- You Have Been Watching…A Woman in Winter Sometimes you stumble across a band, book or film and think ‘how did I miss that?’. Discovering Richard Jobson’s Bafta nominated 2005 film A Woman in Winter prompted me to ask that question as it’s a film that should be seen.
- You Have Been Watching…The Near Room Glasgow Noir. A surprisingly small genre. The city lends itself to the dark shadows, dodgy characters and indecipherable dialogue that noir demands. I don’t doubt that one of the reasons for Taggart’s long running success is down to the noirish qualities of the city of Glasgow.
- You Have Been Watching…Comfort and Joy I’ve looked briefly at Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy in the past, but it is a film worth considering in greater detail. Also, I wanted to concentrate on a great Scottish film set around Christmas and they are few and far between, but Comfort and Joy is just that. This is his most ‘serious’ film, dealing with […]
- You Have Been Watching…I Know Where I’m Going Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made some of the greatest films of all time such as The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus. They were known for marrying often heartbreaking stories with ground-breaking visual flourishes which stay with audiences long after they have finished viewing. I Know Where I’m Going is not one of […]
- You Have Been Watching…Aberdeen It’s been a recent theme that many of the films featured on these pages had only the briefest of visits to cinemas before being shelved. This week’s choice didn’t even make it that far. Apparently the BBFC didn’t even think it worth giving it an age certification. But the most baffling aspect of this neglect is that […]
- You Have Been Watching…Complicity For all his reasonable and affable public persona, the author Iain Banks is an angry man. At least he can be. Most of his mainstream novels have sections where this anger appears on the page and Banks lets rip at numerous targets through his characters. This anger can cover religion (The Crow Road and Whit), […]