Death Watch

Well-deserved re-issue of Bertrand Tavernier's prescient Glasgow-set sci-fi thriller

Its plot is a credibility stretch even in these days of de rigueur media paranoia, and its relentlessly murky, moody tone might raise the odd giggle, but Tavernier’s long-neglected sci-fi curiosity is compelling nonetheless. Romy Schneider plays…

New Prometheus viral features Michael Fassbender as 'David'

Fassbender plays the robotic David in Ridley Scott's upcoming sci-fi blockbuster

Following on from their previous viral clip - a futuristic TED talk delivered by Weyland Industries founder Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) - the folks behind Prometheus have delivered this clip of Michael Fassbender in character as David, a robot built by…

Battleship

Michael Bay-inspired blockbuster burdened by bog-standard plot and uneven tone

(12A) 131mins Inspired by the Hasbro board-game, Battleship is part Michael Bay-inspired planet-trashing mayhem and part love letter to the US Navy, with whom director Peter Berg shares an intimate family history (his father was both a former Marine…

Colin Farrell kicks ass in new Total Recall trailer

Updated CGI, a Biel v Beckinsale punch-up and Bill Nighy among the trailer highlights

Fans of 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall have had little reason to be impressed by the forthcoming remake of Arnie's second best film (it’s not a patch on T2): casting Colin Farrell in the lead alongside almost forgotten female leads…

The Hunger Games

Adaptation that successfully transcends its teen-fiction origins, with excellent cast and direction

(12A) 142min A dystopian thriller with cross-generational appeal, The Hunger Games is an adaptation of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy. From writer and director Gary Ross (Pleasantville) and co-written by Collins herself, it’s set in…

Iron Sky

Finland's so-so sci-fi comedy could actually benefit from an American remake

Six years in the making, Iron Sky arrives in a blaze of pre-release publicity. Finland’s first blockbuster, partly funded by fans, you certainly can’t quibble with its killer pitch: Nazis on the moon. It’s just a pity that director Timo Vuorensola’s…

John Carter

Visually impressive epic adventure suffers by prepping for sequels

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 creation finally hits the screen after 79 years of development hell, with pre-production on an animated feature originally scheduled for 1931. Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, has…

Avengers Assemble in latest trailer

Trailer for superhero movie with Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow

It’s the moment comic book and action movie fans have been waiting for as we get our first good look at all six members of the superhero team, The Avengers, in the latest trailer. The hype has been building for this massive blockbuster with Iron Man…

Guy Pearce delivers futuristic TED talk for Ridley Scott's Prometheus

Pearce stars as the founder of Weyland Industries

We appreciate a well-thought out viral online campaign here at List HQ. We're also fans of the inspirational TED talks, where the leading lights of culture, technology and industry come together to deliver talks based on their chosen field of expertise.

GFF 2012 - Mark Millar interview

The comic book creator of Kick-Ass and Wanted tells us about his role at the Glasgow Film Festival

Mark Millar has written some of the biggest comics of the last 20 years. He’s tackled the X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman and Fantastic Four alongside...

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…

Another Earth

Indie hit with science fiction premise explores complexities of flawed human interaction

(12A) 92min Indie hit Another Earth belongs to a microscopic subgenre of love stories revolving around parallel universes; in this case, a planet hidden by the sun which is an exact mirror image of our own planet, right down to the names of the…

Melancholia

Lars von Trier's sci-fi drama features star turns from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg

(15) 135min Melancholia is like the inversion of TS Elliot’s much quoted dictum. Is this how the world will end? With a bang not a whimper. Lars Von Trier’s curious, enigmatic and deterministic film seeks to equate the black dog of depression with an…

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…

Profile: Andre Ovredal

Writer and director of Troll Hunter

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

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…

Bikini Machine compose a 'cinéconcert' score for Desperado

Each year, the French Institute for Scotland takes part in the Edinburgh International Film Festival and strives to bring the media of music and film together to form one piece of intercontinental art. This year, the Institute have invited five…

Phase 7 (Fase 7)

Dark pandemic tale from Argentina

There’s a vague ‘pandemic’ theme in this year’s EIFF programme (with talks and screenings of the likes of 28 Days Later, The Divide and Panic in the Streets) and Phase 7 is the first to raise its diseased head above the parapet. As a global epidemic…

Kaboom

Cult director Gregg Araki returns to his B-movie roots with comedy-sci-fi-horror

(15) 86min Cult director Gregg Araki (The Living End, Mysterious Skin), one of the leading figures in the New Queer Cinema of the 90s, returns to the style of his earlier work for Kaboom, a gloriously trashy, insane ride of a film that wears its…

Attack the Block

Plays for scares more than laughs, and succeeds admirably

(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…

Source Code

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan star in body-swapping thriller

Duncan Jones’ dazzling debut Moon is, by any standard, a tough act to follow, but while sophomore effort Source Code can’t quite match up, it does ensure the director’s career remains on the right track. The film is an intriguing race-against-time…

Top 5: Philip K Dick adaptations

Featuring Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K Dick (fun fact: the K stands for Kindred) is hailed as one of the finest science fiction writers in history. He never achieved commercial success in his lifetime: he died following a stroke in 1982, three months before Blade Runner - the first…

Buried, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Shock Labyrinth released on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

Over the years some of the greatest horror films have found love and longevity amongst the classics of the genre despite their direct-to-video origins. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as The Open Door (Second Sight) ● proves. Taking the vague…

The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K Dick-inspired sci-fi thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt

The work of Philip K Dick has inspired some of cinema’s great sci-fi films, from Blade Runner to Minority Report via Total Recall. The Adjustment Bureau, which is derived from one of the author’s short stories, doesn’t quite measure up to the former or…

GFF blog: Bruce Goldstein talks The Tingler

The Vincent Price-starring, William Castle-directed gimmick fest gets a new lease of life at the GFF

Bruce Goldstein is not happy about his official job description at the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘I’m not a film historian – well, I guess I am, of a sort – but primarily, I’m a film distributor, and I run a cinema. Most successful repertory stream in the…