THE Edinburgh International Film Festival had one of the most intriguing line-ups in many a year, from soulful dramas to extreme horrors that came primed to shock unsuspecting audiences. There was also a great showing for female filmmakers – long may that continue. I saw plenty of films in my 12th year attending but here are my highlights.
JONAH Hill’s directorial debut kicked the festival off in style.
From the awkward truths of growing up to tortured artistic genius to the ruthless plains of the Old West, this year’s Glasgow Film Festival had an eclectic set of cinematic choices on offer. Here are ten of the best I saw at the country’s most exciting film fest.
GREEK director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a career out of changing course, from Dogtooth to The Lobster and last year’s haunting The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, while still maintaining a very particular brand of skin-crawling oddness.
THIS colourful, gloriously frothy re-emergence of the character who first floated down on to our screens more than 50 years ago performs a neat trick of giving things a fresh sense of panache while keeping things endearingly old-school.
IN the realm of mega budget blockbusters, no other franchise has felt as much like dead weight as Transformers. Sequel after sequel has bombarded us with near-incomprehensible action sequences where giant robots smash into one another, leaving the audience in the wind as to who exactly is fighting whom and for what and why we should even care.
THE rocky road of DCEU films has traversed highs and lows, from the zeitgeist-capturing Wonder Woman to the absolute mess of Justice League. It’s a Marvel-rivalling gambit that, at its worst, is morosely serious in how it goes about presenting its outlandish superhero world without the depth to back it up.
AFTER so many sequels and reboots of the Spider-Man character on the big screen, from Sam Raimi’s trilogy to the character being integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s hard to see what else the film-makers can give us. But then along comes an animated Spider-Man.
