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BFI London Film Festival 2015 – Top Ten Films To Watch
After a decade of attending the prestigious high profile BFI London Film Festival this might be strongest line-up yet, with a particular emphasis on female narratives and performance supported by the BAFTA academy and organisers. With over 238 films representing 71 countries the selection can seem overwhelming so here’s my pick of the ones to watch next […] More
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‘Fury’, ‘Foxcatcher’, ‘Mr. Turner’ headline BFI 58th London Film Festival 2014
[via the BFI] The programme for the 58th BFI London Film Festival launched today, with Festival Director Clare Stewart presenting this year’s rich and diverse selection of films and events. The lineup includes highly anticipated fall titles including David Ayer’s Fury, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, the Sundance smash Whiplash, Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language 3D, The […] More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ’12 Years A Slave’ a milestone piece of work from Steve McQueen
In 1853, Solomon Northup published his memoir 12 Years A Slave, a story of how a black man born free in New York was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and for a dozen years worked on various plantations around Louisiana just before the American Civil War. Acclaimed British artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen has now brought this extraordinary tale to the big screen, following his physically harrowing films Hunger and Shame, in what is more than a mere film but a cultural milestone in the representation of slavery, a major work that is spearing in its intensity, incandescent in its soul. More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ restoration a noir triumph
The Lady from Shanghai Written and directed by Orson Welles USA, 1947 Long before the likes of Brangelina dominated the Hollywood gossip columns, figures such as Hedda Hooper and Louella Parsons were the all-powerful industry matriarchs whose withering wit could make or break film careers. The tumultuous romance between Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth on […] More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ‘The Zero Theorem’ a cacophonous, incoherent dirge from Terry Gilliam
In 1983, the final Monty Python film, The Meaning Of Life, was released with a rather ambitious title and intent to discover, well, the meaning of life. Thirty years later, and Terry Gilliam returns to these enterprising realms with his new film The Zero Theorem, a codex volcanic in enthusiasm yet insipid at its core. Terry does good press: he barks an intriguing sound bite, citing that his latest ode to chaos is an “impossible look at nothing,” which is certain to prick the interest of existentialists everywhere. More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ‘The Double’ an ambitious and darkly funny second feature
The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been well served by cinema, especially his major works Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, all of which have received numerous adaptations throughout the decades. The latter was lavished with a recent Estonian take, after receiving a Japanese decoding by Kurosawa no less, as well as Indian and (naturally) Soviet versions. It has taken until 2013 for a filmmaker brave enough to approach Dostoyevsky’s binary second novel; there is a certain numerical sense of doubling, since Richard Ayoade has decided to allocate his second film as The Double, an ambitiously promising plea following Submarine back in 2010. More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ‘Nebraska’ boasts a grizzled, irascible performance from Bruce Dern
Venerable Woody Grant (a grizzled Bruce Dern) has a singular purpose in mind, to get from his adopted Montana home to neighbouring Nebraska to collect a million-dollar cheque that a suspiciously speculative postal disclaimer has promised to honour. Elderly and suffering with decaying mental functions, Woody clearly can’t see through the marketing scam, and his wife Kate (June Squibb) and son David (Will Forte) grow increasingly exasperated at his dangerous footbound expeditions before arriving at a mutual solution: More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013: ‘All Cheerleaders Die’ a gleeful but meek horror film
Opening with pom-pom twirling, head-splitting glee, All Cheerleaders Die arrives on British shores after a cartwheeling through the North American festival circuit, including a prestigious slot in this year’s Midnight Madness strand of the Toronto International Film Festival. Ostensibly a remake of their 2001 film of the same name, directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson owe a debt of gratitude to the black heart of Heathers and the quippy, macabre banter of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with this gruesome yarn about a high school seeking a new head cheerleader after the previous sneering matriarch is dispatched during a freak turf-side accident. More
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BFI London Film Festival 2013 – Programme Announcement
The programme for the 57th BFI London Film Festival was recently announced, with the BFI’s Head of Cinemas and Festivals, Clare Stewart, returning for her second year with a rich and diverse group of international films and events from established and upcoming talent over a 12-day celebration of cinema. The Festival will screen 234 fiction […] More
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Terence Davies ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ to close LFF
The London Film Festival announced that Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play The Deep Blue Sea, will close out this years festival. The movie marks a return to fiction movie-making for Davies after his documentary Of Time and the City took Cannes by storm in 2008. Davies is responsible for a number of great […] More
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London Film Festival 2009: In Loco Parentis
Cracks Directed by Jordan Scott The opening scene of Cracks is very Madchen in Uniform, as the innocent 1930s school girls stuck on a remote English island sing their hymns, awaiting the arrival of the figurehead: Miss G, the striking, eyeliner-wearing cool teacher, the one the girls all have a pash for, especially head girl […] More