The Week in Film 31 October – 7 November
Bond is most definitely back this week, still minus Q and Miss Moneypenny and full of grit and grimaces. With the trademark humour gone this is basically Bourne...again.
Halloween hits the Filmhouse on Friday with a double bill of late night screenings coinciding with their Africa in Motion festival. Highway to the Grave considers the symbiotic relationship between fundamentalist Christian evangelism and exploitation cinema while The White Darkness is a BBC documentary from 2002 focusing on Haitian Voodoo practices.
The Fall opens this week for a limited run and is well worth seeking out. Director Tarsem Singh takes us from a dreary grey hospital to stunning vistas in this unique film which has divided audiences and critics around the globe.
The first major release this week at the GFT is the acclaimed biopic Hunger from artist-turned-director Steve McQueen, based on the last six weeks in the life of Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands. Also worth seeing is Of Time and the City, a very personal look by director Terence Davies at his home town of Liverpool. Always eloquent, Davies is the perfect narrator and tour guide.
While the Cameo also screens Hunger and Of Time and the City, there’s also a week-long screening of Romance of Astrea and Celadon, a tale of love, heartbreak and cross-dressing based on the novel from 1610.
The Fall (as Edinburgh Filmhouse above) turns up in Dundee alongside new Coen Brothers feature Burn After Reading, while a restored version of the class Powell and Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death is on from Monday to Thursday.
Belmont Picturehouse, Aberdeen
Alongside Quantum of Solace, the Belmont is showing the polar opposite all week in the shape of Mamma Mia! – some solace perhaps for Bond fans still mourning the loss of Pierce Brosnan from the role of 007.