Gareth Edwards’ low-budget post-apocalyptic thriller, Monsters, hits UK cinemas after nine long months on the road at festivals from South By Southwest to Edinburgh. A brooding, even-paced road movie with a love story at its core, it takes place six years after a NASA space probe carrying extraterrestrial lifeforms back to Earth broke up on re-entry, scattering its alien cargo across Central America, where the creatures have now made their home.

We follow Andrew (Scoot McNairy) and Samantha (Whitney Able), a photographer and the daughter of his editor, as they attempt to make their way through the infected zone back to America when all other routes to their homeland are cut off. Shot in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala by a crew of four, the authentically dilapidated locations together with Edwards’ computer generated effects, which include the tentacled CGI creatures that seem to glow and pulsate with energy, give the film an atmosphere of serene gloaming. Unique, adventurous and hard-to-define, Monsters is guerilla filmmaking at its best.

Monsters is released in UK cinemas this Friday, 3 December.

Jacques Tati’s character Monsieur Hulot was France’s answer to Charlot (their fond nickname for Charlie Chaplin) in the 1950s. If you’ve seen The Illusionist (Chomet, 2009) you’ve been introduced to Monsieur Hulot in animated form. The incongruously tall raincoat-clad clown with a hunched gait is the uncle-like protagonist of Tati’s seminal films Playtime and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Les Vacances de M. Hulot). Both films have been re-released by the BFI on DVD and Blu-Ray with immersive extras.

Monsieur Hulot’s fantastical modernist world is filled with machines, overturned social conventions and futuristic portholes. His bumbling charm causes inadvertent and hilarious chaos wherever he steps in a precise pantomime that achieves boffo levels for the first time since James Agee lamented its death in his essay Comedy’s Greatest Era.

The new release of Playtime is complemented with extras including a rare audio interview with Tati, a short biographical film, and both DVDs include alternative ‘international’ soundtracks revised by Tati himself.

Both titles are available for pre-order from the BFI Filmstore & Amazon UK, and are released this Monday, 29 November.

Last week I interviewed Gareth Edwards, director of Monsters, for Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Click here to read it.

Monsters is released in UK cinemas on Friday 3rd December.

This weekend I hopped on a train to Sheffield to check out its 2010 Doc/Fest. A dynamic festival with its audience in mind, Doc/Fest has bucket-loads of charm and more free goodies than you can shake a stick at.

A filmmakers' festival through-and-through, Doc/Fest showcases some of the best documentaries you'll find on the market this year. It also provides distribution opportunities to documentarians, hosting a Meet Market that becomes more saturated each year.

Special guest Joan Rivers opened the festival with her year-in-the-life documentary, A Piece of Work. Directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg followed Rivers for 14 months, documenting her life through a tough period of playing daytime casino gigs, through touring with her play A Work in Progress, and finally celebrating a surge of popularity upon winning Celebrity Apprentice. The tenacious comedienne is as feisty in real life as she is on screen, as she appeared for a Q&A session with the audience after the second screening on Friday night. Most questions were about her family life and former manager, which were not answered in the film. Stern cited the transition from editing to appearing at Sundance as the point where they lost footage about Joan's family life. Joan declared her love for her gay fans, stating that, "If I look out at the front row and there are 4 gay guys there, I know it's going to be a good night." At 75 years old, her no-shit taking attitude and honesty about using comedy as a coping mechanism breaks the illusion of Rivers the old, plastic surgery obsessed comedienne.

I also caught an in person with director Kevin MacDonald (Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void). The Scotsman is marking his return to documentary with Life in a Day, a collaborative project in which amateur filmmakers the world over were invited to document their life and upload short videos to YouTube on 24th July 2010. Now in the process of editing the film, MacDonald was joined by editor Joe Walker to discuss the project. Led by interviewer Stuart Cosgrove, the director discussed the film's inspirations from the mass-observation movement of the 1930s through Russian film Ana 6 to 18.

We enjoyed an exclusive look at the assembly cut of the opening 10 minutes. Contains clips from around 550 participants MacDonald described his authorial position as one of curation; not making a path through theta jungle with a machete but finding avenues through the available footage. He sees the participants as cinematographers, he says, but it is a collaborative project which he helms as director. MacDonald admits there are flaws. For example, they dispatched 470 low-budget cameras tooter 50 underdeveloped countries, but failed to follow through in helping the contributors to understand the aims of the project and how to best document their day. Nevertheless, the film so far features clips from countries around the world. Life in a Day will premiere in the [experimental section of] Sundance, followed by a brief period of art-house distribution before finally becoming available to download on YouTube.

Along with an excellent selection of films and in sessions, Sheffield Doc/Fest had a whole host of amazing parties, including an 80s Roller Disco and the biggest dinner party I have ever attended.

Paving its way as a friendly, young, and vibrant film festival for filmmakers and enthusiasts alike, next year's Doc/Fest will take place in June, so mark it in your calendars as the perfect warm-up for Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Friends of mine have been recommending The Beach to me for years. I avoided the film with the intention of reading it first, and having picked up a copy on Bookmooch during a manic period of book-swapping, this sat on my shelf for a long time. My timing couldn't have been better, though, as it kept me engrossed for a 6-hour train ride to London.

The Beach is narrated by Richard, a 20-something English traveller in Thailand. He meets a mentally unstable Scotsman named Daffy who raves on about a paradisical beach, to which he provides a map. Intrigued, Richard takes a French couple along with him on his mission to find it.

Though often dark, Garland's prose is fresh and engaging with modest flourishes that never detract from the story. Capturing idyllic vistas and tense action scenes, the characters are well-drawn and unabashedly defined by their status, relationships, and how they are perceived by other characters. It's an absorbing and often thrilling read.

Book #37: ★★★★★