Fantasy man Guillermo del Toro’s latest, Pacific Rim, is a large-scale love letter to Japanese sci-fi, but also an accessible blockbuster imbued with delightful eccentricities amid its broad elements…
Category Archives: Film
Natan (Paul Duane/David Cairns, 2013)
When a person is murdered and the body burned, all that is left is a name and a sum total of everything said about them; distort the shape of their life’s outline and the truth will become lost. Cairns and Duane’s documentary implies that early film innovator Bernard Natan died a second death through becoming largely forgotten and misremembered through exaggerated misinformation, spread both during his life and much later. An inventively told film, Natan seeks to rehabilitate the image of an arguable giant of French cinema, who once had ownership of the still prominent Pathé Studios, and advanced colour and sound filmmaking…
This Is Martin Bonner (Chad Hartigan, 2013)
Martin Bonner (Eenhoorn) is at a lull in his life. An Aussie expat, he finds himself leaving his grown-up east-coast family and moving to Reno, Nevada for the only job he can get after three years of searching – transitioning ex-convicts into society. Through this new position, he forms a friendship with one of the people he mentors, Travis (Arquette), who’s been released into a city he does not know, following a 12-year stretch for involuntary manslaughter, and is desperate for help in getting a fresh start…
We Are the Freaks (Justin Edgar, 2013)
Following three teenage friends on a night out in 1990, after Thatcher has just stepped down, We Are the Freaks opens with self-reflexive narration that posits that “this is not a teen movie”; this follows an opening tirade that includes the lead expressing contempt for films where people talk to camera, right after doing so himself. It’s a film that, through meta stylistic tics (“Got any music that won’t be in wanky nostalgic films in 20 years time?”), constantly draws attention to itself; the problem is that it never provides anything to warrant the viewer’s attention…
From Tehran to London (Mania Akbari, 2012)
Mania Akbari’s film is dedicated to “all those filmmakers in Iran, who have served a prison sentence and the ones who are still in prison.” A hypnotising exploration of a dissatisfied couple, the film conveys imprisonment in its own aesthetic. Relegated solely to a rural home’s interiors and shot in long, unbroken takes heavy on close-ups, it is a series of electric dialogues between wife, husband, sister and servant over the course of a few weeks, addressing both a specific relationship and the issue of women’s roles in Iran…
Robot Rock: Kenji Kamiyama on ‘009 Re: Cyborg’
Since 2009, October’s Scotland Loves Anime festival has been a yearly highlight for the country’s animation fans, hosting various UK and European premières, Q&A events with filmmakers, and that all important and often rare opportunity to see anime in a cinema environment. Andrew Partridge, the driving force behind the festival, has now launched Anime Limited, a new distribution company based out of Glasgow. Its mantra is to provide chances to see high quality anime films on the big screen, as well as through other media. As such, Anime Limited’s first release, 009 Re: Cyborg, will receive a multi-platform release, heading to both select cinemas and digital platform Distrify. ..
Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon, 2012)
In Adam Leon’s debut feature, two teenaged graffiti artists, Malcolm (Hickson) and Sofia (Washington), attempt to leave their mark on an iconic monument at a New York baseball stadium. Needing $500 to pay off stadium security, the pair manoeuvre through a myriad of loosely-conceived schemes and disparate characters over 48 hours, from flirtations with over-privileged slackers to break-ins with irritable tattooed thieves…
Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
Stoker marks the English language debut of contemporary South Korean cinema poster child Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Thirst), and the film is full of the striking compositions and sweeping camera movements of his prior acclaimed work. Unfortunately, free of compelling, well-realised material to frame his style around, Stoker sees the director’s worst tendencies in full force; those of garish melodramatics and shallow showiness…
GFF 2013: The Kids are All Right
Taking place in the 11 days preceding the main event, Glasgow Youth Film Festival is an increasingly formidable entity in its own right, and this year’s line-up is no exception. Curated by a passionate programming team of 15-18 year olds, the festival hosts several UK or Scottish premieres of its own, alongside exciting workshops and special events for film fans of all ages…
Scotland Loves Anime 2012: Animation Looks East
Following a very successful run in 2011, animation festival Scotland Loves Anime returns to Glasgow and Edinburgh in October for a third year, with even more international and UK premieres than before. Though the festival’s film selection is centred around Japanese animation and culture specifically, its charity organisers Scotland Loves Animation seek to promote animation of all origins as art. As such, the festival plays host to interview sessions with people involved with films in the line-up, as well as an education day for students of animation at Edinburgh College of Art (19 Oct), with input from industry professionals…
Read Write Hand 