Edinburgh International Film Festival - Top Ten Things To See

This morning I travelled to Edinburgh, and more specifically, the Filmhouse to attend the programme launch for the 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Festival Director Mark Adams introduced us to the launch, the festival and went through a selection of his own personal highlights before making sure we all had our goodie bags...

With over 120 films in the official line-up it can be daunting to know where to start when deciding what to go and see. To help you out a little bit, I've gone through the entire brochure with my trusty highlighter and selected my top ten recommendations for what to watch this June.
Tickets are on sale now to Filmhouse & Belmont Filmhouse members and on sale to the general public from 10.00am on Friday 25th May.

Blood Fest

Screening 22nd & 24th June

Dubbed a razor-sharp synthesis of Scream and Cabin In The Woods, this meta horror sees a group of hardcore film fans having to use their knowledge of the genre to escape a horror movie festival when events take a gory turn. This could be one of the breakout late night hits of the fest.
To book tickets, click here.

Calibre

Screening 22nd, 23rd & 30th June

A World Premiere for writer-director Matt Palmer’s tale of two friends on a hunting trip in the remote Scottish Highlands that takes a deadly turn. The film also sees a welcome return for Festival favourite Jack Lowden who opened the Fest in 2016 with Tommy’s Honour and closed last year’s with England Is Mine.

To book tickets, click here.

Flammable Children (Swinging Safari)

Screening 27th & 29th June

Sold on this film by the image of Guy Pearce with a moustache to rival Paul Rudd’s from Mute, this Australian comedy set in the “swinging Seventies” and also stars Kylie Minogue this is one movie made especially for you (sorry, not sorry).

To book tickets, click here.

Humor Me

Screening 30th June & 1st July

Sometimes just a couple of cast names is enough to merit a viewing and the double act of Jemaine Clement and Elliot Gould as a father-son duo is a must see.

Clement stars as a struggling playwright who moves in with his father in a retirement village and finds himself coaching a group of woman putting on a staging of The Mikado. Could this be Flight of the Concubines?
To book tickets, click here.

The Incredibles 2

Screening 24th June

Someone at the Festival must have something on Disney because this is the 4th year in a row that they have scored an advance screening of the new Pixar film for the Family Gala and this year it is the sequel to The Incredibles, one of the greatest Pixar films of all-time. Will it be a Toy Story 2 or a Cars 2? Only time will tell but I’m keeping my elasti-fingers crossed for this one.
To book tickets, click here.

Jaws - In Concert with RSNO

Friday 22nd June

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Festival Theatre, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra will play one of John Williams’ most iconic scores live at a screening of Steven Spielberg’s summer blockbuster Jaws.
Following in the footsteps of previous year’s screenings of Back To The Future, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, this will be one night not to be missed.
To book tickets, click here.

Life After Flash

Screening 28th & 30th June

A light-hearted documentary that follows Sam Jones as he tours the convention circuit. Finally embracing the fame and fandom that came with starring in Flash Gordon, a film that for a long time he had a difficult relationship with.

To book tickets, click here.

Searching

Screening 21st & 22nd June

The plot of a father trying to track down his missing daughter might not sound like anything new but this film tells the story entirely through various screens from laptops to mobile phones which could elevate this crime thriller to something truly special.
To book tickets, click here.

The Secret Of Marrowbone

Screening 21st & 22nd June

Expectations are high for Sergio G. Sanchez’s haunted-house drama given that he wrote the screenplay for The Orphanage. It stars Scottish star George Mackay as part of a family that move to a dilapidated old house to escape their brutal father but realise there might be an even greater danger lurking in the attic.

To book tickets, click here.

Unicorn Store

Screening 29th & 30th June

One of the hot tickets of the festival, Brie Larson’s directorial debut sees Captain Marvel herself play a woman obsessed with unicorns who is offered the chance to adopt a real unicorn by a flamboyant salesman (Samuel L. Jackson), if she completes a series of tasks in this quirky and charming story.
To book tickets, click here.

Also, if you prefer to listen to my picks, check out this mini Filibuster podcast where Lee and I talk about our most anticipated movies...

