LFF

Suffragette Written by Abi Morgan Directed by Sarah Gavron UK, 2015 As the high-profile spearhead of UK film culture, the London Film Festival thrives on promoting the heritage films that its indigenous industry clings to so dearly: the historical and period dramas which keep the production designers, wardrobe wranglers and most of the Royal Shakespeare Company solvent throughout another procurement drive of Elizabethan ruffs, …

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 …

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.

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.

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:

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.

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 …

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 …