Glasgow
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Glasgow 2021: Spring Tide review
★★★☆☆ Three female members of a family struggle with multi-generational secrets, trauma and the hardships of motherhood in Yang Lina’s Spring Tide. The Chinese filmmaker, whose past work lies predominantly in documentary, inspects the past, present and future of a nation by pulling apart the ties, lies and aspirations of a grandmother, her daughter and…
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Glasgow 2021: My Favorite War review
★★★☆☆ Bookended by visits to the same stretch of coastline under very different circumstances, Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen’s My Favorite War makes a perilous journey into her nation’s past through the eyes of an artist – or in her case journalist – as a younger woman. A self-portrait of sorts, the Latvian-Norwegian filmmaker seeks to come…
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Glasgow 2021: In the Shadows review
★★★★☆ An isolated, run-down coal mine, enclosed by high-sided valley walls, is the forbidding, dystopian setting of Erdem Tepegöz’s impressive third feature, In the Shadows. Shackled not so much by the harshness of their physical surroundings, but unseen omnipotent forces which control their every waking hour, the oppressed workforce dare not step out of line.…
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Glasgow 2021: Programme preview
Following successful outings for CPH:DOX and the BFI London Film Festival in 2020, and digital editions of Sundance and Rotterdam taking place since the turn of the year, the 2021 Glasgow Film Festival follows suit in going online. Keen cinephiles across the UK will be able to log in to the Glasgow Film At Home…
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Glasgow 2016: Zootropolis review
★★★★☆ The latest feature from Disney Animations Studios, whose recent revitalisation has brought us such hits as Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, Zootropolis (or Zootopia in the US) is rollicking entertainment with a side of ripe social commentary. Ever since she was a little bunny, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has had big dreams of becoming a…
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Glasgow 2016: Labyrinth of Lies review
★★★☆☆ Labyrinth of Lies – Germany’s official Academy Award submission – takes place in the late 1950s, around ten years after the end of World War II, with Germany is in a state of repair and most of the population in denial about the holocaust. It’s an undoubtedly fascinating topic, but is diluted somewhat by…
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Glasgow 2016: Hail, Caesar to open festival
Days after it was revealed that Hail, Caesar! and Anomalisa would act as bookends, opening and closing respectively, the full programme for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival (17-28 February) has been announced by co-directors Allan Hunter and Alison Gardner – and there’s plenty for cinema enthusiasts to look forward to. Not only are the likes…
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Glasgow 2015: Dispatch #2
The joy of any film festival lies in the sheer breadth of cinematic dishes from which one can pick the tastiest morsels. These might be pictures that are never going to see the light of day in British cinemas, or gems awaiting imminent release that will likely remain under-appreciated. In the latter half of CineVue’s…
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Glasgow 2015: Warsaw Uprising review
★★★☆☆ There are a number of dichotomies at the heart of Warsaw Uprising (2014), a new film directed by Jan Komasa and masterminded by the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The most pronounced of these is its blend of documentary and fiction, and the effects of both. The former comes through six hours of footage mined from…
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Glasgow 2015: Electric Boogaloo review
★★★★☆ From 1979 to 1989, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were cinema’s premier purveyors of low-budget schlock. “It’s hard to say the words ‘Cannon Films’ without laughing” says one commentator at the very beginning of Mark Hartley’s documentary history of the company, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014). That is proved…