www.list.co.uk/film Films screening this fortnight are listed below with certificate, star rating, credits, brief review and venue details. Film index compiled by Paul Dale ✽✽ Indicates Hitlist entry
The A-Team (12A) ●●●●● (Joe Carnahan, US, 2010) Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel. 118min. Over the top, macho fun. Cameo, Edinburgh. The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby (U) ●●●●● (John Henderson, UK, 2005) Oliver Golding, James Cosmo, Greg Wise, Christopher Lee. 104min. Whimsical fiction involving dogcatchers, cute orphans and conniving councillors. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. L’Age D’Or (18) ●●●●● (Luis Buñuel/Salvador Dali, France, 1930) Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, Max Ernst, Pierre Prevert. 60min. Buñuel and Dali’s seminal surreal feature film is a vivid confrontation between sexuality and Catholic censure explored with humour, panache and genuine eroticism. Part of Screening Surrealism season. Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
✽✽ Alamar (U) ●●●●● (Pedro González-Rubio, Mexico, 2009) Jorge
Machado, Natan Machado Palombini, Nestor Marín ‘Matraca’. 73min. Part documentary, part fiction, Alamar follows a father and son on holiday in the Caribbean. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Alice in Wonderland 3D (PG) ●●●●● (Tim Burton, US, 2010) Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter. 108min. A sequel of sorts that takes in elements of both Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, this finds Alice (Wasikowska) as a teenager returning to Underland. Empire, Clydebank. Avatar 3D (12A) ●●●●● (James Cameron, US, 2009) Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez. 166min. Set in 2154, Cameron’s much-hyped Avatar focuses on a paraplegic marine named Jake Sully (Worthington), who arrives on the distant moon of Pandora with a mission to help displace its indigenous population. But, after winning their trust, Jake finds his allegiances gradually shifting. High on technical flair but short on storytelling ambition, this visually stunning sci-fi epic sadly remains deeply flawed. IMAX Theatre, Glasgow. Odeon Wester Hailes, Edinburgh. Badlands (15) ●●●●● (Terrence Malick, US, 1973) Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek. 94min. Rarefied, lyrical US filmmaker Terrence Malick’s stunning and mega- influential 1973 crime spree drama is brought back to life in a beautiful new 35mm print. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. The Battle of the Sexes (U) ●●●●● (Charles Crichton, UK, 1959) Peter Sellers, Robert Morley, Constance Cummings. 80min. Edinburgh-made film after the style of the Ealing comedies. An accountant’s (Sellers) quiet existence is disturbed by the arrival of an American ‘Efficiency Expert’ (Cummings). Part of Made in Edinburgh season. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. The Blood of a Poet (15) ●●●●● (Jean Cocteau, France, 1930) Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Enrique Rivero. 53min. Semi-autobiographical study of the pain of being an artist, in many ways the overture to poet/author/director Cocteau’s later, richer work. Rougher and less sophisticated than Cocteau’s later Orphee, it is still a fascinating entry point in to both surrealist cinema and Cocteau’s work. Screening together with short Rose Hobart, by Joseph Cornell, a compilation of footage from 1931 jungle B-movie East of Borneo. Part of Screening Surrealism season. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Bread and Roses (15) ●●●●● (Ken Loach, UK, 2001) Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elpidia Carrillo. 110min. Bread And Roses bravely dramatises the daily struggle of Los Angeles’ immigrant Hispanic population. Maya (Padilla) is a gorgeous, gutsy young Mexican, who escapes kidnapping by smugglers to toil alongside her sister, Rosa (Carrillo), cleaning offices. In
a downtown office block, she meets passionate white activist, Sam (Brody), who is running the Janitors For Justice campaign. Loach has forsaken neither of his trademark concerns – the drama within the mundane, the indomitable spirit of the oppressed. This is essentially a film about victory, and the tone is surprisingly upbeat. Part of Take One Action! festival. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Budrus (E) (Julia Bacha, Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory/US, 2009) 70min. See panel, right and profile, page 62. Part of Take One Action! festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
✽✽ Buried (15) ●●●●● (Rodrigo Cortés, Spain, 2010) Ryan Reynolds,
Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky. 94min. See review, page 59. General release. Certified Copy (12A) ●●●●● (Abbas Kiarostami, France/Italy/Iran, 2010) Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Jean-Claude Carrière. 106min. Kiarostami steers away from the experimentation of recent work, bringing a holiday feel to this quasi-romantic comedy. Shimell as author James Miller is pleasingly dry, while Binoche demonstrates why she deserved her Best Actress Prize at Cannes for her role in this intriguing enigma of a film. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Climate Refugees (E) (Michael P Nash, USA, 2010) 95min. Shocking environmental catastrophe documentary focusing on the large-scale human population displacement that is happening as a result of climate change, from the submerging islands of Tuvalu and the flooded coasts of Pakistan and Bangladesh to the drought-blasted regions of East Africa and China. The screening is followed by a Q&A session with director Michael Nash. Part of Take One Action! festival. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
