From other films Herald reviewers have had a chance to see before their official festival screenings, here are some strong recommendations:
Magnolia
It's not often you see the likes of Tom Cruise in a festival film. But Cruise's is just one remarkable performance among many that director Paul Thomas Anderson
(Boogie Nights) conjured from the ensemble of his ambitious and brilliantly unwieldy epic (it's three hours long) about a group of Los Angeles residents whose lives interconnect through family, death and the occasional remarkable coincidence.
The Cup
Set in a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan, this charming and wry film about a group of young Tibetan monks obsessed with the 1998 World Cup soccer tournament offers a window into a world of ritual and refugees. You'll learn more about Tibetan Buddhism from this little gem than from Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun combined.
The Filth and the Fury
Or how the Sex Pistols quickly became the scourge of Britain. This documentary by Julien Temple - who also did the earlier Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle - delivers previously unseen footage, an engrossing interview with Sid Vicious, questions the remaining band members, lays on plenty of filth and fury, punk style.
High Fidelity
Festival fare can often forget that white, English-speaking, happily heterosexual blokes are people too. The inclusion of the adaptation of Nick Hornby's touchstone book about love and record collecting makes some amends. And we're pleased to report that its Americanisation from London to Chicago - with John Cusack in the lead - has worked out nicely.
Les Enfants du Marais
A sunlit memoir of childhood in the French countryside, this is the ideal balm for souls lashed by winter rain. Delicious in every way.
A Pornographic Affair
Or Une Liaison Pornographique if you're suggesting it to someone as a date. Essentially, this French two-hander is a beguiling chamber piece about how a triste between two Parisians (Nathalie Baye and Sergi Lopez) turns to something deeper. Sexy in a clothes-on kind of way.
American Psycho
Mary Harron's take on Brett Easton Ellis' controversial novel is fast, funny and as stylish as hell, driven by an incandescent performance by Christian Bale as the muscular and murderous master of the universe.
East West
Big-screen and big-hearted French moviemaking from Regis Wargnier the director of Indochine, this story of repatriated Russians betrayed by Stalin is a Cold War epic and love story which was Oscar-nominated.
Rear Window
Among the vintage flicks in this year's programme, we pick this restored Hitchcock suspense classic about how spying on the neighbours will get you into trouble. It plays a sparkling romantic comedy, too, with Jimmy Stewart's wheelchair-bound photographer musing on commitment problems with Grace Kelly's social butterfly in between developing a fixation about goings-on in the next apartment building.
The Feathers Of Peace
Barry Barclay's intelligent and gripping documentary about the extermination of the Moriori and the suppression of their story stands tall among a clutch of excellent documentaries.
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<i>Film Festival:</i> Pick of the peaks
From other films Herald reviewers have had a chance to see before their official festival screenings, here are some strong recommendations:
Magnolia
It's not often you see the likes of Tom Cruise in a festival film. But Cruise's is just one remarkable performance among many that director Paul Thomas Anderson
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