EIFF 2015 - Maggie

Maggie is being sold on it being a zombie movie and the movie in which the world discovers that Arnie can act.
Only one of these facts are true and shockingly it is the second one because the former Governer and Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers what is arguably his finest on screen performance to date (although is that difficult given his previous benchmarks? After all he is a movie star rather than an actor).
As a father struggling to come to terms with the fact this his daughter will evolve into a zombie, Arnie delivers a surprisingly tender and emotive performance, even shedding the odd tear or two.
Despite it being marketed as a zombie movie, it is a far away from your typical zombie flick as Let The Right One In is from a vampire movie.
There is no widespread panic, massive scenes of desolation or Arnie fighting off hordes of the undead.
Instead at the heart of the film is a family drama where a biological outbreak has created a disease that causes people to slowly turn into the undead.
The disease is treated in the early stages just like any other, with patients patched up and sent home with a pamphlet on preventing the spread of the disease until it is time for them to "turn" and they are shipped off to quarantine.
Quarantine is meant to be where the infected are cared for in their final days but according to some, it is in reality a horrific place where all the infected are left to rot and feed off each other.
And so to the central crux of the story and what Maggie is really about.
The film is actually a comment on the moral dilemma of assisted suicide. Should Arnold allow his daughter to get taken to quarantine where the quality of her life is not assured and she slowly and painfully deteriorates into someone that they and she herself no longer recognises or does he do the humane thing and help her end her life?
All three central performances are strong, with Breslin providing a lot of pain and empathy as the girl who will turn and Joely Richardson offering a counterpoint to Arnold's desire to protect his daughter as the stepmom who doesn't see Maggie as one of her own.
The tagline for the film could have been "Don't Get Too Close" but this is close to being the freshest take on the zombie film since 28 Days Later and won't be undead on arrival in cinemas this July.

4 stars

EIFF 2015 - Opening Night Gala - The Legend Of Barney Thomson

Last night saw the 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival kick off festivities with its opening night gala premiere of The Legend Of Barney Thomson, directed by and starring festival patron Robert Carlyle.
Having missed last year's opening gala without an unfortunately timed and incredibly painful case of kidney stones, it was exciting and reassuring to be able to walk the red carpet in my tuxedo (which up until an hour before still had the tags on from its purchase last year!).
The film tells the story of Barney Thomson, a Glaswegian barber who is down on his luck and accidentally kills a co-worker who fires him from his job.
With a serial killer stalking the streets of Glasgow and mailing body parts of their victims to relatives, Barney's mum (a hilarious Emma Thompson) convinces him to ride on the coattails of the killer to get the police (including a dogged Cockney copper played by Ray Winstone) off his scent.
There are parallels to Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (particularly with Ray Winstone in the film as he played the barber on BBC) but Barney is a much more sympathetic character, with the emphasis on the pathetic.
The psycho Begbie is nowhere to be seen here as when we meet Barney he is sad, alone and about to be fired from his job. Even then he can't seem to muster the energy or passion to fight back, only killing his co-worker by accident. Then his attempts to dispose of the body set off a hilariously awful chain of events that cause Barney's life and lies to spiral out of control, and Carlyle plays his sense of hopelessness and growing anger at his inability to change things quite wonderfully.
The sense of humour that runs through the film is as sharp as the razor that Barney uses at work. A lot of it comes from the situation that Barney gets himself into and a fair dose comes from Emma Thompson's turn as his ageing, bingo obsessed mother.
She delivers the "Glasgae banter" with aplomb and receives many of the films biggest laughs (although one does wonder if anyone outside of Scotland will understand what she is saying half the time).
The film's subplot about inter-departmental police rivalry could have done with a trim, or even a short back and sides, but Carlyle (in his first film as director) has delivered a accomplished tale of the macabre that should play well to audiences who enjoy a wild, wacky and wicked ride.
The Legend Of Barney Thomson was a cracking, crowd-pleasing choice for the new direction of the Edinburgh Film Festival and proved to be a bloody good laugh.

4 stars

The Green Inferno - EIFF review

It's a good thing that I had an early morning Aberdeen to Edinburgh Megabus to digest my breakfast before the early morning press screening of The Green Inferno because there was a chance that my sausage and egg mcmuffin could have made an reappearance halfway through when the Inferno really ignites.

This film is Eli Roth's love letter to the cannibal horror films of the Eighties, particularly the infamous Cannibal Holocaust.

This movie has a similar plot which involves a group of American student activists attempting to safeguard an area of the Amazon jungle only to be eaten by the very people they are trying to protect. THAT Alanis Morrisette is the true meaning of irony!

The first half of the film which follows the activists in visiting Peru and staging their protest feels like it goes on forever and the slow burn approach was not that effective. I know that it is designed to help develop the characters but given the nature of this film, we all know what they are here for and I for one would rather have just skipped the appetisers and moved straight to the main course. After all, do you spend this much time getting to know the turkey you are having for Christmas dinner?

