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In the words of James McAvoy Filth is a “bold, brave, controversial and a rare and precious film in English speaking cinema.” One could almost be mistaken for thinking that Scotland’s leading man was referring to his own performance, if it were not for that one singular word “film.” Every great actor at the mention of their name has that one singular film that immediately comes to mind, or in the case of Robert de Niro a handful of films that can spark a furious impassioned debate amongst red-blooded cineastes. For James McAvoy the character is Bruce Robertson; the film Filth.

Whilst in my introduction to Jon S. Baird’s interview I stated that Filth “delivered a shock to the system, and shook up the cinematic social consciousness with a bold and courageous piece of filmmaking.” Equally McAvoy’s full blooded performance delivered the same shock and shakes that...

Sacha Baron Cohen's film joins Team America and The Producers in depicting despots as one-dimensional buffoons. But why are we obsessed with satirising tyrants – and is it right to find them funny?

Ever since His Excellency Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen, self-styled beloved oppressor and chief ophthalmologist of the People's Republic of Wadiya, inadvertently spilled Kim Jong-il's ashes over Ryan Seacrest's tux outside the Oscars, the world has had to deal with some pretty awkward questions.

What is it with our obsession with satirising dictators? Was Aristotle correct when he suggested that the right genre for dramatising bad men is comedy not tragedy, or should it be beneath us to find power-crazed nutjobs funny? Why can't Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Aladeen (slogan: "Death To The West!") in the upcoming movie The Dictator, find some tougher targets? If it was wrong of the Sun to mock Roy Hodgson for his inability to pronounce rs,...

He spent five years on a script and then walked away. He was thrown off a publicity tour for ruining The Road's Oscar chances. Writer Joe Penhall tells Mark Lawson why truculence works

Childbirth is a common metaphor for artistic creation and, in the recent experience of the dramatist Joe Penhall, the two have blurred. "One night, I said to my wife: 'Guess what? I've just finished a play.' And she said: 'Guess what? I'm pregnant."

The child was their first, a son; the play, his ninth, is Haunted Child, opening at the Royal Court in London next week. As Penhall wryly notes, these days the gestation of a theatre production is somewhat longer than a pregnancy (because of waiting for stages, actors and directors to become free), and while waiting for Haunted Child to drop, there was time for a second son and another play. Birthday will...

This week's news in the arts

When President Assad or Colonel Gaddafi watches Star Wars – which surely sometimes happens – whatever do they make of it? Do they tut and nod about the sad necessity of Darth Vader's strong leadership, and the difficulty of finding a good henchman nowadays? I ask because, among the many stories told about dictators (usually by men), very few are on the tyrant's side.

By far the largest group are the biographies and based-ons. George Orwell neither fooled anybody, nor tried to, with his meticulous allegory of Stalin's Russia, Animal Farm. Unusually, the book begins with a dictator's overthrow, when farmer Jones is defeated, then shows Napoleon the pig's slow progress towards becoming his replacement.

Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler in Downfall has become perhaps the most memorable performance in the category, thanks partly to its brilliance, but mostly to its aptness for revision on YouTube.

This year two British directors are turning the traditional Roman epic on its head by transferring it to the same boggy patch of Roman British history

Sweaty, leather-clad beefcakes slugging it out with ferocious barbarians; glamorous Roman ladies, exquisite but merciless, dripping with jewels; the quiver of a jaunty coxcomb atop a shining helmet – for the filmgoer, this is the familiar world of the sword-and-sandals movie. But this year, two British directors are doing something different with that familiar material: Neil Marshall and Kevin Macdonald transport it into the mud, rain and bogginess of northern England and Scotland to tackle stories about Britain's past as the northernmost province of Rome's empire.

Marshall – best known for the horror movie The Descent – is the writer-director of Centurion, a bloodfest starring Michael Fassbender and Dominic West, which is released later this month. In 117Ad, the year Hadrian becomes emperor, the Ninth Legion is...

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Director Kevin Macdonald introduced the Telluride screening of "The Last King of Scotland" by saying, "It's my first feature. Please be gentle." But there's little need for gentleness. Much of "Scotland" is an extraordinary piece about naivete caught up short in terrible events. Boxoffice looks substantial in sophisticated urban venues in North America.

