Matthew Anderson
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Edinburgh 2016: Forsaken review
★★☆☆☆ Just as John Henry Clayton thought he was out, they pull him back in. Directed by Jon Cassar, Forsaken is a humdrum Western which never demonstrates even the suggestion of a trick up its sleeve. Kiefer Sutherland tops the bill as a reformed gunslinger, a prodigal son returning home from the Civil War to…
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Edinburgh 2016: Chicago Boys review
★★☆☆☆ The subject matter of Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano’s Chicago Boys is certainly worthy of documentary coverage but its narrow scope and dull presentation mean it is unlikely to appeal to many viewers other than students of financial history. Under the tutelage of Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, from the mid-1950s onwards groups of…
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Edinburgh 2016: Brothers review
★★★☆☆ A labour of love to rival that of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Brothers is a charming study of growing up, a preservation of memory and lessons learned from a mother to her own sons. Norwegian documentary filmmaker Aslaug Holm is lucky to have two such thoroughly likeable and comfortable subjects. Filmed from their infancy into…
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Film Review: The Violators
★★★★☆ Ten years have passed since Shane Meadows’ This Is England punched a vitriolic, tattooed fist through the 1980s Midlands racial divide. Nationalist tension does not feature in novelist turned writer-director Helen Walsh’s The Violators but it is a comparably hard-hitting and bleak state of the British nation address. At a time where class division…
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Edinburgh 2016: Tommy’s Honour review
★★★★☆ “There’s only one story you’ll get from me,” growls Peter Mullan from behind a hedgerow of coarse woolly beard. As Tom Morris in Tommy’s Honour, the veteran Scottish actor embodies the pioneering exploits of a St. Andrews man who inaugurated the Open Championship from his humble standing as greenkeeper and caddie to the club’s…
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Edinburgh 2016: Programme highlights
As cinema doors across the Scottish capital open to celebrate a very special 70th birthday the Edinburgh International Film Festival ushers in the start of its 2016 edition. With as many worthwhile stories to tell as any septuagenarian, and exuding prestige, oodles of experience and an extraordinary range of cinematic treats, this year’s festival once…
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Interview: Vincent Lindon, The Measure of a Man
Vincent Lindon, a powerhouse and household name of French film for decades, received widespread acclaim for his subdued, naturalistic performance in Stéphane Brizé’s The Measure of a Man. His turn as a family man struggling against the persistent tides of the economic recession saw him bag the Best Actor gongs at Cannes and the Césars.…
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Film Review: The Nice Guys
★★★★☆ There’s no better way to transport a cinemagoer back to the late 1970s than with Papa was a Rolling Stone by The Temptations. The tap of a snare drum and slow groove of a rhythmic bassline set a steady beat for The Nice Guys, a mordant crime caper and buddy movie from writer-director Shane…
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Film Review: The Measure of a Man
★★★☆☆ The Measure of a Man, a third collaboration between French director Stéphane Brizé and veteran actor Vincent Lindon in just six years, is a pared-down social critique that charts the day-to-day drudgery of a man suffering the slings and arrows of economic recession. It’s far from a joyous viewing experience but fans of the…
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Film Review: Holding the Man
★★☆☆☆ Adapted from a 1995 memoir of the same name by Australian actor Timothy Conigrave, Holding the Man recounts the star-crossed love of a lifetime between the writer and his athletic, handsome beau, John Caleo. Both men would succumb to AIDS-related illnesses and it is a pity that this layered and temporally-shifting recollection, that spans…