Beyond Lorenza Izzo's Lead character Justine, the rest of the crew are the kind of whiny, self-serving tree huggers you would gladly see served up in a running all-you-can-eat buffet.

When dinner is finally served, this is where the film comes alive (ironically).

Roth's cinematographer Antonio Quercia captures a range of greens, yellows and reds so bold and vivid that it gives the film a unique colour palette which only serves to increase the intensity of the images when the group reach the cannibalistic tribe's camp.

The first human sacrifice is genuinely one of the most horrific things I have seen on a cinema screen in years. I consider myself a big horror fan these days but even I had to turn away at a couple of moments.

Kudos for that must go to the sterling work of horror makeup and effects gurus Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger.

The shocks continue to be served as rapidly as a nine course tasting menu of depravity with a side order of humour as dark as peruvian cocoa powder as the group slowly reduces in number before the inevitable escape plan is formulated.

Whether or not anyone escapes being dessert is not for me to reveal here but I can guarantee that you will need a strong stomach in order to find out.

If Roth had trimmed the fat from the opening act, this might have been worth going back for seconds over but it is nice to see someone whip up an 18 rated horror delight rather than the tame 12A and 15 certificated dishes so often cooked up by Hollywood.

3 stars

Snowpiercer - French Blu Ray review

It feels odd to be reviewing a film from a French blu ray when it hasn't even been released in cinemas in the UK yet but the journey that Snowpiercer is taking to the big screen over here has been filled with more problems and delays that the trams in Edinburgh city centre. Ironically that is where the film has just had its UK premiere at the Film Festival.

Last year word started to surface that Harvey Scissorhands wanted to edit the film, cutting twenty minutes out of it and adding in a voiceover at the beginning to help audiences understand what was going on. Anyone reminded of Blade Runner here?

This would have been the cut for UK and US audiences but thankfully the original "director's cut" had already been released and proven very successful in France.

Earlier this year film critic Anne Bilson mentioned on Twitter that the film would be available on region free blu ray in April with the only minor niggle being that, although it was in English, it only had French subtitles therefore it made one scene where the dialogue is in Korean difficult to follow.

Undaunted by this and desperate to see the director's original version, I ordered it from Amazon.Fr in January and proceeded to forget about it until the beautiful box set arrived at work randomly one afternoon in April.

Finally it was time to board the Snowpiercer.

Set in a dystopian future where a failed attempt to reverse global warming has left the Earth in a state of perpetual winter, the only human life that remains circumnavigates the globe in a special train called the Snowpiercer.

The train is split up into classes with the rich and powerful living in comfort at the front with all the poor people crammed into the rear of the train.

Unhappy with existing in squalid conditions, surviving on nothing but gelatinous food bars that might be from the makers of Soylent Green, and spurned on by cryptic messages, Chris Evans's Curtis wants to find out if life really is greener on the other side.

So Evans, like Gene Hackman's Reverend Scott in The Poseidon Adventure, sets out to lead a rag tag bunch (including Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer) on a Titanic struggle up through the vessel following the icy track road to see Wilford, the wonderful Wilford of Oz.

Everyone is seeking something different (redemption, power, drugs, their children) and the hope is that Wilford can provide that for them, even if they have to use force to get it.

If Wilford is the mysterious man behind the curtain, then Tilda Swinton's Mason is undoubtably The Wicked Witch of the West (Coast Line).

With her protruding teeth, hideous wardrobe and glasses as thick as her Yorkshire accent she is a comically grotesque character who, when berating the dirty, grim soaked masses to remember their place, feels like Thatcher and the miners during the 80s.

At one point she makes a speech about how life must be kept in a delicate balance and this ties into the situation on the train which is on an eternal loop of the earth, a continuous cycle, with the natural order of the classes and the circle of life.

Elysium tackled a similar subject last year but this has much more in common in terms of aesthetics and feel with the work of Terry Gilliam such as Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, and one of the characters is even called Gilliam.

Not only is this graphic novel adaptation at heart fantastical science fiction and social commentary but it plays out like a video game with each new compartment they make it to representing a higher level and a different challenge, sometimes physical, mental or emotional. Different characters are required to progress and once complete the next compartment is actually "unlocked" by the train's security designer who controls the doors.

The struggle to reach the front takes it toll on the group but it is Curtis who is constantly Under Siege to try and gain control of the train and with it comes one of Chris Evans's finest performances, in particular delivering a haunting monologue about what life of the train is really like.

Hopefully Snowpiercer won't face too many more delays before it gains a proper cinema release as this is first class entertainment that remains on track to be one of my favourite films of the year.

5 stars