Reviews & features: Paul Gallagher
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Crispian Mills on A Fantastic Fear of Everything - interview
22 May 2012
The ex-Kula Shaker frontman has directed a black comedy starring Simon Pegg
Fearless The frontman of Kula Shaker directing a film? Given Crispian Mills’ family heritage it’s not such a surprise after all, discovers Paul Gallagher. Received wisdom might suggest that rock stars who try their hands at filmmaking are essentially…
If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle
18 May 2012
Drama depicting tensions of prison society from Romanian director
18-year-old Silviu (George Pistereanu) has nine days left to serve of what has been an uneventful, well-behaved prison sentence. When an unexpected visit from his younger brother brings some unwelcome news, Silviu’s previously-held composure begins to…
Angèle and Tony
4 May 2012
Beguiling and slow-moving story charting unlikely romance in remote Normandy fishing village
A beguiling and slow-moving story about an unlikely romance in a remote Normandy fishing village, director Alix Delaporte’s debut feature film certainly doesn’t force its way into audiences’ attentions. But for cinemagoers looking for some considered…
The Monk director Dominik Moll - interview
26 Apr 2012
The French director discusses his dark and beautiful adaptation of Matthew Lewis’ Gothic horror
'Film has a lot to do with dreams and nightmares,' says Dominik Moll, 'and what I like about making films is that they allow you to show a surface and also what’s underneath. I’m attracted to this double-layer idea.' The German-born French filmmaker…
Amara Karan, star of All in Good Time - profile
17 Apr 2012
The actress is also set to star alongside Simon Pegg in A Fantastic Fear of Everything
Born 29 March, 1984, London Background Oxford-educated Karan spent two years working as an investment banker before plucking up the courage to pursue her interest in acting. Her audition tape was enough to impress revered director Wes Anderson, who…
All in Good Time
17 Apr 2012
Sweet-natured culture clash comedy starring Amara Karan and Meera Syal
(12A) 93min Originally a 1965 play and subsequently a film by Irish writer Bill Naughton, this sweet-natured comedy became a theatre hit again in 2007 when East is East writer Ayub Khan-Din adapted it into a present-day British-Asian setting. The…
Cafe de Flore
17 Apr 2012
An objectionable, distasteful and ultimately pointless exercise in parallel plotting
(tbc) 120 min In crisply-shot present-day Montreal, celebrity DJ Antoine (Kevin Parent) has recently left his wife Carole (Hélène Florent) and set up a home with their two children and his new girlfriend, Rose (Evelyne Brochu). In dull and dingy Paris…
Return
3 Apr 2012
A fine example of independent filmmaking, despite familiar subject matter
American filmmaker Liza Johnson is by no means the first to take a crack at the ‘soldier comes home from war’ story, and she certainly won’t be the last, but Return is a worthwhile addition to the genre. It’s a focused, unshowy character study, light on…
Babycall
23 Mar 2012
Noomi Rapace stars in creepy thriller that loses focus
(15) 96min Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, whose fearless performance as Lisbeth Salander was the best thing about the original Millenium trilogy, gets a chance to stretch her acting muscles again in this creepy thriller. Rapace plays Anna, a young…
Wild Bill
19 Mar 2012
Dexter Fletcher debut is a mature and funny comedy
(15) 98min There are many aspects of Wild Bill that could cause a discerning cinemagoer to give it a wide berth – its lack of recognisable stars; its done-to-death London gangster milieu; its debuting writer/director Dexter Fletcher’s connections to…
Apocalypse Archives: Dexter Fletcher
19 Mar 2012
Actor turned director Dexter Fletcher picks 5 films he’d save in an impending apocalypse
The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) ‘It’s a great film about London at a particular time, and there’s something so deeply emotionally impacting about it. I’d have to have it in there, irrespective of my own appearance in it! There’s some great…
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
19 Mar 2012
Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt quirky comedy romance is insubstantial muddle
(12A) 107min This adaptation of Paul Torday’s 2007 novel is another to add to the list of ‘books that didn’t work as films’. The story of a nerdish Scottish fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) and a sophisticated legal aide (Emily Blunt) selected by a…
