Goodbye First Love

Intimate but unenlightening romance populated with unlikeable characters

(15) 110mins It’s supposed to be unbearably boring hearing about other people’s dreams. But often that’s not nearly as bad as hearing about other people’s formative love affairs. Watching vain, drippy, lugubrious teenager Camille (Lola Créton) fall…

This Means War

Unsuccessful mash-up of the rom-com and spy action genres

(12A) 97min McG attempts to satisfy both sexes in This Means War – a testosterone-driven action meets girl-pleasing rom-com, that ends up not being good in either genre, despite featuring two of the hottest young actors around (Tom Hardy and Chris…

Bel Ami

Pretty but shallow romantic period drama starring Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman and Christina Ricci

(15) 102min A young man gains social and financial advancement via his irresistibility to women, but has trouble securing professional credibility. And then he gets cast in a film called Bel Ami! Yes, it’s hard to imagine that Robert Pattinson…

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

Like Crazy

Sundance-wowing romance starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones

(12A) 89mins Winner of 2011’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, Like Crazy is a long-distance love story mired in the complications of modern-day living. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a British student living in Los Angeles who spends the perfect summer with…

Interview: Felicity Jones, star of Like Crazy

Young actress set to follow Sundance hit with films by Warren Beatty and Ralph Fiennes

A year ago, Felicity Jones was asleep when she got a call from America. ‘I thought there’d been a terrible accident,’ she laughs. But this was no accident. On the line was the producer of her new film Like Crazy: the Sundance Film Festival had just…

Weekend

Poignant and captivating story of unexpected love cut short

(18) 96min A casual one night stand unexpectedly blossoms into a much more meaningful connection in Weekend, a tender heartbreaker from writer/director Andrew Haigh that is easily one of the most impressive British independent features of the…

Monte Carlo

Flat romcom vehicle for Justin Bieber's paramour Selena Gomez

(PG) 108min The star of tween drama Wizards of Waverly Place, but better known as the current squeeze of Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez is being relentlessly packaged for fame. Her previous venture, last year’s Ramona and Beezus sank like a stone, and…

Perfect Sense

Dark yet sentimental romance set in an apocalyptic world

(15) 92min David Mackenzie’s seventh feature is, superficially, his most disturbing yet. That’s saying something given the Scottish filmmaker introduced himself and his penchant for dark psychosexual drama with his grim and gritty adaptation of…

Mademoiselle Chambon

Moving romantic drama from director Stéphane Brizé, starring Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain

(12A) 101min Mademoiselle Chambon is another bitter-sweet and elegantly orchestrated chamber drama from Stéphane Brizé, the French writer-director of Not Here to be Loved, which plays like a Gallic variation of Brief Encounter. Jean (Vincent Lindon…

Friends with Benefits

Sappy rom-com fails to deflate clichés of the genre

(15) 109min The rom-com has been a moribund genre for years now, excepting Marc Webb’s acerbic and adventurous (500) Days of Summer. Despite promising a similarly caustic examination of the gap between real-life relationships and romantic clichés…

Zookeeper

Kevin James stars in woefully bad family rom-com

(PG) 101min Part rom-com, part Doctor Dolittle style family comedy, Zookeeper, starring lardarse comic actor Kevin James (The Dilemma, Grown Ups), is a wholly unsatisfactory experience for all but the most juvenile minds. The latest offering from…

Potiche

Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu star in playful French comedy

(15) 103 min Catherine Deneuve has a gift of a role in this deliciously subversive farce from the prolific François Ozon. Deneuve is Suzanne, the ‘potiche’ or trophy wife, blithely content to be a domestic goddess in the shadow of insufferable…

Farewell (L'Affaire Farewell) - a romantic thriller set in the midst of the Cold War

Starring Emir Kusterica and Guilliame Canet

(12A) 113min Based loosely on the actions of high ranking KGB official and spy Vladimir Vetrov, Farewell is a complex but tender portrait of the Cold War in free fall, a place where a passionate eccentric like Vetrov (here renamed Grigoriev) can…

GFF blog: You Instead premiere creates perfect T in the Park vibe

Featured musician Jo Mango talked to us at the after-party

Sigma Films – the Glasgow-based company behind the likes of Red Road, Hallam Foe and Young Adam – celebrated its 15th birthday with the premiere of You Instead on Friday night. The film tells the tale of two bickering rockstars – played by Luke…

Film You Instead shot at music festival - David Mackenzie interview

Hallam Foe and Young Adam director on making a film at T in the Park

David Mackenzie, director of Hallam Foe and Young Adam, discusses his new movie You Instead, a rock'n'roll romcom that aims to capture the excitement of T in the Park.

No Strings Attached - Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher in casual sexual relationship

Ivan Reitman's sweet-and-sour confection coasts by on personable leads

(15) 107min The moribund romcom genre emits a shrill death-rattle in No Strings Attached, in which Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play friends who find themselves in a casual sexual relationship, only to find that there are always strings…

The Passion Within

Period detail and good-looking actors in an unremarkable film

‘You f**k like a boy’, reads the message that an actress leaves smeared in red lipstick across the bedroom mirror of a famous bullfighter in this 1940s Spain-set biopic that focuses on the tempestuous romance between Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz) and…

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The combination of big-budget producer Jerry Bruckheimer and deep-pocketed studio Disney bore attractive if banal fruit with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but the muddle-headed fantasy The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is more likely to make audiences…

Toy Story 3 and The Illusionist among Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 highlights

With The Edinburgh Film Festival 2010, which runs between 16-27 June, only a matter of weeks away, the red carpets are getting waterproofed and the popcorn machines are getting serviced. Now in its 64th year, the twelve day festival, packed with…

My Last Five Girlfriends

(12A) 87min Frothy, above average British romcom based on a novel by philosopher Alain de Botton. Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris and Michael Sheen star. General release from Fri 19 Mar.

(500) Days of Summer

Back to front story romantic comedy

(500) Days of Summer promises more than it delivers, regrettably. This factory made YouTube generation rom-com kicks off at breakneck speed delivering a drole reconstruction of young man Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) unruly love affair with young girl…

Film: Also Released

This week's other cinematic offerings

A Perfect Getaway, Imagine That, The Time Traveler's Wife, Sin Nombre

The Go-Between

Film adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery

Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter’s immaculate 1971 adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery in Edwardian Norfolk enjoys a slight return on new digital print.

The Ugly Truth

This by-the-numbers romantic comedy from director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster in Law) pairs Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, 27 Dresses) with alpha male Gerard Butler (300, PS I Love You) for a mindless run through of familiar genre…