GEORGINA COBURN catches up with MATT LLOYD, Coordinator of the Rural Cinema North Project and creator of the Virtual Film Club website for the north of Scotland

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies THE SMOKING BAN has brought a breath of fresh air to Scottish life. An evening at the pub or a meal out no longer entails a foggy atmosphere or the risk of cancer. It is a definite blow against the evil of cigarettes. The tobacco industry isn’t about to stand […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies THERE IS NO escaping the World Cup. Documentaries and dramas crowd the television schedules and every commercial seems to have some link to the beautiful game. If you are hoping to take refuge in the cinema then football rears its ugly head here too. The best of the films on […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies RICHARD E GRANT is the latest star to make a successful transition from actor to filmmaker. Based on incidents from his own life, “Wah Wah” is an affectionate, keenly observed portrait of a volatile father/son relationship set in Swaziland at the last gasp of the British Empire in the late […]

KATHY HUBBARD is steeling herself to help spend £7 million of public money.

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies JUST LIKE the central character of the delusional Harlan Fairfax Carruthers, ‘Down In The Valley’ is a film with the best of intentions. It doffs its hat to landmark American cinema of the 1970s like ‘Badlands’ and ‘Taxi Driver’, and gives Edward Norton one of his best roles in some […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies THE SCOTS have such a passion for football that it’s hard to imagine a country where the game isn’t considered a matter of life and death. You only have to travel back to America in the 1960s to discover a country where it was a matter of complete indifference. One […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies FRENCH DIRECTOR Francois Ozon is fascinated by death and how we cope with mortality. He claims that the much-admired ‘Under The Sand’ with Charlotte Rampling was the first film in a trilogy about death. The second film is ‘Time To Leave’, a sombre, elegantly handled tale of a young man’s […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies THERE ARE some music fans who consider Daniel Johnston to be a genius. He struggles to play an instrument. His voice is an acquired taste. His lyrics sound like the kind of thing Phoebe might have written in the tv comedy ‘Friends’. Despite all those drawbacks, there is a raw […]

ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies IT IS MORE than twenty years since Sam Shepard and Wim Wenders collaborated to such memorable effect on ‘Paris, Texas’. Expectations were high for their belated reunion on ‘Don’t Come Knocking’, but the film hardly seems the work of the same people. The dialogue is stilted, the performances are awkward, […]