✽✽ Cyrus (15) ●●●●● (Jay Duplass/Mark Duplass, US, 2010) John C Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei. 102min. A romcom which, under normal circumstances, would render its own plot unfathomable, is saved by its mumblecore genre: unconventional, low-budget and mostly improvised. Man meets woman with unhealthy mother/son relationship, but the characters are believable and result in an awkward, but breathtakingly truthful story. General release. Day for Night (15) ●●●●● (Francois Truffaut, France, 1973) Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Francois Truffaut, Valentina Cortese. 120min. Interesting and entertaining movie about moviemaking, with Truffaut as the hack director trying to steer cast and crew through a tacky love story. Won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Devil (15) ●●●●● (Drew Dowdle/John Erick Dowdle, US, 2010) Geoffrey Arend, Bojana Novakovic, Logan Marshall-Green. 80min. Effective minimalist horror in which a group of people stuck in a lift realise the devil is amongst them. General release. Dinner for Schmucks (12A) ●●●●● (Jay Roach, US, 2010) Steve Carell, Jermaine Clement, Paul Rudd. 114min. With a stellar line-up of comedians, this remake of Veber’s French comedy should go down easily. However, while the plot – executive seeks loser to humiliate at his boss’ dinner for oddballs – suffices, unbalanced portions of eccentricity and sentimentality leave the viewer unsatisfied with the final serving. General release. Donnie Darko (15) ●●●●● (Richard Kelly, US, 2002) Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze. 113min. Cult science fiction fable. Glasgow Film Theatre. Dragon Hunters (12) (Guillaume Ivernel/Arthur Qwak, France/Germany/Luxembourg, 2009) Voices: Mary Matilyn Mouser, Forest Whitaker. 100min. Animated adventure in which little Zoe, her enterprising weasel friend and a blue creature called Hector accompany the mighty dragon slayer Lian-Chu on the quest to kill a monstrous fire-breathing beast. Showcase Cinema, Coatbridge, Glasgow. Eat Pray Love (PG) ●●●●● (Ryan Murphy, US, 2010) Julia Roberts, Billy Crudup, James Franco. 139min. See review, page 58. General release. The Edge of Dreaming (E) (Amy Hardie, UK, 2010) 73min. Amy Hardie
INDEX Film
FILM FESTIVAL FOCUS TAKE ONE ACTION!
Now in its third year, the Take One Action! Film Festival offers a rare opportunity to watch activist documentaries and politically-orientated films at the cinema. This excellent festival concentrates on the agenda- setting and eco-documentary sub-genres that have grown exponentially over the last decade, showing films as varied, worrying and fascinating as A Crude Awakening, The End of the Line, An Inconvenient Truth and Darwin’s Nightmare.
Many of the films showing this year are vigorously propagandist, in
that they fight for a cause as if going in to battle. Indeed, one of the highlight films of this year’s programme, Climate Refugees, draws this comparison directly, when filmmaker and narrator Michael P Nash attempts to answer the question of future generations dealing with a collapsed environment: ‘What did you do in the war, daddy?’ This propagandist element is no bad thing. Nero’s Guests is another
fine example; following the journalist P. Sainath, Deepa Bhatia’s film works from Sainath’s anger and despair about the 200,000 Indian farmers who have taken their own lives in the last ten years. Full of facts, figures and indignation, the film highlights the fatuousness of remarks made by some well-known names in the fashion world. One young woman notes that we need the poor – how else would she get a manicure and her hair done?
Other documentaries include Budrus, which is getting a broader release
(see profile, page 62), and Persona non Grata, a hagiographic account of Frans Wuytack, a Belgian priest who went to Venezuela and gave up his official residence in Caracas to live among the poor in the slums. Sandy Cioffi’s Sweet Crude details the recent history of the Niger
Delta, where the average life expectancy has been reduced from over 60 to 40 years because of oil companies spewing out waste into the region. The Garden (pictured) asks if a community garden in south central LA, where the locals grow their own food and feed their families, can survive or whether big development will take over. ‘I don’t like their cause and I don’t like their conduct,’ says the mega-rich, activist-hating developer in the film. Take One Action! stands for the opposite: it likes people’s causes and their conduct. (Tony McKibbin) ■ Take One Action! Film Festival, GFT, Glasgow & Filmhouse, www.takeoneaction.org.uk Edinburgh,Thu 23–Tue 5 Oct.
dreamed of a death, and it happened. When another dream then prophesied her own imminent demise, she was understandably concerned: did her subconscious know something she didn’t? A poetic, personal project, some nine years in the making, this film explores humanity’s relationship with dreams, death and destiny, via Hardie’s own scientific and emotional quest for answers. Glasgow Film Theatre. Electric Edwardians (PG) (Sagar Mitchell, James Kenyon, UK, 1900–1906) 71min. This recently discovered century-old footage from early filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon shows working-
class life in Britain when the country was the world’s only superpower. Programme includes early Lumiere shorts. Part of an Introduction to European Cinema course. Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Enter the Void (18) ●●●●● (Gaspar Noe, France/Germany/Italy, 2009) Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Ed Spear. 142min. See review, page 58. Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh. The Expendables (15) ●●●●● (Sylvester Stallone, US, 2010) Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren. 103min. A flawed throwback to the testosterone-driven action vehicles of the mid 23 Sep–7 Oct 2010 THE LIST 61