he pursues unattainable ice-queen…

Modern Love, Get Low, Aaron Schneider and the fragility of film-making at EIFF 2010

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

26 Jun 2010

Friday 25 June Friday was my last day at the Festival, and I decided to use it to take a walk off the beaten EIFF track and check out Modern Love, a short film made by a bunch of teenagers from Fife in conjunction with a company called Media…

The Quay Brothers' Maska plus film without images - HP Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

25 Jun 2010

Wednesday 23rd June. While EIFF’s programme focuses mainly on conventional feature-films, there are several one-off events scattered throughout the Festival’s 10 days, so I decided to investigate a couple of the more adventurous ones. The first was a…

Up close with Cherry Tree Lane, Skeletons and Ollie Kepler's Expanding Purple World

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

23 Jun 2010

Tuesday 22 Jun Paul Andrew Williams’ Cherry Tree Lane was one of the first films I saw here this year, and I did not like it. No sir. As I watched the London to Brighton director’s brutal tale of suburban home invasion playing out in real time, I…

Pixar make Brave move with Reese Witherspoon and Billy Connolly after Toy Story 3

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

22 Jun 2010

Sunday 20 June Edinburgh calls itself a festival of discovery, and it’s true, the majority of films playing here are by first- or second-time filmmakers, and you go into each screening hoping to discover the next great moviemaking talent. But, as…

Monsters director Gareth Edwards and producer Graham King at EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

20 Jun 2010

Saturday 19 June The days, as Calvin & Hobbes astutely observed, are just packed. Saturday began with two great things: the first was Toy Story 3, which was possibly the best threequel I’ve ever seen (I’m meeting its two chief animators later today…

Ben Miller - Huge respect for the nicest man at the EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

18 Jun 2010

Friday 18th June. It’s my first day at Edinburgh Film Festival 2010; the opening party is a thing of blurry half-memory and the real business of movie-watching has properly begun, but the atmosphere is a joyous one: the sun is shining, and the weather…

A history of the con man in cinema

28 May 2010

Con artists, sharks, flimflammers and hustlers have an honourable history on the silver screen. Paul Gallagher goes in search of the best

Tamsin Egerton of 4.3.2.1

28 May 2010

Born 26 November 1988, Hampshire, England Background Having followed her older sister to a BBC audition at their local youth theatre as a child, Egerton started to get TV parts immediately, traveling the world for various productions before she…

The Brothers Bloom

28 May 2010

(12A) 113min In 2005, writer/director Rian Johnson transplanted ‘40s film noir to the modern high school and came up with Brick, an exhilarating debut that announced his arrival as a filmmaker of singular vision in no uncertain terms. For his…

4.3.2.1

28 May 2010

(15) 116min The shadow of Quentin Tarantino looms large over Noel ‘Adulthood’ Clarke’s ambitious second film, in which four girls (Emma Roberts, Tamsin Egerton, Ophelia Lovibond and Shanika Warren-Markland) have the weekend from hell. Clarke and his…

Whip It - Let the good times roll

31 Mar 2010

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, is the high-octane story of indie-rock misfit Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) who escapes small town family life by joining the US roller derby circuit. But does the film get close to capturing the real…

Trucker

19 Mar 2010

(15) 92min An interesting little drama that’s light on incident but big on character, Trucker is a welcome showcase for the acting talents of Michelle Monaghan. Having been a solid support player in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone, here…

The Scouting Book For Boys

10 Mar 2010

(15) 93min One hazy summer in a sleepy Norfolk holiday park, David (This is England’s Thomas Turgoose) and Emily (Holliday Grainger), constant companions by default of being the only teenagers there, spend the days mucking about under the permissive…

Gregory's Girl, Mogwai's Burning and Legacy bring Glasgow Film Festival 2010 to a close

