Movie stars and local heroes take lead in varied diet at film festival
A wonderful selection of movies will be dished up for movie buffs
Dangerous dames Dedicated to the ladies of the film noir night, this year’s retrospective stand includes such classics as Chinatown, Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Tickets free, but only available on day of screening. Oh Canada This year’s country in focus is Canada, the place Ryan Gosling calls home. Find out what else it has to offer cinema, with titles including Celtic Soul, a documentary about actor Jay Baruchel’s passion for Celtic FC, and the coming-of-age drama, The Demons. The galas Aka the ones that sell like Greggs’ hot bakes. Choose from Berlin Syndrome (Berlin-set, boy meets girl psychological thriller); Catfight (black comedy about female schoolmates unhappily reunited); Free Fire (black comedy actioner, set in Boston 1978, and starring Cillian Murphy and Brie Larson); Goldstone (a follow-up noir from the hugely talented Ivan Sen of Mystery Road fame); Mindhorn, a comedy about an ageing actor making a comeback; The Odyssey (a biopic of Jacques Cousteau); Patriots Day (a thriller based around the Boston marathon bombing and starring Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman and JK Simmons); Rules Don’t Apply (Warren Beatty returns to directing with a romantic comedy set in old Hollywood); and Their Finest (Bill Nighy and Gemma Arterton in a comedy drama set in the Seconde World War and based on Lissa Evans’s novel). Don’t forget the Surprise Film on February 21. What’s up docs Best is a study of the Manchester United football legend Pele called “the single best player in the world”.
The award-winning I Am Not Your Negro is a blistering look at racial politics in America, with Samuel L Jackson narrating. The Lost City of Cecil B DeMille finds a filmmaker on an epic quest to find out if one of the sets from The Ten Commandments really was buried in the sands outside LA. The Chocolate Case details a quest of another kind – to find a guaranteed, 100 per cent, politically guilt-free chocolate bar. Local heroes A new strand, faithful to what it says on the tin. Picks include Mark Cousins’ blend of drama and documentary, Stockholm, My Love; Hope Dickson-Leach’s award-winning family drama The Levelling (starring Ellie Kendrick from Game of Thrones); and Benny, a portrait of the Gorbals boxer who won a world championship title but could not defeat the illness that killed him at a young age.
John Byrne will attend a special screening of his pure dead brilliant Slab Boys on February 26, and it wouldn’t be a salute to local heroes w ithout Bill Forsyth, whose adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, shows on February 19. The golden globe Featuring cinema from around the world, highlights include The Teacher, set in communist Czechoslovakia in 1983, a study of power corrupting; and family drama Harmonium, winner of the Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Also worth mentioning here, though it is part of the Cinemasters strand, is Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, which stars Isabelle Huppert as a victim of crime who refuses to suffer twice over.
Huppert won best actress at the Golden Globes, with the film awarded best foreign film. Family favourites Dogs feature heavily in this strand, and why not? Rock Dog is about a Tibetan mastiff who hears music for the first time and decides to become a musician, while How to Steal a Dog is a hit from South Korea about youngsters who hit on a very naughty get rich quick scheme. Tickets: Available from Monday, January 23 at 10am online (www. glasgowfilm.org/festival); in person at the Glasgow Film Theatre, 12 Rose Street, Glasgow G3 6RB or the CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD; by telephone, 0141 332 6535 during GFT opening hours.