Reviews & features: Eddie Harrison
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Paul Brannigan, star of Ken Loach's The Angels' Share - profile
23 May 2012
The actor is also set to appear with Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
Born 1987, Glasgow, Scotland Background After working as a football coach in the Barrowfield community in Glasgow and helping to tackle knife crime as part of a Strathclyde Police initiative, Paul Brannigan was spotted by screenwriter Paul Laverty…
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
23 May 2012
A witless and bland work based on the pregnancy self-help book
‘You don’t know what love is until you’ve wiped someone’s ass,’ offers one of the many baby-boomers in Kirk (Waking Ned, Everybody’s Fine) Jones’ multi-stranded adaptation of the bestselling self-help book about the dos and don’ts of pregnancy.
The Apocalypse Archives - Nikolaj Arcel
22 May 2012
Screenwriter of original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Screenwriter of the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie and director of new Danish drama A Royal Affair, Nikolaj Arcel, picks five films he’d rescue in the face of the apocalypse. 1. Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) ‘Just to show I’m…
Casa de mi Padre
11 May 2012
Will Ferrell's Spanish-language comedy is at once unfunny and too silly to take seriously
Funnyman Will Ferrell as a tough rancher in a violent Spanish-language Western? It could only be a joke, and that’s exactly what Case de mi Padre is, a ragged, silly spoof in the Airplane/Naked Gun mode. Unfortunately, as jokes go, it’s a not…
The Pact
11 May 2012
An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension
The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…
A Royal Affair
11 May 2012
A skillfully delivered but coldly aloof period drama from the Swedish Dragon Tattoo team
Reuniting the writing team behind the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair is a welcome break from the current plethora of morbid Scandinavian thrillers; instead, Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel have co-adapted an unfamiliar but…
Red Tails
11 May 2012
George Lucas pet WWII project suffers from thin characterization, cliché and crude simplification
Star Wars creator George Lucas used clips from his favourite aviation dramas to stand in for battle scenes in the original rough-cut of Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that several decades later, Lucas has invested some of his personal wealth in an…
Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy
19 Apr 2012
An agonisingly watered-down imitation of Welsh's short story
Nothing dates faster than drug culture, and writer-director Rob Heydon’s Irvine Welsh adaptation arrives nearly two decades after the era of the dedicated pill-popper. Taken from Welsh’s story 'The Undefeated', part of the 1996 compilation that provides…
666: The Prophecy
18 Apr 2012
By-the-numbers horror from Darren Lynn Bousman, inspired by calendar numerology
(15) 90mins The current public appetite for horror barely excuses the eventual, much delayed release of 666: The Prophecy, which was opportunistically released in the US in November last year on the date (and under the title) 11-11-11. The idea that…
Outside Bet
18 Apr 2012
Low-budget British horse-racing comedy falls at the first hurdle
(12A) 101mins The cinematic equivalent of the clumps of horse dung that characters repeatedly step into for the cheapest of laughs, Outside Bet is strictly a non-runner in terms of light entertainment. In this painfully naïve British comedy, Bob…
The Raid
17 Apr 2012
A short, tough, pumped-up flick for die-hard action fans
(18) 101min ‘1 ruthless crime lord. 20 elite cops. 80 floors of chaos.’ The advertising sets exactly the right proficient tone; crunching the numbers as well as bones, The Raid features a small group of policemen taking on a vertically stacked army of…
Silent House
17 Apr 2012
A ponderously slow psychological drama packaged as a horror film
(18) 85min With Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen proved herself to be a young actress with great potential by persuasively playing a refugee haunted by her experiences with a murderous cult. Silent House features her in a disappointingly…
StreetDance 2
2 Apr 2012
A sequel of so-so dances, hackneyed plotting and wooden performances
(PG) 85mins The ‘kids dancing their way out of the ghetto’ trope has been a staple of cinema since the 1950s but taking inspiration from recent US products like Step Up and Stomp the Yard, StreetDance 3D inexplicably became the UK’s most popular…
Act of Valour
2 Apr 2012
Impressive technique and verisimilitude delivered at the expense of plot and characterisation
(15) 110min The on-screen pursuit of combat verisimilitude is the driving force behind Act of Valour, an anti-terrorist action flick which aims to make a virtue of casting real life Navy SEALs (United States Navy's Sea, Air, and Land Teams) as…
John Carter
8 Mar 2012
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…
The Devil Inside
22 Feb 2012
Skimpy, poorly shot and incoherent entry in the exorcism stakes
(15)83min Horror has a new home in the ‘found footage’ genre that spawned The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, with The Devil Inside the latest low-budget effort to conjure up huge box office returns with the aid of heavy studio marketing…
Contraband
22 Feb 2012
Bland, low-key but solid and watchable action film
(15) 109min ‘This is world-class smuggling!’ enthuses a member of Mark Wahlberg’s crew in Contaband, a terse US remake of 2008 Icelandic thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam. Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, an ex-smuggler whose attempts to go straight with…
Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema 2012
17 Feb 2012
Programme includes The First Born, Another Fine Mess, The Black Pirate and Safety Last!
Shhh...! Whisper it quietly, but it’s fair to say that 2012 is likely to be the biggest year in silent cinema for nearly eight decades. The global success of Michel Hazanavicius’ glowing tribute The Artist means that silent films currently have their…
GFF 2012 - Death Watch
2 Feb 2012
Bertrand Tavernier’s remarkable Glasgow-shot film foresaw the coming of voyeuristic TV
It’s arguably the best film ever shot in Scotland, but chances are you’ve never seen it. Directed in 1979 by French auteur Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country, Round Midnight) and set in the near future, Death Watch is a Glasgow-set sci-fi drama…
Best Laid Plans
1 Feb 2012
Predictable grim Northern tale that fails despite Stephen Graham's great central performance
(15) 108min Positive arguments for the public financing of UK films will not be encouraged by the release of Best Laid Plans, a dreary miserablist fable haplessly reconfiguring John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men into the world of Northern…
Jack and Jill
1 Feb 2012
Mirthless comedy atrocity sets a new low for all concerned
(PG) 91min Adam Sandler’s run of popular low-brow comedies has rarely hit the charming heights of The Wedding Singer, but even fans of Don’t Mess With the Zohan or I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will choke on their popcorn when confronted by his…
Girl Model
27 Jan 2012
Clinical expose of the modeling industry
(tbc) 78min Far from the fairy-tale fiction of America’s Top Model is Girl Model, a clinical, disturbing industry expose by documentary makers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Mardi Gras: Made in China). Ashley Arbaugh is an ex-model and now a…
Oscars 2012 - predictions
25 Jan 2012
Some of The List's film critics give their predictions on who'll win what at the Oscars
Best Picture. The Artist; simplicity is the reason that is soars above the other Oscar bait. The Artist probably will win, as it has won pretty much everything else going. It deserves it - when was the last time a film came along that made everyone fall…
The Sitter
5 Jan 2012
Zippy but unappealing sub-Apatow comedy starring Jonah Hill
(15) 81min After springing to stardom in Superbad, Jonah Hill gets his first lead role in The Sitter, an amiable low-brow comedy from director David Gordon Green which throws Hill’s laid-back slacker persona into a similar underworld of criminal…
W.E.
5 Jan 2012
Occasionally perceptive but overall flat second movie from Madonna
(15) 119min Madonna’s second film as director after the forgotten comedy Filth and Wisdom aims considerably higher. The initials W.E. refer to the joint signature of American divorcee Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, whose relationship shook the…
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