Glasgow Film Festival 2013 Review: WELCOME TO THE PUNCH

Executive producer Ridley Scott’s presence is immediately felt with an opening credits title reveal which instantly recalls that of Alien. Unfortunately that is about the only place it is felt in director Eran Creevy’s follow up to impressive lo-fi geezer drama Shifty. The canvas is broader and it certainly makes headway towards rivalling its American counterparts, but Welcome to the Punch is a glossy British crime thriller that feels like Michael Mann's Heat turned down to Gas Mark 3.

Where Creevy must be applauded is in crafting a relatively lean thriller that not only looks stylish with its depiction of London bathed in a steel blue neon glow, but has its fair share of nicely handled action set pieces. There is a finely tuned sense of what makes an image dynamic and it plays with visual motifs throughout.

Lacking the profundity and underlying depth of other underworld dramas, everything here is surface level. It isn’t always a problem when that surface is so highly polished but it is missing a vital ingredient: characters we can invest in and get behind. With a slick running time of just over ninety minutes, there is never time to delve into what drives our lead characters. It keeps feeling pressured to hit that next action beat.

The full review is continued over at STV's website.

★★★★★

Tweet

Glasgow Film Festival 2013 Review: THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

The weight of expectation lies heavily on The Place Beyond the Pines. Not only is it co-writer and director Derek Cianfrance’s follow up to 2010’s lauded anti-love story Blue Valentine, it also marks his reteaming with that film’s breakout star, Ryan Gosling.

It transcends easy genre classification as it surges from frenetic crime thriller, to the bridled passions of a savage love story, to family drama about paternal expectation and the sins of the father.

It marks Cianfrance out as a major new force in American cinema and proves the masterful handling of the potentially depressing plot of his last film was not a fluke. He is just as adept handling even broader, less intimate themes here but manages to ground them in a film that, for the most part, doesn’t feel overblown. The energy and rawness in the action scenes is matched in every respect by the way he handles smaller emotional scenes.

The full review is continued over at STV's website.

★★★★★

Tweet

Glasgow Film Festival 2013 Review: JOHN DIES AT THE END

With a title which might sound like the ultimate in movie spoilers, John Dies at the End is so consistent in its attempts to uproot viewing preconceptions at every turn that this potential warning klaxon is of no concern.

To begin to explain what it is about is both a futile task and nigh-on impossible. Don Coscarelli, the maestro behind horror-comedy classics Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep, has constructed something so multi-layered and ambitious that it would be easier to list the things the film doesn’t touch upon. It is a clear cut case of chucking anything and everything at the screen and seeing what sticks. As is always the case with this scattershot approach much doesn’t work but, as is pleasingly the case here, much does.

It pitches itself somewhere between the cult movie conundrum of Donnie Darko and the freewheeling inanity of Dude, Where’s My Car?

The full review is continued over at STV's website.

★★★★★

Tweet

Glasgow Film Festival 2013 Review: STOKER

The latest in a long line of successful directors from around to world to make their way to the US film industry is respected South Korean director Park Chan-wook, who directed the hugely respected Oldboy. Stoker, his English language debut, sees him working with an A-list cast and crafting an indie thriller which treads on hallowed Hitchcockian ground.

As an exercise in creating an atmosphere of tension it is an unrivalled success but it ultimately leads to nothing.

The full review is continued over at STV's website.

★★★★★

Tweet

Glasgow Film Festival 2013 Review: THE LOOK OF LOVE

Changing attitudes to permissiveness in British society since the 1950s are marginally shown through the prism of Soho property entrepreneur and mucky mag magnate Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan) in this biopic. Or, as he succinctly puts it in his pre-credits introduction, “Welcome to my world of erotica.” Sadly this transgressive address direct to camera is one of the few moments which display the same irreverent verve as Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom’s last biopic together, 2002’s 24 Hour Party People.

Halfway between a British Boogie Nights and Carry On Titillating.

The full review is continued over at STV's website.

★★★★★

Tweet