ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies BRITISH audiences have a never-ending fascination with films that capture the private lives of public figures. When that figure is a member of the Royal family, the mixture is even more irresistible. The Young Victoria is a genteel but very engaging costume drama charting all the pressures on a woman […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies WHO WOULD want to be a teacher these days? The number of times that question is asked seems to increase in direct proportion to our perception that young people are unruly, unambitious and ungovernable. The Class (Entre Les Murs) is a fascinating blurring of fact and fiction that takes us […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies CLINT EASTWOOD has hinted that Gran Torino might be his last film as an actor. He will be 79 this year and there are fewer and fewer scripts that attract his interest. If this is his swansong then it couldn’t be a better one. Gran Torino is a powerful melodrama […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies IT IS twelve years since Biggie Smalls was shot dead in Los Angeles. Notorious makes no attempt to discover who pulled the trigger. Instead, it offers a well-made but traditional biography charting Biggie’s rise from a drug-dealer on the streets of Brooklyn to one of the defining voices of rap […]

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 6 February 2009

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, January 2009

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies RICHARD YATES is one of the great American novelists of the 20th century who died in relative obscurity in 1982. His reputation has grown as more people have discovered a body of work that examines all the broken hopes and shattered lives of people who felt betrayed by the American […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies HARVEY MILK was the first openly gay man elected to a significant political office in America. Just like Barack Obama, he became a symbol of hope for people who believed in America as a land where all men were created equal and where anything was possible. Eleven months after he […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies TWENTY years ago Mickey Rourke was considered one of the biggest movie stars of his generation. So much has changed since then. In the 1990s, Rourke seemed to press the self-destruct button on his career when he turned his back on Hollywood to pursue the life of a professional boxer. […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies OVER THE past few months, Slumdog Millionaire has been earning a reputation as the little film that is good enough to take on the world. The reputation is entirely justified. The tale of a Mumbai slum orphan turned potential millionaire has all the richness and detail of a Charles Dickens […]