CineDaily – 27 Feb: Wake In Fright, Kim Longinotto, today's reviews and more
GFF15 Audience Award
By tonight all of the films up for Glasgow Film Festival's inaugral Audience Award will have been seen at least once. Here's who we think stands a good chance of winning based on the films our reviewers have caught during GFF.
Hot Favourites (films we loved)
A Girl Walked Home Alone at Night: "As disparate as its influences are the emotions Amirpour’s languid, moody, topsy-turvy piece inspire: it’s righteous, shocking, terrifying, iconic, funny, twistedly romantic and refreshingly unpredictable."
Theeb: "Theeb is a self-contained coming-of-age adventure at its core. A tense and really quite beautiful one to boot."
Appropriate Behaviour: "Reductively described by some as a Lena Dunham knock-off, it is admittedly another entry into the hip New York twenty-something subgenre. It is also, however, a frank and very funny debut from an interesting new talent."
Steady runners (films we liked quite a bit)
Tender: "The pacing is slow and there isn’t much of a dramatic hook, but Tender’s insistence on capturing “ordinary” people simply doing good for each other is refreshing – this is not a flashy exposé, but a snapshot of a tight-knit community coming together in mutual love and support."
52 Tuesdays: "The film represents queer characters as fully human – selfish, virtuous, mundane; suffering the micro-aggressions of heteronormativity."
Life in a Fishbowl: "It’s a film of dark material with flickers of soulful hope amid its doom and gloom, and it’s these moments that help it transcend its more routine elements."
Radiator: "Radiator is a thoughtful film, though, and not without moments of lightness and beauty. It gently probes the line between companionship and dependence."
Outside bet (films we did not care for)
When Animals Dream: "In the end, however, the tone gets rather confused, not knowing whether to be an operatic tragedy, like Brian De Palma’s Carrie, or a sassy parable, like comic-horror Ginger Snaps, the two films from which When Animals Dream riffs. Arnby settles, unfortunately, on a dour and bloodless drama."
Dark Horses (films we missed)
The Wonders
Mardan
The winner will be announced at the closing gala on 1 Mar. Watch this space for the results, as well as The Skinny's own favourites and those of our readers in our CineSkinny awards roundup.
Win Tickets to Eden and Closing Gala Force Majure
Last chance to cast your vote for your favourite film at this year's Glasgow Film Festival, and you could win tickets to the closing film Force Majeure, or Mia Hansen-Løve's latest film Eden.
To find out more, click here.
Today's Highlights
Wake In Fright
Mackintosh Queen’s Cross, 9pm
Straddling the Aussie New Wave and the gritty underbelly of Ozploitation, this dizzying outback psychodrama might be one of the most terrifying examinations of warped masculinity put to film.
The Samurai
GFT, 11pm
The werewolf myth gets a queer makeover in this nightmarish thriller, as a young cop tries to stop a sword-wielding maniac’s rampage.
Love Is All
Mackintosh Queen’s Cross, 5.30pm
Kim Loginotto celebrates love on the silver screen with this intricate archive film set to Richard Hawley’s swooning score.
Film of the Day: A Girl Walks Home Alone in the Night [GFT, 8.30pm]
What we said: "As disparate as its influences are the emotions Amirpour’s languid, moody, topsy-turvy piece inspire: it’s righteous, shocking, terrifying, iconic, funny, twistedly romantic and refreshingly unpredictable."
#GFF15 VIDEOS AND INTERVIEWS
Taking Us on Journeys: Kim Longinotto: “Often I end up making a film in a really horrible place, you know, where I don't really want to go, but it's because the story is so good”
Yasmin Fedda discusses new film Queens of Syria at Glasgow Film Festival 2015
OUR REVIEWS OF TODAY'S FILMS
Electric Boogaloo: "While it’s fun revelling in Death Wish sequel shlock, more curious projects from Godard and Cassavetes that inexplicably ended up at the studio get too fleeting a look." (Read fill review...) | GFT, 8.45pm
Man From Reno: "Beautifully shot and elegantly paced, Dave Boyle’s dreamy, laconic neo-noir plays out kind of like an episode of Murder, She Wrote as filtered through the minds of the Coen brothers and Hal Hartley – which is about as high praise as you can get, really." (Read full review...) | CCA, 8.45pm
Burroughs: The Movie: "While this examination of renowned American oddball William Burroughs presents viewers with something approaching a linear narrative, its fragmented tone calls to mind the writer’s famous literary ‘cut-ups’." (Read full review...) | CCA, 6.15pm
The Falling: "Without spoiling anything, we can say that the film promises to resolve much but moves on to other themes, and we found it evocative but unsatisfactory." (Read full review...) | Grosvenor, 8.30pm
Wake in Fright: Equal parts psychological thriller and searing cultural critique, Wake in Fright depicts a world of aggressive camaraderie, treeless plains and brutal kangaroo hunts." (Read full review...) | Mackintosh Queen's Cross, 9pm