The Review The 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival

SLIM PICKINGS town and forges an uneasy alliance with Jack got himself a girlfriend and set him up The website may have trumpeted that in straight-laced, by-the-book FBI agent with fellow social inept, the shy Connie (Amy 2011, the 65th Edinburgh International Film Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), in town to Ryan). Jack and Connie unsurprisingly hit it Festival isn’t ready for senior citizenship but break up an international drug ring. A funny, off and Jack impulsively offers to cook her a after 3 lacklustre years that saw the Festival profane, politically incorrect, sweetly meal and to take her boating in Central move from it’s traditional home in August melancholic twist on the traditional buddy Park. The only problem is Jack can neither (where it nestled vibrantly alongside cop movie, The Guard is a guilty pleasure. cook nor swim. Enlisting Clyde and Lucy’s Edinburgh’s other festivals), to June, a The humour is dark and, at times, help, Jack decides to radically change his dramatic drop in audiences, a combination deliberately uncomfortable. Gleeson’s Boyle life to become the kind of man he feels of lack of vision, lack of ambition, bad is an unreconstructed cop without a filter, Connie deserves, Clyde teaching him to management, and one of the worst unconsciously spouting casual racism. His swim and Lucy’s chef friend teaching him to programmes in its history means that the first meeting with Cheadle’s Everett is both cook. But as Jack and Connie’s romance EIFF may well be ready for its bus pass. hilarious and mortifying; during a briefing flickers waveringly to life, their friends’ 2011’s Festival had a Producer/Director about the dealers they are after Gleeson marriage starts to implode. Amy Ryan instead of an Artistic Director. James asks ‘I thought only black fellas were drug shines as the insecure Connie and Ortiz is Mullighan has described himself as not dealers? And Mexicans?’ It’s a moment that likeable and intense as the cheerfully being a cinephile. His first act was to slash elicits as many winces of embarrassment desperate Clyde. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s and burn; cutting the Festival’s awards, as it does laughs, Gleeson going on to performance is unshowy, solid, and scaling back the number of films and axing comment ‘I’m Irish. Racism is part of our dependable. Workmanlike. An honest and popular crowd-pleasing strands, getting rid culture.’ The Guard works because of realistic portrait of loneliness and middle- of the red carpet Gala screenings, and Gleeson who dominates the film and has aged romance, Jack Goes Boating is severing ties with top entertainment PR never been better. You’re never in any doubt poignant but never quite shakes off its stage company Rogers & Cowan and with that, come the final reel, Gleeson’s Boyle roots and feels longer than its 89 minutes. multiplex chain Cineworld. No proper will do what a man’s gotta do. Far more exciting was Jose Padilha’s catalogue, almost non-existent media. And American Indie cinema’s favourite chunky pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller Elite then there were the films themselves. monkey, Philip Seymour Hoffman, finally Squad 2: The Enemy Within . Picking up While previous Artistic Director Hannah makes his directorial debut with his first where the 2007 original left off, Wagner McGill’s programmes almost felt as if they feature, Jack Goes Boating . Based on Bob Moura reprises his role as Roberto were striving for mediocrity, it’s safe to say Glaudini’s 2007 off-Broadway play for which Nascimento, commander of Rio’s Mullighan has achieved it with a mostly Hoffman won rave reviews as Jack, paramilitary police unit BOPE. After bloodily uninspiring selection of films. Top of the list, Hoffman stars again as the titular Jack, a suppressing a violent prison riot, Roberto is the Festival’s Closing Night film (only middle-aged pot-smoking slacker, drifting promoted and finds himself out of his depth, confirmed halfway through the first week), through life, isolated, his only friends forced to navigate the treacherous corridors the 3D reissue of Disney’s The Lion King . married couple Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy of power, uncovering a web of corruption First released in 1994: 17 years ago. For a (Daphne Rubin Vega) who decide it’s time linking crooked politicians, corrupt cops, festival that has traditionally showcased and Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle in The Guard . championed the most innovative, exciting, dangerous, and creative cinema from around the world, if one of your biggest films is a last-minute screening of a two decade old cartoon surely that’s got to start a few alarm bells ringing. There were some awful films ( Charlie Casanova, Fast Romance, Stormhouse, Israel’s Rabies ) and there were some good films. There just weren’t any must-see films. The Opening Night film, John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard , was a blackly comic, modern day Western set in the Wild West — of Ireland. Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) of the Galway Gardaí is a country copper whose days are spent drinking, whoring, and consuming confiscated drugs. But when a drug dealer is murdered on his patch and his new partner goes missing, Boyle unbelievably finds himself the only incorruptible cop in

