Gillies MacKinnon

Directing

Gillies MacKinnon

Born

1948-01-08 (78)

Place of birth

Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Known for

Directing

Credits

23 titles

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gillies MacKinnon (born 8 January 1948, Glasgow) is a Scottish film director and writer. His film credits include Hideous Kinky, Small Faces and Regeneration. Description above from the Wikipedia article Gillies MacKinnon, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known for

The Last Bus poster
6.5

Widower Tom, on the recent passing of his wife Mary, uses his free bus pass to travel the length of Britain from John O'Groats in Caithness to Land's End in Cornwall, their shared birthplace, using only local buses. It's an incident-fuelled nostalgia trip and his encounters with local people make him a media phenomenon. Tom is totally unaware and to his surprise on arrival at Land’s End he’s greeted as a celebrity.

The Last Bus

2021

A Simple Twist of Fate poster
6.2

When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.

A Simple Twist of Fate

1994

Hideous Kinky poster
5.9

In 1972, disenchanted about the dreary conventions of English life, 25-year-old Julia heads for Morocco with her daughters, six-year-old Lucy and precocious eight-year-old Bea.

Hideous Kinky

1999

Whisky Galore poster
5.9

The story of the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of Todday, in the Outer Hebrides, where gloom sets in as their wartime rationing of whisky runs out. When cargo ship the SS Cabinet Minister runs aground the shrewd islanders run rings around the buffoonish English Home Guard commander Captain Waggett and conspire to hide away cases of the precious amber nectar.

Whisky Galore

2016

Torvill & Dean poster
6.7

Biopic of the British ice dancers and British, European, Olympic and World champions, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

Torvill & Dean

2018

Pure poster
6.1

A young boy trying to deal with his mother's heroin addiction befriends a waitress who helps him cope with the tough situation.

Pure

2002

Behind the camera

The Last Bus poster
6.5

Widower Tom, on the recent passing of his wife Mary, uses his free bus pass to travel the length of Britain from John O'Groats in Caithness to Land's End in Cornwall, their shared birthplace, using only local buses. It's an incident-fuelled nostalgia trip and his encounters with local people make him a media phenomenon. Tom is totally unaware and to his surprise on arrival at Land’s End he’s greeted as a celebrity.

The Last Bus

2021

A Simple Twist of Fate poster
6.2

When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.

A Simple Twist of Fate

1994

Hideous Kinky poster
5.9

In 1972, disenchanted about the dreary conventions of English life, 25-year-old Julia heads for Morocco with her daughters, six-year-old Lucy and precocious eight-year-old Bea.

Hideous Kinky

1999

Whisky Galore poster
5.9

The story of the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of Todday, in the Outer Hebrides, where gloom sets in as their wartime rationing of whisky runs out. When cargo ship the SS Cabinet Minister runs aground the shrewd islanders run rings around the buffoonish English Home Guard commander Captain Waggett and conspire to hide away cases of the precious amber nectar.

Whisky Galore

2016

Torvill & Dean poster
6.7

Biopic of the British ice dancers and British, European, Olympic and World champions, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

Torvill & Dean

2018

Pure poster
6.1

A young boy trying to deal with his mother's heroin addiction befriends a waitress who helps him cope with the tough situation.

Pure

2002

The Last of the Blonde Bombshells poster
6.9

After Elizabeth's husband dies, she begins to play her tenor saxophone again, and remembers when she was 15 and a member of the Blonde Bombshells, an all-girl (with one exception) swing band. Accompanied by the exception and urged on by her grand-daughter, Elizabeth hunts up all the old members of the band and urges them to perform, and in doing so, learns more than she knew about the band, its members, the roses on the drum set, and herself--the last of the Blonde Bombshells.

The Last of the Blonde Bombshells

2000

Tara Road poster
5.3

A grieving Connecticut mother temporarily switches houses with a woman in Dublin, Ireland.

Tara Road

2005

Regeneration poster
5.5

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two of England's most important World War I poets are sent, along with other traumatized combatants, to a rest home in order to treat their emotional troubles, caused by the psychological fatigue that suffer the soldiers fighting in the no man's land.

Regeneration

1997

The Playboys poster
6.2

A young woman, Tara Maguire (Robin Wright) scandalizes her provincial Irish village in the 1950s by having a baby out of a wedlock, and refusing to name the father. She has a rare beauty and every man in town desires her, especially Sergeant Hegarty (Albert Finney). The arrival of a dramatic troupe stirs things up even more, especially when she falls in love with one f the "Playboys", Tom Casey (Aidan Quinn).

