Barbara (12A)
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Dir: Christian Petzold
With: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld
Runtime: 105 minutes
SET in communist East Germany, Christian Petzold's drama will prompt inevitable comparisons with the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others. While not as exquisitely calibrated as Lives, it is just as much of a gripping watch. Nina Hoss, below, plays a doctor who has been banished, we know not why, from Berlin to the provinces. There she meets fellow medic Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld), a man with secrets of his own. Secrets are everywhere in this walled-in society, and Petzold does a grand job of teasing them out.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from tomorrow; Glasgow Film Theatre, October 12-18
The Queen of Versailles (PG)
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Dir: Lauren Greenfield
Runtime: 100 minutes
ONCE upon a time there was a female engineer who became a beauty queen, married a stupendously rich man and set about building the largest house in America with his riches. Then a little thing called the sub-prime mortgage crash happened, the financial world fell apart, and the house, once compared to a modern-day Versailles, had to be put on the market half-finished. Lauren Greenfield's film starts off strongly with a great character in Jacqueline Siegel and only becomes more jaw-droppingly engrossing as her pretty world falls apart. Truly the rich suffer too.
Cameo, Edinburgh, and Belmont, Aberdeen, October 2; Glasgow Film Theatre, October 9-10.
House at the End of the Street (15)
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Dir: Mark Tonderai
With: Jennifer Lawrence, Elisabeth Shue
Runtime: 100 minutes
JENNIFER Lawrence of Winter's Bone and The Hunger Games is playing well below her league in this by-the-numbers thriller. Elissa and her mother (Lawrence and Elisabeth Shue) move from Chicago to rent a big house, a very big house, in the country. Its only drawback: the pile next door was once the scene of a grisly crime. The predictability kicks in early on and never lets go as Lawrence, Shue and the rest of the cast go through the well-worn phases of a teen chiller. And it's not even Halloween yet. Brace yourselves for more of this to come.
All The President's Men (15)
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Dir: Alan J Pakula
With: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford
Runtime: 138 minutes
THE 1976 film that launched a million reporting careers, and won four Oscars, is given a big-screen outing to mark International Right to Know Day. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are the much prettier versions of the men, Woodward and Bernstein, whose reporting of the Watergate scandal brought down a president. As the running time of 138 minutes suggests, Alan J Pakula's political drama could have done with an editor's firm touch, but the story still roars off the page.
Tomorrow, 2.50pm, Glasgow Film Theatre.
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