My brief trip to the Edinburgh Film Festival came to an end Friday evening, as I hopped on a bus to Glasgow for a weekend with friends — sadly, that means I missed Tilda Swinton’s flashmob dance event, but I’m waving my right hand in the air as I type. It’ll have to do.
I had planned to do a separate post for each of my final two days at the fest, but the notable films from that period can be squeezed into a single roundup. It’s perhaps kinder not to dwell on the likes of Britfilm “The Kid” — a paperback misery memoir put to film that bottoms out with Natascha McElhone trying to out-monster Mo’Nique in National Health glasses and oddly well-conditioned hair — while some titles are already old news Stateside.
I dipped into Icelandic director Dagur Kári’s “The Good Heart,” for example, to see if the critical pounding US critics gave it in April was justified. Alas, it was: after this and “The Extra Man” (easily the worst film I saw here) Paul Dano should be wary of any script that calls on him to shack up with batty old codgers in Manhattan. Thankfully, my final day provided me with two of my favorite discoveries of the week, a happy conclusion to a cheerily-run festival that has been needlessly mauled in certain media quarters.