The Playboys

1992

Castles in the Sky poster
6.0

England, while the storm clouds of Nazism menace Germany. Robert Watson Watt and a team of eccentric and brilliant meteorologists struggle to turn the mere idea of radar into a functional reality.

Castles in the Sky

2014

The Grass Arena poster
8.5

The Grass Arena is based on the autobiography of John Healy. Raised in an strongly religious family, with an abusive father, John soon learns that he has to defend himself. Growing into adulthood he takes up boxing, but soon falls victim to alcoholism. His boxing career over, John takes to the Grass Arena (the park) where he lives with other alcoholics. Prison time introduces him to a new and unexpected path.

The Grass Arena

1991

Small Faces poster
6.5

Three teenage brothers, gang-member Bobby, troubled mama's boy Alan and self-assured prankster Lex, reside in a downtrodden section of Glasgow, Scotland, circa 1968. But while Bobby and Alan are beginning to experience the power of raging hormones, the story focuses on Lex, who begins a downward spiral after he accidentally shoots the leader of Bobby's gang. Lex's cockiness and immaturity unfortunately prevent him from understanding the effect his subsequent crimes will have on both himself, and on those around him.

Small Faces

1996

Small Faces poster
6.5

Three teenage brothers, gang-member Bobby, troubled mama's boy Alan and self-assured prankster Lex, reside in a downtrodden section of Glasgow, Scotland, circa 1968. But while Bobby and Alan are beginning to experience the power of raging hormones, the story focuses on Lex, who begins a downward spiral after he accidentally shoots the leader of Bobby's gang. Lex's cockiness and immaturity unfortunately prevent him from understanding the effect his subsequent crimes will have on both himself, and on those around him.

Small Faces

1996

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Love's Sweet Song poster
5.2

Ireland's bloody 1916 Easter Uprising, the suffragette movement in England, a Zeppelin raid, and a meeting with a rising young British cabinet member named Winston Churchill become vivid vignettes in Indy's life. So too do his brief but impassioned romances with the sister of a clandestine Irish rebel, and with an English suffragette for whom the vote comes before love.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Love's Sweet Song

2000

The History of Mr Polly poster
6.7

When Alfred Polly fails to find fulfilment as a shop keeper, he leaves his wife and sets out on the open road to see where freedom leads.

The History of Mr Polly

2007

The Escapist poster
5.8

Denis Hopkins, a pilot, lives with his pregnant wife Valerie and has a comfortable lifestyle. When a gang of criminals led by the sadistic Ricky Barnes breaks into his home, he offers whatever the criminals want to protect his wife and unborn child, but the evil Ricky kills Valerie anyway. Their baby is saved, and later Barnes is arrested and sentenced to life in the maximum security prison, Sullen Voe. Denis fakes his own suicide, then assaults a police car in order to get himself arrested and sent to prison with the intention of tracking down and killing Ricky Barnes. He does not reveal his true name and is called John "What" by the prisoners and guards. Denis escapes from successive prisons, forcing his eventual transfer to Sullen Voe. When he reaches his objective, Ricky Barnes schedules a confrontation, but things do not quite turn out the way Denis had expected.

The Escapist

2002

No artwork available
8.0

A Group of unemployed Edinburgh youths embark on a recreation of Roald Amundsen's historic expedition to the South Pole.

Conquest of the South Pole

1989

No artwork available
NR

When Spanish Civil War veteran Jessie McFarlane dies, the funeral is a mockery of her life and beliefs. Caught in a family divided by politics and religion Jessie's granddaughter, Sadie, makes a stand.

Passing Glory

1986

No artwork available
NR

When Spanish Civil War veteran Jessie McFarlane dies, the funeral is a mockery of her life and beliefs. Caught in a family divided by politics and religion Jessie's granddaughter, Sadie, makes a stand.

Passing Glory

1986

Trojan Eddie poster
5.3

Trojan Eddie sells stolen goods for John Power, aging godfather of a local network of Irish gypsies, known as "travelers." Having done time rather than inform on his partner in a failed burglary, Eddie now struggles to raise his two daughters alone. Power falls for and marries traveler girl Kathleen, but when she runs off with Power's nephew Dermot — and takes the $11,000 dowry with her — Eddie must track the couple down.

Trojan Eddie

1996

Needle poster
10.0

Needle paints a harrowing picture of a Liverpool overrun by drugs, charting a young man's nightmarish descent into intravenous heroin use and AIDS and a police and political leadership incapable of the imagination or courage necessary to respond to the drug problem.

Needle

1990

No artwork available
7.3

When 16-year-old Peter suddenly loses his best friend to cancer, he breaks out of hospital and hits the road in pursuit of life, liberty and love with the first girl he meets.

Zig Zag Love

2009