Glasgow Film Festival: Dexter Fletcher, Wild Bill and All in Good Time
24 Feb 2012
Highlights including Trishna, The Monk and This Must Be The Place
Glasgow Film Festival is at its halfway point already, and I’ve only caught a small slice from the exploding smorgasbord that is this year’s programme (more than 200 films: your move, EIFF). But in that slice there’s been a few that are definitely worth…
We Bought a Zoo
22 Feb 2012
Dishearteningly average movie from Cameron Crowe
(PG)124min Disappointingly, after Elizabethtown, writer/director Cameron Crowe is just as bogged down in the valley of mediocrity with his new offering. The story of Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon), a recently widowed father-of-two who gives up his…
Hunky Dory
22 Feb 2012
Musical drama set amid teenage life in 1970s rural Wales
(15) 110min The turbulent lives of working class teenagers in 1970s Britain have hardly been underrepresented on our cinema screens in recent years, with Cemetery Junction, Soulboy and Neds all recreating the era, each offering varying degrees of…
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
10 Feb 2012
By-the-numbers old age comedy drama
Early in this by-the-numbers comedy drama, a young salesperson eagerly enthuses to retiring couple Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) that 'the grey pound is very strong at the moment'. We’re quite clearly supposed to see this…
Young Adult
2 Feb 2012
A fiercely dark comedy from Juno writer-director team Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman
(15) 94min This reteaming of Juno director (Jason Reitman) and writer (Diablo Cody) is a fiercely dark character comedy that once again demonstrates the pair’s refusal to be limited by genre conventions, no matter how sacred. The set-up is…
A Dangerous Method
27 Jan 2012
Cronenberg's cerebral study of psychoanalysis, starring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender
(15) 99min David Cronenberg’s new film is a change of pace for the seldom gore-shy director of The Fly and A History of Violence, being a talky period drama about the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. But while the body-horror…
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 Descendants
5 Jan 2012
Star performances from George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in Alexander Payne's latest comedy drama
(15) 115m In Alexander Payne’s first film since his 2004 critical darling Sideways, George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii-based businessman and heir to a hugely valuable piece of Hawaiian land. On the eve of him signing a deal to sell the land and…
Haywire
5 Jan 2012
Steven Soderbergh's fast-paced chase movie stars Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas
(15) 93min While other directors talk endlessly about the next great movie they are going to make, Steven Soderbergh keeps on quietly making films at a frequent rate, never repeating himself (Ocean’s sequels notwithstanding), and consistently…
War Horse
5 Jan 2012
Unashamedly sentimental cinema from Spielberg
(12A) 146m As War Horse begins, with soaring shots of rolling English hills and a sweeping John Williams overture, director Steven Spielberg sends a clear message: settle down for some large-canvas, unashamedly romanticised, old-fashioned big-screen…
Ralph Fiennes, star and director of Coriolanus - profile
5 Jan 2012
Man behind the modernised Shakespeare adap has Bardic pedigree
Name Ralph Fiennes Born Ipswich, Suffolk, 22 December, 1962 Background Initially a star onstage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fiennes gained international film recognition for his Oscar-nominated performance as Nazi Commander Amon Göth in…
The Iron Lady
5 Jan 2012
Meryl Streep shines in a film that avoids tackling Thatcher's politics
(12A) 105min In The Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) and writer Abi Morgan (Shame) take arguably the most significant British politician in living memory as their subject, and perversely evade questioning her policies. The result is a…
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
13 Dec 2011
Slight but entertaining sequel from Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law
Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes was considerably better than could reasonably have been expected from the fading and formerly feted Lock, Stock director. Ritchie and his writers successfully pulled off a tough balancing act, rooting the character in…
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