Glasgow Film Festival blog

2 Mar 2010

I returned to GFF for the closing day yesterday and discovered it had been an eventful weekend: Neil Marshall turned up at FrightFest to show off 20 minutes of Centurion, his forthcoming historical actioner featuring a naked Michael Fassbender in the…

Restored Pandora and the Flying Dutchman among the GFF highlights

Glasgow Film Festival blog

26 Feb 2010

So last night didn’t quite work out as planned. It was a toss-up between Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant or the Comrade Couture documentary, showing in Glasgow’s hippest warehouse, SWG3. Much as I’m keen to see Nic Cage getting his crazy on, I decided the…

Young stars of 1234 dispel myths of film industry

Glasgow Film Festival blog

25 Feb 2010

It seems to be a pre-requisite of my typical film festival experience that I will inevitably end up in a conversation about the value (or not) of film criticism with a filmmaker who clearly isn’t a fan of critics. Such was the case yesterday, as myself…

Julian Fellowes' From Time to Time a really satisfying family film

Glasgow Film Festival blog

24 Feb 2010

Cary Grant would, I think, have approved of some of the goings-on at the party held in his name last night. As an iconic figure of class, cool and control he took many opportunities to puncture that image in some of the all-time-classic screwball…

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Boys and Big Fan among film festival highlights

Glasgow Film Festival blog

23 Feb 2010

Paul Gallagher. Photo: Dan Mayers Monday 23 Feb After the busy opening weekend, Monday felt like a bit of a breather – no big parties, no blockbusting events – so I took it as a chance to watch a few movies, and I thought I would use this space…

Screen legend James Earl Jones master of good conversation

Glasgow Film Festival blog

22 Feb 2010

The festival buzz has definitely been building over the weekend, and on Sunday I felt its full effect as I walked, a few minutes late (for shame!), into a jam-packed GFT Cinema 1 for the sold-out In Coversation with James Earl Jones event. The place was…

Court 13 Collective among highlights of the GFF Short Film Festival programme

Glasgow Film Festival blog

21 Feb 2010

Early yesterday afternoon I was back at the CCA Courtyard, the scene of Friday night’s party, but it was now home to a much more relaxed and clear-eyed clientele, downing their brunches and reading the papers. I wondered for a moment if I had dreamed…

Kristin Scott Thomas and LuckyMe on day one of the Glasgow Film Festival

Glasgow Film Festival blog

20 Feb 2010

Mellow greetings, fair reader. It was the first full day of the festival yesterday, and while it was a little quiet in some of the earlier screenings, by the time evening came around the ticket queues were swelling and the GFT could rightly be referred…

Glasgow Film Festival: Opening night party

Glasgow Film Festival blog

19 Feb 2010

List festival correspondent Paul Gallagher's daily festival reports from the 2010 Glasgow Film Festival.

Paul Gallagher meets the great French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Glasgow Film Festival blog

19 Feb 2010

I had heard from a few people that Jean-Pierre Jeunet was in a bit of a grumpy mood before the screening of his film Mic Macs last night, but even if that was the case there were no signs of such moodiness when I got the chance to interview him this…

A strange brew prior to Glasgow Film Festival opening night gala

Glasgow Film Festival blog

18 Feb 2010

I’m sitting in the GFT’s Café Cosmo, and there’s more than tea brewing. There’s a definite atmosphere, a sense that much is yet to come, a bit like that feeling you get at the end of every Harry Potter film. It’s not a ‘buzz’ yet; that will kick in once…

Leap Year

17 Feb 2010

(PG) 100min Imagine the classic 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert road movie romance It Happened One Night with all the wit, spontaneity and charm sucked out of it. That’s Leap Year. Director Anand Tucker (Red Riding: 1983, And When Did You Last See…

Profile: Katie Jarvis of Fish Tank

3 Sep 2009

Name Katie Jarvis Born 22 June 1991, Dagenham, Essex Background You won’t recognise the star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but you won’t soon forget her. Cast with no acting experience after being spotted arguing with her boyfriend at…