Young Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) actually is beyond naive. He is criminally reckless and unaware of the world he has chosen to enter. When he finishes medical school, he spins the globe in his bedroom to decide where he will seek his fortune. Garrigan's finger lands on Uganda, and by coincidence, he gets there the very day in 1970 that Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) seizes power.

While many white British immediately understand the potential danger to themselves and to Uganda, young Garrigan's first response is to have a quick fling with a black Ugandan woman who shares his seat on the bus. In another rash moment, Garrigan accepts Amin's offer to become his personal physician, which leads Garrigan deep into the morass of the horror Amin unleashes upon his own people.

Macdonald, with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, has a terrific eye for detail and motion. The early rollicking scenes as Garrigan arrives in Uganda are loaded with color, dancing, fast-moving events and music. Then the color grows ever more somber, while lines and shapes become more regular and ominous as the story continues. Eventually, the film turns into a thriller -- can Garrigan escape both Amin's insanity and his own folly before he, too, falls to Amin's murderous insanity?

"Scotland" has pace and wit; it is brainy and visceral at the same time. Amin is simultaneously absurd and dangerous, as the wild dictator bests friends and colleagues at swimming by starting before the gun goes off. He arrays himself and his troops in kilts to celebrate some private notion of Scottishness, and a bizarre lingering affection for the European colonial powers.

But the core of the film presents problems. Macdonald, working from a novel by Giles Foden, falls into the trap that claims too many white filmmakers who want to film other kinds of people. The movie tries to bring home the horror of Amin's regime by showing the trials of a white character. All over Uganda, Amin's henchmen are murdering his often-imagined enemies, mostly black people, including Garrigan's friends and lover. But the character whose pain matters most to the movie is Garrigan's. It puts the film out of balance.

You can see the film struggle to resolve this dilemma, but the result is confusion at the end. The thriller side of the movie takes over, while the lively questions about Garrigan's responsibility for his own ignorance fade away. An imaginative and original picture turns conventional as it ends.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Fox Searchlight

Fox Searchlight Pictures, DNA Films and FilmFour present in association with the U.K. Film Council and Scottish Screen a Cowboy Films/Slate Films production

Credits:

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Screenwriters: Peter Morgan, Jeremy Brock

Based on a novel by: Giles Foden

Producers: Andrea Calderwood, Lisa Bryer, Charles Steel

Executive producers: Tessa Ross, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich

Director of photography: Anthony Dod Mantle

Production designer: Michael Carlin

Music: Alex Heffes

Costume designer: Michael O'Connor

Editor: Justine Wright

Cast:

Nicholas Garrigan: James McAvoy

Idi Amin: Forest Whitaker

Nigel Stone: Simon McBurney

Sara Zach: Gillian Anderson

MPAA rating R

Running time -- 121 minutes...

LONDON -- Oscar-winning documentary director Kevin Macdonald's first feature, The Last King of Scotland, will open the 50th edition of the Times BFI London Film Festival, organizers said Wednesday. Billed as a European premiere, Macdonald's movie will unspool Oct. 18 in the event's opening gala slot. Based on the award-winning novel by Giles Foden, the movie stars Forest Whitaker as the tyrannical Ugandan President Idi Amin, alongside a cast that includes James McAvoy and Gillian Anderson. Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock adapted the book for the screen.

LONDON -- Oscar-winning documentary director Kevin Macdonald's first feature, The Last King of Scotland, will open the 50th edition of the Times BFI London Film Festival, organizers said Wednesday. Billed as a European premiere, Macdonald's movie will unspool Oct. 18 in the event's opening gala slot. Based on the award-winning novel by Giles Foden, the movie stars Forest Whitaker as the tyrannical Ugandan President Idi Amin, alongside a cast that includes James McAvoy and Gillian Anderson. Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock adapted the book for the screen.

Kerry Washington will star opposite Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, a political drama that that Kevin Macdonald is directing for Fox Searchlight. Set in the 1970s, King is based on Giles Foden's award-winning novel that blends history and fiction. It centers on a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who, though a twist of fate, becomes the personal physician of the then-new president of Uganda (Whitaker). Washington will portray one of Amin's wives. The project was developed for several years by Film Four, and is being financed by Film Four and DNA.