So, here goes it: Part 1 of my three-part rundown of my 2017 London Film Festival experience. With 242 films on display, I didn’t quite get a chance to see everything – though I’m hoping to catch a few more on the Digital Viewing Library, so watch this space.…
Category: Reviews
REVIEW: The Snowman
Who butchered The Snowman?
This utterly clueless adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s bestseller fails on every conceivable level. What seems like a reliable basis for an atmospheric Nordic Noir becomes instead a trudge through rote scenarios and underdone psychology. So who is responsible?…
REVIEW: The Shape of Water & Brawl in Cell Block 99 (LFF Day 6)
Okay, so I may have skipped a few days, but both of these films were fresh in my mind and my thoughts on them actually seem to have made it onto the page in semi-presentable form.
The Shape of Water
With The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro has delivered a film that is at once a luminous love letter to ‘50s sci-fi and a pricking commentary on prejudice.…
REVIEW: Battle of the Sexes & The Meyerowitz Stories (LFF Days 2-3)
Battle of the Sexes
The real-life Battle of the Sexes, the 1973 tennis match between women’s world champion Billie Rae King and former men’s champion Bobby Riggs, is an event that might well have been conceived with dramatisation in mind.
To say that the film version, co-directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), in a populist, mainstream sports biopic takes nothing away from it.…
REVIEW: The Death of Stalin
What do we do when life imitate art to the extent that it renders art redundant?
Well, in short, you look for relevancy elsewhere.
With Trump still in the White House and Brexit still apparently going ahead, the world is too absurd in itself to get much mileage out of trying to take it further.…
REVIEW: Mudbound & Wonderstruck (LFF Day 2)
Mudbound
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of sorrow.”
It’s misery and anguish that are the heart of Mudbound, Dee Rees’ Netflix-bound period drama about farmers in early 20th Century Mississippi.…
REVIEW: Breathe (LFF Day 1)
Breathe is a film about which it’s easy to be cynical.
The directorial debut of Andy Serkis, the film was commissioned by Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios co-founder John Cavendish as a tribute to his father, disability advocate Robin. As such, it seems designed to squeeze every breath of uplift you from Robin’s already inspirational story.…
NETFLIX HORROR DOUBLE BILL: Gerald’s Game & Cult of Chucky
Gerald’s Game
2017 may be remembered as the year we remembered how to adapt Stephen King.
We’ve even figured out how to do a quality ’90s-style Stephen King miniseries; specifically by getting rid of the sprawl.
Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) take a romantic weekend away in a last-ditch attempt to recover the spark in their marriage.…
REVIEW: Borg Vs McEnroe
The second Curzon film I’ve seen this month to deal with the impossibility of finding satisfaction in a chosen pursuit Swedish production Borg Vs McEnroe seeks to add a touch of psychological depth to the public personas of the legendary tennis rivals.…
REVIEW: Kingsman: The Golden Circle
When, in 1977, Carly Simon sang “Nobody Does It Better” in reference to Britain’s favourite secret agent, 007, she couldn’t have foreseen the coming of Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton).
While the idea of a working-class lad OHMSS had been covered in slightly more low-key form of Harry Palmer, Matthew Vaughn’s comic-book-inspired Kingsman: The Secret Service was the first to do so while embracing the fundamental silliness of the whole super-spy concept.…