50ft. robot from outer space, the action is transported from rural England to small- town Arnerica in the late 19505. The resulting film is a fast-moving thrillfest featuring bongo-beating beatniks, a great rockabilly soundtrack and explosive destruction on a grand scale. This being a kids film, through, it’s violence with a conscience. General release.
Jason and The Argonauts (U) *ttt (Don Chaffey, UK, 1964) Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Gary Raymond. 103 mins. Totally brill adventure yarn as our hero Jason sets out to retrieve the legendary golden fleece and is helped by a number of the gods on Olympus along the way. Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects remain among the best of his career, most notably the final conflict with an army of skeletal soldiers. Glasgow: GFT.
Joan OfArc (15) £11: (Luc Besson, France, 2000) Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway. 148 mins. The heroine of this would-be international blockbuster is reinvented as the standard bearer of in a valiant endeavour to repel the forces of Anglo-American cultural imperialism. But made with English dialogue, the film has much in common with the gory spectacle of Braveheart. The uneven opening and closing parts — Joan's childhood, and imprisonment and trial — cannot efface the impact of the film's central battle scenes nor the image of the armour- clad Joan in the midst of the carnage. Glasgow: Odeon At The Quay, Showcase. Edinburgh: UCI, Virgin Megaplex.
John Carpenter's Vampires (18) H: (John Carpenter, US, 1999) James Woods, Thomas Ian Griffith, Sheryl Lee. 107 mins. Based on the novel Vampires by John Steakley, it pitches the obsessive mercenary Jack Crow (Woods) and his Vatican-backed band of vampire slayers against Valek (Griffith), a 600-year-old blood-sucker. A few years back, the title John Carpenter 's Vampires might have quickened one’s pulse. But this Vampire Western feels like a throwback to the bad old days of 1970s gore movies, it wastes Carpenter's directing skills and Woods’ considerable acting talent on a pedestrian plot littered with gratuitous female nudity and repellent violence against women. Edinburgh: Odeon.
Kes (PG) **** (Ken Loach, UK, 1969) David Bradley, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Brian Glover. 109 mins. In the run-down industrial north, a young boy learns some harsh lessons about life from the fate of his pet bird. Classic piece of British realism which showed that Loach‘s television work could transfer to the big screen. A very humane sense of humour leavens what is in effect a tale of some desolation. Edinburgh: Lumiere.
Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears) tit (Ricardo Franco and Fernando Baulz, Spain, 1998) Fele Martinez, Ariadna Gil, Elena Anaya. 97 mins. Ironically, the most striking location on show isn’t Spanish at all. It's a Portuguese beach providing the locale for the film's conclusion; a stunning spot that in its haunting, rock faces and its end of the world feel, knocks the club med look of The Beach in to the bargain basement bin. Sadly, the film's story, of a young man falling for the wrong woman, less entrancingly holds the attention. Part of the Spanish Film Festival. See preview. Glasgow: GET. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
Land And Freedom (15) *t*** (Ken Loach, UK/Spain, 1995) Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, lciar Bollain. 109 mins. A magnificent, moving, politicised epic on the Spanish Civil War by Britain's most committed director on the Left. An unemployed man (Ilart) leaves 305 Liverpool to fight with the POUM Militia, and sees first hand the betrayal of his cause by the Stalinists. His story is told in flashback, as his granddaughter reads his hidden letters home — a link to the present day that proves these events have a strong relevance to today. Edinburgh: Filmhouse. Las Huellas Borradas (Fading Memories) *iiri (Enrique Gabriel, Spain, 1999) Federico Luppi, Mercedes Sampietro, Elena Anayas. 95 mins. Timely stuff, this. Manuel returns from a trip to Argentina to find the imminent submersion of his village beneath a new Brussels-sanctioned reservoir. His hopes to rekindle friendships and a romance
are drowned in bitter rivalries, financial settlements and land disputes. Part of the Spanish Film Festival. See preview. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
Limbo (15) **** (John Sayles, US, 1999) David Strathaim, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Vanessa Martinez. 128 mins. Sayles isn’t a filmmaker to toe the line, so when he goes to Alaska to shoot a film in which three individuals become marooned in the wilderness, it's unsurprising than what he comes up with is a well-crafted, solidly told tale that's less action adventure and more psychological/sociological study of people and place. And Sayles takes his time, easing us into the environment and the lives of the principal characters, before the forces of nature give the plot its dramatic twist. Edinburgh: Lumiere.
The Loss Of Sexual Innocence (18) *tii (Mike Figgis, UK, 2000) Hanne Klimtoe, Femi Ogumbanjo, Julian Sands. 105 mins. Figgis's low-budget art movie will divide those who admire its experimental audacity from those who think it merely pretentious. Relying more on mood and texture than on linear plotting and naturalistic dialogue, it interweaves pivotal moments from the life of a jaded, middle- aged documentary film-maker (Sands) with a stylised representation of the Garden Of Eden myth. Lingers in the imagination for days afterwards. See review. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
Lost Highway (18) ***** (David Lynch, US, 1996) Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquctte, Robert Loggia. 135 mins. Further out than even the celluloid version of Twin Peaks: Fire Walks With Me, Lynch’s latest radicalisation of the film noir traditions concerns jazz saxman Pullman, his wife (Arquctte), a mystery man (Robert Blake), a garage mechanic (Balthazar Getty) and a crime kingpin (Loggia) - but in typically Lynchian non-linear plotlines that exist within the logic of dreams. Haunting, provocative, and a genuinely personal undertaking. Edinburgh: Cameo.
Madeline (U) it (Daisy Von Scherler, US, 1998) Frances McDormand, Nigel Ilawthorne, Hatty Jones. 89 mins. Madeline is a hybrid of the “adorable’ pre-teen childrens' heroine. As intelligent as Matilda, she's also as precocious as Pippi Longstocking and, like Annie, she‘s an orphan. She lives in a Parisian boarding school with eleven other girls and is tutored by Sister Clavel. Made in the spirit of childrens’ films of bygone times, this well- intentioned film is nevertheless desperately dull. Glasgow: UCI. East Kilbride: UCI. Magnolia (18) trade (Paul Thomas Anderson, US, 2000) Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Tom Cruise. 185 mins. P.T. Anderson's follow-up to his superb 703 LA porn industry flick, Boogie Nights is a snapshot of the lives of a dozen residents of LA's San Fernando Valley . Their stories are sad, funny and moving without ever becoming overly-sentimental and Anderson‘s script is full of humble humanity and beautifully observed moments. And the quite stunning miraculous conclusion is audacious but it works — the same can be said of the whole film. See preview and review. Glasgow: Odeon At The Quay. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
The Matrix (15) *ttti (The Wachowski Brothers, US, 1999) Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Lawrence Fishburne. 139 mins. In the future, reality is actually an illusion — the human race is enslaved by a computer virus which has taken over the world. Computer genius Neo (Reeves) is one of the few people who doesn‘t believe his eyes, so it's up to him and a couple more cyber commandos to save the world. Edinburgh: Cameo.
Ministry Of Fear (PG) *ttiv (Fritz Lang, US, 1944) Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Dan Duryea. 85 mins. Adapted from the Graham Greene novel, this is one of Lang's most satisfying American movies with star Milland at the peak of his popularity. A tense tale of espionage in wartime London and the framing of an innocent man it is tautly constructed, atmospheric and suspenseful in the Ilitchcock tradition. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
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