572 British Journal of General Practice, September 2011 ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE David Watson, E-mail: [email protected]

supplies running low and the survivors starting to show signs of radiation sickness, tensions within the group build and alpha- male Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and his friends establish their own personal fiefdom, using fragile single mother Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette) as their personal sex slave. As the situation devolves into violence, degradation and death, only the enigmatic Eva (Lauren German) struggles to maintain any sense of decency. But when the chance of escape presents itself she finds herself forced into a vicious struggle for survival. Bleak, intense, claustrophobic and horrific, The Divide is a post-apocalyptic movie that dares to suggest that the worst thing about the Alex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus . apocalypse may be surviving it. and organised crime. Increasingly isolated mythical monsters of Scandinavian myth. The most satisfying film of the Festival, for and paranoid, Nascimento realises that the Aping the found footage-style of movies like once, however was British. Niall price of doing business in Rio may just be Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch MacCormick’s Albatross was that rarest of the assassination of himself and his family. Project , a group of film students follow the things; a genuinely funny, bittersweet, A more mature, measured film than the titular hunter as he traps the giant beasties coming-of-age tale that didn’t make you original’s rabid action thriller, Elite Squad 2 roaming the countryside. And that’s about it. want to pluck out your own eye and bat it is still more violent than a shark in a tumble And what caused the ire of our colonial around your head like a Swingball. Penned dryer, packed full of tense stand-offs and cousins? At one point the hunter asks the by first-time screenwriter, Tamzin Rafn, the violent shootouts. Moura is magnetic as the film crew if any of them are Christians as film follows teenage aspiring writer Emelia honest, incorruptible Nascimento, a shoot- true to the myths trolls can ‘smell the blood (Jessica Brown Findlay) who takes a job as a first-ask-questions-later kind of cop, and of a Christian man.’ I’m not letting any cats cleaner at the hotel owned by frustrated Padihla’s portrait of Rio is an almost out of bags by revealing that pretty soon one author Jonathan (Sebastian Koch). She Boschian vision of Hell. of the film crew has to be replaced by a befriends Jonathan’s bookish, Oxford-bound If you suffer from coulrophobia, the Muslim student. daughter Beth (Felicity Jones), irritates his irrational fear of clowns, maybe you should In times of recession the number of sci-fi dissatisfied wife (Julia Ormond) and give Alex de la Iglesia’s bonkers cult movie and horror movies hitting the screens bewitches Jonathan who’s struggling to fulfil The Last Circus a miss. Haunted by his traditionally rises exponentially, so brace the promise of his earlier bestseller. It’s clown father’s death in the Spanish Civil War yourself for the Apocalypse. From Mexico almost inevitable that the vivacious, worldly, 30 years before, shy, overweight clown we had the glacial, cerebral By Day And By yet still naïve Emelia will get involved with the Javier (Carlos Areces) finds himself drawn Night , an atmospheric fable where older writer and it’s just as inevitable that it to Natalia (the wonderfully named Carolina ecological collapse and overpopulation will all end in tears, but it’s to Rafn’s credit Bang) the acrobat girlfriend of brutal, leads to the oppressive, totalitarian that the film feels fresh and the chemistry sociopathic head clown Sergio (Antonia de government implanting an enzyme into between relative newcomer Brown Findlay la Torre). As with any de la Iglesia movie it’s each person’s DNA which regulates their and Jones is fantastic, their friendship not long before violent insanity erupts and sleep patterns, forcibly dividing the having the breathless intensity of a girl- the two warring clowns are rampaging population into day citizens and night crush. Previously seen in Downton Abbey , through the streets in full make-up toting citizens, biologically unable to meet. And Jessica Brown Findlay’s performance is a joy machine guns. The Last Circus is probably when they do …? to watch; she’s smart, funny and sexy, and, the only film you’ll see in the next year Phase 7 saw a 28 Days Later -style for once, so is a British film. featuring a machete-wielding clown taking epidemic of madness and violence hit a laid- If the Edinburgh International Film on an army of Fascists. back Argentina with a slacker barricading Festival is going to be around in 2012 it’s One of the more amusing and frustrating himself and his pregnant wife in their going to need a radical rethink and more conversations I had during the Festival was apartment as war erupts between paranoid films like Albatross. an argument in the cinema bar with a group neighbours, while French horror-meister of American students (what else?) Xavier Gens gave us The Divide , the only film David Watson, David contributes to the online film review site complaining about the inherent atheist to inspire walk-outs at this year’s Festival. FilmJuice http://www.filmjuice.com agenda of Norway’s Troll Hunter and When an unexplained nuclear attack Europe’s general anti-Christian bias. Just so destroys New York, a diverse group of Provenance you know, Troll Hunter is a mockumentary survivors sheltering in the basement of their Freely submitted; not externally peer reviewed. movie about a guy employed by the apartment building find themselves trapped Norwegian government to hunt trolls, the as the world above them collapses. With DOI: 10.3399/bjgp11X593956

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