ALSO RELEASED Goodbye Bafana (15) 118min
00 Well intentioned but dreary and overlong adaptation of the recanting memoirs of white Afrikaans warder James Gregory who was in charge of Nelson Mandela when he was imprisoned on Robben Island. Directed by Dane Bille August (Sm/Ila '3 Feeling for Snow. The House of the Spirits) and starring Joseph Fiennes and Dennis Haysbert from TV's 24 as Mandela. General release from Fri 77 May
The Bridge (18) 93min ooo Documentary looking at the motivations behind many of the San Francisco‘s Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers. See interview. right. Filmhouse. Edinburgh, Fri ll—Mon 74 May The Tiger’s Tail (18) 106min ooo John Boorman's self indulgent moral fable ab0ut the Irish economic boom and how its benefits have been distributed stars Brendan Gleeson as the busmessman who loses his identity to his identical twin. There's lots of good stuff here: the camerawork. score and many of the performances are terrific but much of the dialogue and action is drab and unconvincing. Plus the accents of the non-Irish performers l'partiCLilarly SATC'S Kim Cattrall who gives an otherwise fine performance as a neglected Wife) are appalling. Another flawed but arresting feible from Boorman. General release from Fri 78 May Love Wrecked (PG) 86min
0 Pitifully bad romantic comedy about what happens when hideous teen Jenny (Amanda Bynes) becomes marooned With her rock star idol Jason Masters (Chris Carmack) while on a Caribbean crUise. This unfunny nonsense was directed. sadly, by Randall Grease Kleiser. General release from Fri 78 May Magicians (15) 89min oo
Peep Show stars Mitchell and Webb hit the big screen in this disappomting comedy of rivalry and the black ans. See preView. page 37. General release from Fri 78 May
Conversations With Other Women (15) 84min ooo Intrigtiing. wordy. ultimately numbing two hander in which two old friends (Or were they lovers?) meet at a wedding. Presented in Split screen, Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter are excellent and daring as the leads. See profile. page 39. Cineworld Renfrew Street, Glasgow and Cineworld FOL/ntainpark. Edinburgh from Fri 78 May.
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40 THE LIST 10—24 May 200/
A BRIDGE TOD FAR
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is the most popular suicide destination in the world. For a whole year filmmaker Eric Steel filmed the iconic monument and those who took their lives there for his documentary The Bridge. Leigh Singer questions him What inspired you to make this film?
Eric Steel I witnessed the World Trade Center collapse from my window and l was very aware of the people who chose to jump from the towers rather than perish in the inferno. When I read several years later about the Golden Gate Bridge. I imagined the people who were jumping were, in a similar way, trying to escape their own inferno. The footage of people jumping is hugely disturbing.
ES It shouldn't be easy to watch people die. And we were only two people with cameras most of the time. For us to be able to see these things — a bridge two miles long and we're only watching 25 feet of it . . . I believe that we were shown things for a reason.
How did you feel the first time you witnessed someone die?
ES Disbelief. lf you look at the footage, it's not beautifully framed — the camera is shaking, it tilts down very quickly — and it‘s because I stood up and screamed. Every part of me was revolting against what I was witnessing. And at the
THRILLER ZODIAC (15) 157min I...
Se7en director David Fincher returns to the scene of the Crime with another engrossrng yarn abOLit a serial killer. The film is based on Robert Graysmith's books about the real life Zodiac. who terrorised San Francisco with a series of random murders in the 1960s and 1970s.
After a stomach churning opening that is confusing and over the top. Fincher tones down the blood in fax/Our of a police procedural movie that is more French Connection than Cruising. Inspector DaVId Toscl'ii (Mark Ruffalo) heads the investigation and follows one red herring after another. 'l he myriad of suspects he interviews are a bizarre. varied and captivating bunch. However the scariest and most iinneiying characters are those working for The San FranCisco Chronicle. A deadringer for Eddie l/xard, Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery. an alcoholic journalist aSSigned to the case. The obsession of Avery and Toschi in catching Zodiac leads to their downfall. It's when a cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a shine to the Zodiac's penchant for sending cryptic messages to the newspaper that it becomes clear that the template for this memo is All The President's Men. It's Fincher's attention to detail that makes [.(XilélC so remarkable and his most mature. rather than his most entertaining. work. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 78 May.
same point, right afterwards I felt this is exactly why I was there.
Because that’s exactly what you were waiting for ES Yes but we were very clear before we shot even a single frame of footage that we were human beings first and filmmakers second. Whenever you see in the film someone has climbed over [the railing], we've already called the Bridge Authority. If we hadn't been there. more people would have died.
Did you ever have moral doubts about what you were filming?
ES If I'd wanted to make a movie that was exploiting these jumps I never would have spent a year interviewing the jumpers' families. The film is much more about that experience than it is about the few seconds of footage of people jumping off the bridge.
How do you answer critics who say your film only encourages ‘copycat’ suicides?
ES The Golden Gate Bridge already has a copycat problem. These people didn't get the idea because they saw an image of someone jumping off the bridge; the idea of suicide had been in their minds for quite some time and they'd been struggling with these problems. The collapse of the mental health support system is the real problem here.
I The Bridge, Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 77—Mon 74 May.