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Glasgow Film Festival · 2018

Glasgow Film Festival 2018

Galas

Programme

13 films · 9 reviews

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120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (120 Battements Par Minute, 120 Beats Per Minute)

Review preview for 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)

Campillo has a weakness in not knowing when to trim all the talking.

Richard Mowe · 3 out of 5
Portrait of the ACT UP activist group, a direct action collective aiming to impact the lives of people with AIDS.

(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Robin Campillo; Writer: Robin Campillo; Stars: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adèle Haenel, Yves Heck, Emmanuel Ménard, Rahim-Silvioli Mehdi, Antoine Reinartz, Caroline Piette, Marco Horanieh, Pascal Tantot, François Rabette, Naelle Dariya, Ariel Borenstein, Coralie Russier, Saadia Bentaïeb)

Full review See: 120 Beats Per Minute award-winner Nahuel Biscayart on sexuality, activism and the pink condom , Robin Campillo on AIDS drama 120 BPM, writing from the heart and collaboration

The Ballad Of Lefty Brown

Always the grizzled sidekick and never the hero, Lefty is considered an unreliable loser but is pushed into the limelight after being left for dead when his best friend is murdered.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Jared Moshe; Stars: Bill Pullman, Peter Fonda, Tommy Flanagan, Kathy Baker, Jim Caviezel)

The Bookshop

A widow moves to a small seaside town where she wants to turn a run-down building into a bookshop, but she faces local opposition.

(Country: UK, Spain, Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Isabel Coixet; Stars: Bill Nighy, Emily Mortimer, Hunter Tremayne)

Custody (Jusqu'à la garde)

Review preview for Custody

Though a short film, even one of half-an-hour as Legrand’s was, can be carried almost solely on this sort of tension, a feature needs something more.

Amber Wilkinson · 2.5 out of 5
A couple embark on a bitter custody battle for their son.

(Year: 2017; Director: Xavier Legrand; Writer: Xavier Legrand; Stars: Léa Drucker, Denis Ménochet, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveux, Mathieu Saikaly, Florence Janas, Saadia Bentaïeb, Coralie Russier, Sophie Pincemaille, Emilie Incerti-Formentini, Jérome Care-Aulanier, Jenny Bellay, Martine Vandeville, Jean-Marie Winling, Martine Schambacher)

Full review See: Interview with Xavier Legrand about Custody (Jusqu’à La Garde)

Isle Of Dogs

Review preview for Isle Of Dogs

Go in as a fan of Anderson's work and you will not be disappointed. Go in as a fan of film and you will likely be delighted.

Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
In a future world where dogs have been exiled to the giant rubbish dumps of Trash Island, a Japanese boy sets out alone in search of his beloved pet.

(Country: US, Germany; Year: 2018; Director: Wes Anderson; Writer: Wes Anderson; Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Liev Schreiber)

Full review

In The Fade (Aus dem Nichts)

Review preview for In The Fade

Akin asks us to shift our perceptions of terrorist attacks in deliberately provocative ways, constantly flipping what we think we know and what we expect to see right up until the film's haunting final image.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Revenge thriller set in the aftermath of a bombing.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Fatih Akin; Writer: Fatih Akin; Stars: Diane Kruger, Numan Acar, Ulrich Tukur, Siir Eloglu, Jessica McIntyre, Ulrich Brandhoff)

Full review See: Interview with Diane Kruger about In The Fade

Journeyman

After a boxer suffers a head injury in a fight, it has a major impact on his family life.

(Country: UK; Year: 2017; Director: Paddy Considine; Writer: Paddy Considine; Stars: Paddy Considine, Jodie Whittaker, Paul Popplewell, Tony Pitts, Anthony Welsh, Craig Thomas Lambert, Paul Donnelly, Jonny Masters, Richard Varley, Emelia Spencer, Shamir Masri, Kris Athey, Jonathan Cheetham, Nigel Passey, Jacob Smyth)

Love, Simon

Review preview for Love, Simon

Nice

Angus Wolfe Murray · 3 out of 5
A young teenager worries that his family will discover he's gay before he's ready, and finds himself falling in love with a similarly closeted classmate he talks to online, without either of them knowing who the other is.

(Country: US; Year: 2018; Director: Greg Berlanti; Writer: Elizabeth Berger, Isaac Aptaker, based on the novel by Becky Albertalli; Stars: Nick Robinson, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Kelynan Lonsdale, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Talitha Bateman)

Full review

Madame

Review preview for Madame

The script is cleverly done, the key relationships well and economically drawn; and while this is clearly comedy, it does not pull its punches.

Jane Fae · 3.5 out of 5
A wealthy American persuades her Spanish maid to pretend to be a noblewoman in order to make up the numbers at dinner, only to have an English aristocrat fall in love with her.

(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Amanda Sthers; Writer: Amanda Sthers, Matthew Robbins,; Stars: Rossy de Palma, Toni Collette, Harvey Keitel, rossy de Palma, Michael Smiley, Tom Hughes)

Full review

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House

Review preview for Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House

A sterling performance from a silvery Liam Neeson.

Andrew Robertson · 3 out of 5
A dramatisation of the story of the man who was Deep Throat.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Peter Landesman; Writer: Peter Landesman, based on the books by Mark Felt, John D O'Connor; Stars: Liam Neeson, Diane Lane, Marton Csokas)

Full review

Nae Pasaran

Review preview for Nae Pasaran

The journey to this point for Sierra speaks of the passion project that it is - and the film benefits hugely from his engagement with the emotional aspects of the story.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
The story of the East Kilbride factory workers who refused to carry out repairs on warplane engines in an act of solidarity against the violent military coup in Chile.

(Country: UK; Year: 2018; Director: Felipe Bustos Sierra)

Full review

The Party's Just Beginning

A young woman struggles to find meaning in life after the suicide of her best friend.

(Country: UK; Year: 2017; Director: Karen Gillan)

You Were Never Really Here

Review preview for You Were Never Really Here

Nothing plays out as you expect, with Ramsay maintaining an unsettling staccato that keeps both the action and the viewer on edge.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
A tormented assassin tries to rescue a girl but trouble lies ahead.

(Country: US, France; Year: 2017; Director: Lynne Ramsay; Writer: Lynne Ramsay, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames; Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Manette, John Doman, Judith Roberts, Jason Babinsky, Kate Easton, Frank Pando, Leigh Dunham, Madison Arnold, Dante Pereira-Olson, Jonathan Wilde, Scott Price, Silvia Pena)

Full review