Reviews & features: Film

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013: Surprise Movie candidates

The EIFF Surprise Movie is a closely guarded secret - here's what we think could be showing

Filth The James McAvoy-starring Irvine Welsh adaptation is a bit of a long shot, considering it isn't scheduled for general release until October. That said, the news broke recently that Filth was coming out in Scotland a week before anywhere else in…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013: the best horrors

The Conjuring, Frankenstein's Army and Outpost 3 among our best bets for horror at EIFF 2013

The Conjuring Having reconfigured the modern horror template with Saw back in 2004, James Wan turned his attention to ghost stories, first with the less-than-perfect Dead Silence, then with the more successful (but still a bit iffy) Insidious. The…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013: the best comedies

Frances Ha, Oh Boy and Old Stock among our top picks for comedy at EIFF 2013

Frances Ha This being a film by Noah Baumbach (Greenberg, The Squid and the Whale), you'd probably expect this to be a comedy of the 'bittersweet and poignant' vein rather than, say, all-out slapstick. And you'd probably be right to a certain extent…

New trailer for Not Another Happy Ending starring Karen Gillan

The Glasgow-shot romcom features the Doctor Who star as an author suffering from writer's block

Following the announcement that quirky indie romcom Not Another Happy Ending will be the closing gala film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, we've just been given a first glance at the trailer. Not Another Happy Ending features the big…

Disney Pixar’s Monsters University announced for Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013

The family film will screen at the festival three weeks before release in the rest of the UK

Edinburgh International Film Festival audiences will be among the first in the UK to see Disney Pixar’s latest offering, Monsters University. The Family Gala 3D screening will take place on Sun 23 Jun in the Festival Theatre, with an exclusive schools…

Watch: trailers for the Richard Fleischer retrospective at EIFF 2013

Edinburgh International Film Festival to screen six of the American director's films

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has started releasing the first few snippets of information about its 2013 programme. As well as featuring Karen Gillian romcom Not Another Happy Ending as its closing film (read what Gillan says about it in our…

Take One Action Film Festival 2012 returns to Glasgow and Edinburgh

Groundbreaking festival to open with Martin Scorsese produced film and features workshops and Q&As

Returning to Glasgow and Edinburgh for the fifth year in a row, the Take One Action Film Festival’s aim is as much to celebrate great work that is being done around the world to fight injustice, as it is to provoke audiences to get up and do something…

Edinburgh Film Festival 2012 programme launched

Chris Fujiwara reveals extensive world cinema programme for EIFF 2012

This year the Edinburgh International Film Festival 's new director, Chris Fujiwara, has devised a brave and eclectic programme in an attempt to return the festival to its former glory. With a similar format to previous years - with several strands…

Shinji Somai retrospective at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012

Introduction to one of Japan’s most popular and respected filmmakers

It often seems like there’s an infinite wellspring of Japanese filmmakers revered in their home country yet barely heard of overseas, with every year bringing yet another retrospective of some unheralded cinematic maestro. It’s all enough to leave those…

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, with live score by Minima

Expressionist horror flick with live soundtrack performance

‘It’s a truly, truly amazing film,’ is the simple reason given by guitarist Alex Hogg as to why his band Minima chose to create a live score for Robert Wiene’s classic 1919 German expressionist silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. ‘Even more…

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…

The Room

Gloriously awful Rocky Horror-style particapatory film screening

The midnight movies phenomenon is well documented – starting in the 1970s at fleapit cinemas, movies that were too bizarre, too violent or too extreme for the mainstream were shown to cult film-loving audiences in the dead of night. The Rocky Horror…

Cult bad film The Room set for Edinburgh Festival Fringe screenings

Tommy Wiseau's 2003 film now has cult following

The Room is infamous as one of the worst films ever made. Yet its popularity just keeps on increasing. Ahead of debut Fringe screenings, John Darley looks at the story so far, revealing the true horror behind the ‘Citizen Kane of bad movies’

Qatsi trilogy with Philip Glass live score highlight of Edinburgh International Festival

EIF 2011 screening of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi

One of the earliest Edinburgh screenings of Koyaanisqatsi, the first of Godfrey Reggio’s remarkable trilogy of films scored by minimalist composer Philip Glass, was in an old porn cinema opposite what is now the Festival Theatre, then a bingo hall.

Strong EIFF short film programme includes Night Mayor, The Great Race and Pentecost

Edinburgh International Film Festival shorts round-up

Sometimes the short film programme can look like a lesser sibling of the main festival, but this year it was one of the few aspects of EIFF that was in better health than ever. With a fancy new venue in the form of an upgraded George Square Theatre, a…

Ghosted - Art Malik, John Lynch & Craig Viveiros interview

Prison drama cast includes Martin Compston and David Schofield

It’s that if actors of the calibre of John Lynch and Art Malik want a meaty role in a British feature film, the odds are number one, it’s going to have to be set in a criminal world of some description and number two, it’s more than likely going…

Highlights among mixed bag suggest hope for return to cinephilia at EIFF

Reflections on Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And when life gives you a programme for an international film festival that misspells the Coen Brothers name (among other heinous typographical and grammatical crimes), best take the bull by the horns and make…

How should the EIFF move forward?

Reflections on Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011

When the lights came up on The Guard, this year’s opening film, my overriding thought was, 'that was fine'. It was quite funny and had a good cast, but was entirely unadventurous filmmaking. Fine, but nothing more. As a tone-setter for the 'reinvented…

Calvet - Dominic Allan & Jean Marc Calvet interview

Documentary charting extraordinary life of French artist

CALVET depicts the struggles of Jean Marc Calvet, now an artist with burgeoning international success, to come to terms with his past and, more particularly reconcile with the son he abandoned. So far, so straightforward, but Jean Marc has quite a few…

Weekender - Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jack O’Connell interview

Film charting 1990s British rave scene

“We’re a bit like a double-act”, quips Jack O’Connell, referring to himself and his co-star Henry Lloyd-Hughes, and it proves true as they talk to me. They’re ostensibly discussing Weekender, which has it’s World Premiere at this year’s Festival, but…

Convento - Jarred Alterman interview

Portrait of Dutch artist family and kinetic sculpture

Jarred Alterman, director of the documentary Convento, takes me round the tie-in exhibition at Teviot Row House, full of the kinetic sculptures by Christiaan Zwanikken that populate Alterman’s dreamlike film. Passing a gang of creepy, animated and…

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…

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…

Turin Horse - Béla Tarr interview

Hungarian director's final film takes Nietzsche's madness as starting point

Iconic Hungarian director Béla Tarr was in Edinburgh to present his latest and reportedly final film, Turin Horse. The film is inspired by an event often reported as the beginning of Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. The philosopher is said to…

Troll Hunter - André Øvredal interview

Director of the Norwegian moc doc taking film festivals by storm

Something that’s pretty thin on the ground at Edinburgh this year are genuine ‘festival finds’; films from unknown filmmakers that seem to come out of nowhere and really impress audiences. TrollHunter is perhaps the closest thing to that in this year’s…