St Andrew's Day - The best film from Scotland

Our editors pick highlights from Scottish film through history

Scotland shares Saint Andrew with areas of Russia, Romania, Greece and Malta, though this list is closed to the corruption of arthouse favourites like Theo Angelopoulos and Sergei Bondarchuk with their long names and even longer films. We’re assuming St…

Film books round-up

The Man in the Seventh Row, Cinema: The Whole Story, Hitchcock’s Magic and more reviewed

Brian Pendreigh must surely be the hardest working movie-mad journalist and writer in Scotland. The Man in the Seventh Row (Blasted Heath ●●●) is his seventh book following biographies of Ewan McGregor and Mel Gibson, as well as Scottish cinema and…

Blood In The Mobile

Documentary explores mineral extraction in Eastern DR Congo for use in phone handsets

(12A) 85min The mobile phone, that universal symbol of convenience and progress, comes at quite a price. We are not talking fiscal here, we are talking of a price above rubies, a cost measured in blood, sweat and tears. All mobile phones contain…

The Help

Oscar-bait portayal of the civil rights struggle in the Deep South

(12A) 146min As Lee Hazlewood wrote in his musical paean to the nihilistic life: ‘Honey, I’m gonna snowball Jackson. See if I care.’ He needn’t have bothered, someone already had. A white American baby boom in the Deep South in the 1950s had taken…

Document 9 film festival highlights

The documentary film fest celebrates a 'year of protest' theme

Boasting one of their best film line ups in years, the Document 9 human rights festival takes the theme of protest as its mascot this year. The festival opens with Andrea Roggon's Soy Libre (I am Free) about life and hope in modern day Havana. The next…

Interview: Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey at 2011 Document 9 film festival

Director Leila Doolan's doc on radical Irish politican Bernadette Devlin

Leila Doolan's remarkable documentary Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey is one of the absolute highlights in Glasgow-based human rights film festival Document 9's very strong line up this year. The film follows the ideological and political…

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…

Tyrannosaur - Paddy Considine interview

The star of Dead Man's Shoes discusses his directorial debut

There was a time when if a British actor got a bit of movie money, he (they were invariably male) would direct Henry V, A Bridge Too Far or The Night of the Hunter. But since Gary Oldman made Nil By Mouth in 1997, a very different generation of largely…

Tyrannosaur

Paddy Considine's directorial debut features strong performances from Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman

(18) 92min Unemployed widower, drunk and all-round angry old man Joseph (Peter Mullan) stumbles into the council estate charity shop minded by good Samaritan volunteer Hannah (Olivia Colman), and friendship follows initial hostility. Despite her…

Red, White and Blue

Grimly progressive horror/thriller strips away cliché that surrounds the genres

(18) 103min Erica (Amanda Fuller) is not a good girl. She’s promiscuous but dispassionate, nihilistic but emotionless. The girl’s clearly got some issues. The only person who manages to make any kind of non-sexual connection is weirdy beardy Nate…

Drive

(18) 100min You should never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly. If only Ryan Gosling’s Hollywood stuntman/ getaway driver had heeded this advice he might not have got mixed up with beautiful mum Irene (Carey Mullighan), her jailbird beau…

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Interesting observational comedy smothered by rom-com farce and sentimentality

(12A) 118min Suburbia, modern day. Emily (Julianne Moore) tells husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she wants a divorce. Cal agrees to move and hits the local bar. After a period of drunken self-pity, local lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling) takes him under…

Post Mortem

Powerful sophomore feature based on 1970s Chilean politics

(15) 97min It’s 1973 and work on President Salvador Allende’s ‘Chilean Path to Socialism’ is about to be brought to an abrupt halt by a Chilean military coup. Mario (Alfredo Castro) works for the Santiago morgue as a typist. Quiet, efficient, Mario…

The Hedgehog (Le Herisson)

Smart and faithful adaptation of Muriel Barbery's best-selling book

(12A) 99min There’s no demographic quite like the French bourgeoisie. Their revolution may as well not have happened, Gustav Flaubert pretty much summed things up when he wrote: ‘The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level…

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Elite Squad 2 - The Enemy Within (Tropa de Elite: O Inimigo Agora e Outro)

Returns to Rio's criminal world with pace, plot and violent set pieces

(18) 114min Returning to the favela killing fields of his reactionary 2008 thriller, the schizophrenically talented writer/director Jose Padilha (Bus 174, Garapa) resurrects Captain Nascimento, but this time the right wing, law and order sympathies…

A Better Life

Chris Weitz's immigration drama is admirable but predictable

(12A) 97min There’s no denying American comedian Pat Paulsen’s dictum that the problems the United States faces today can be traced to the American Indian’s slack immigration policy. A Better Life is the mainstream cinemagoing public’s worst…

War correspondent Martin Bell to give Oliver Stone another chance

Martin Bell will be introducing Oliver Stone's Salvador at the EIFF

‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I first saw it in 1986 that’s why it will be interesting to present it and revisit it in Edinburgh. I remember he satirised a female reporter I know…

DVD Box sets of work by Terence Rattigan, Andrei Tarkovsky and Danny Boyle

Abbas Kiarostami and David Leland collections also released in June

If you are still buying DVDs in these straightened, downloaded times then you are going to want a bit of bang for your buck. Box sets are the way forward and late June and July are surprisingly full of intriguing new releases. The Terence Rattigan…

The Guard

Regrettable, cliché-ridden tale is entirely forgettable

(15) 96min Don’t you just love the Irish? They’re cultured, funny, nihilistic and big-hearted. They can be naughty, but they love their mammies and they are always up for the craic. OK let’s not beat about the Gaelic bush here, The Guard, written…

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Lovingly realised documentary on American chess master

(12A) 93min Bobby Fischer was the greatest of all past chess masters, and certainly the best America has ever had. Like most geniuses, however, Fischer’s life was a bizarre trajectory of success, fame, delusion and ultimately (possibly) madness.

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 opens with an Oirish whimper (not a bang)

65th festival gets underway despite disappointing opener The Guard

So the 65th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is now open. It opened last night, a balmy, spitty Wednesday evening, with a screening of John Michael McDonagh’s decidedly patchy Irish comedy policier The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson.

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Outside The Box

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

Duncan Speakman: Our Broken Voice Speakman’s project is a ‘subtlemob’ – ‘A film that’s happening in a public space where you’re both a performer and an audience member,’ he says. Still baffled? Imagine arriving at a designated public location, with an…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Conflict and Reportage

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

Conflict and Reportage Frontline Club: Martin Bell presents Salvador Broadcasting and politics’ ‘man in the white suit’ says of this event: ‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Nokia Shorts Weekender

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

Vice TV Greatest Hits! The great global magazine’s four-year-old spin-off youth internet TV channel celebrates the story so far. Having enjoyed early endorsement from Spike Jonze it now has a global network of correspondents who report on all that is…