Movies

David Lean, Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears , Terrance Davies, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle

David Tennant RD Laing biopic to close Glasgow film festival

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Mad to Be Normal, about pioneering Scottish psychiatrist, also stars Michael Gambon and Elisabeth Moss

David Tennant (Broadchurch) will bring the curtain down on this year’s Glasgow film festival (GFF) with the world premiere of his latest movie about a pioneering Scottish psychiatrist.

Starring Michael Gambon, Elisabeth Moss and Gabriel Byrne, Mad to Be Normal is about the life of RD Laing, who was seen as a radical when he set up a medication-free community for psychiatric patients in London in the 1960s.

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Ridley Scott: superhero movies have no story

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Ridley Scott, the British director famous for Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and The Martian, has said he would never direct a superhero movie. Speaking to Digital Spy, Scott, 79, said the genre is “not my kind of thing”.He said he has turned down several offers. “I can’t believe in the thin, gossamer tightrope of the non-reality of the situation of the superhero,” he said [ . . . ]

Read Complete Story: Ridley Scott: superhero movies have no story | Film | The Guardian

Review: Long-delayed ‘Rum Diary’ worth the wait – KVIA

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Bruce Robinson has never topped the riotous comic miserabilism of his first film, the cult classic “Withnail and I” — he’s never even come close — but “The Rum Diary” might be considered hair of the dog after a 24-year-long career hangover. He’s back in his debauched and debunking element, which is reason enough to celebrate.

Read Full Review: Review: Long-delayed ‘Rum Diary’ worth the wait – KVIA

Pulling Focus: Withnail and I (1987)

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Pulling Focus: Withnail and I (1987)26 NOVEMBER 2016 FEATURES, REVIEWS BY SHANE SCOTT-TRAVIS

“The best British comedy ever made? Possibly. A masterpiece? Unquestionably.”– Ali Catterall, Film4

From the tender and impassioned sound of King Curtis’ live recorded cover of Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in the opening scene to the finishing drizzly goodbye by the wolf enclosure in Regent’s Park, Withnail and I is a funny, affectionate, and wistful perfection from writer/director Bruce Robinson.

While Robinson has never been a prolific filmmaker and his following films so far have proven a tad unfulfilling by comparison, nothing can temper or depreciate the strikingly idiosyncratic pleasures of his coming out party, Withnail and I. A lamentably sentimental comic chronicle of impoverished living in late-1960s Camden Town, the Swinging Sixties as presented by Robinson is a booze-fuelled, bleak and grimy place of dreggy pubs, unkempt cafes, and offensively filthy kitchens.

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