The Imposter (15)
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Dir: Bart Layton
Running time: 98 minutes
A WORD of mouth hit at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Bart Layton's picture is the documentary gift that keeps on giving (pictured below). The tale starts in Spain with a lost boy identified as an American youngster who went missing years before. Layton traces the story from there as relatives are contacted and arrangements made to fly the teenager home. Through clever use of flashbacks, reconstructions and talking heads, the film builds its tale inch by fascinating inch. Every documentary these days seems to need a tale weirder than fiction to stand out, and Layton has found a doozy.
The Watch (15)
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Dir: Akiva Schaffer
With: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn
Running time: 101 minutes
IF ever there was a film so unfunny it should be featured on Crimewatch for offences against comedy it's this romp about a neighbourhood watch scheme. Ben Stiller plays the leader of a pack of middle-aged men in a small American town being hit by a wave of strange deaths. Together with Vince Vaughn (last witnessed being funny in 1987), Jonah Hill (on probation) and Richard Ayoade (all but ruining his reputation from the IT Crowd), Stiller mugs and chugs his way through lines that fall flat and gags that couldn't fly if they had propellers attached. Lazy and indulgent, it's about as funny as being burgled while you are away on holiday.
Out Monday, August 27.
Planet of Snail (N/C 8+)
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Dir: Seung-Jun Yi
Running time: 87 minutes
YOUNG-Chan and Soon-Ho are just like any other young South Korean couple, juggling the day-to-day business of studying and working with running a home together. In this instance, however, he is deaf and blind and she has a spinal disability. Seung-Jun Yi's documentary treats their situation as they do – as something not to be dismissed lightly, but nothing to make too much of a fuss about. A subtle, moving film that ends up being as much about the give and take involved in making a marriage work as it is about disability.
Glasgow Film Theatre, August 27-30.
Eames: The Architect and The Painter (12A)
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Dirs: Jason Cohn, Bill Jersey
Running time: 84 minutes
JASON Cohn and Bill Jersey's documentary opens with a shot of that chair before going on to show that the Eames, Charles and his wife Ray, were so much more than the designers of cool furniture. The architecture school dropout (Charles) and the "painter who rarely painted" (Ray) were merchants of style who turned their hands to everything from designing dining chairs to crafting the corporate identities of IBM, Polaroid and the like. As one contributor says, they gave shape to America's 20th century. There's a lot of detail here for design junkies, rather too much sometimes, but just as interest begins to flag the film begins to look beyond the brand to the individuals who made the partnership so enduring.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, August 24-27.
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