So, here goes it: Part 2 of my three-part rundown of my 2017 London Film Festival experience. Part 1 is available here.
Call Me By Your Name
A story of sex, sculpture, and self-discovery, Call Me By Your Name is the latest in a recent trend of achingly sensitive LGBT romantic dramas that seem to hold suchanallure for me.…
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.…
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.…
Okay, so, I’m just under a week into London Film Festival 2017 and, to be honest, I’m already knackered (boo hoo, woe is me, right?).
As it stands, I’ve seen thirteen films; which isn’t that many compared to previous years, but I’m struggling to find the head-space to write about any one of them.…
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.…
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.…
Sherlock Holmes was a doctor – or at least the real-life inspiration for him was, Dr. Joseph Bell; a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, at which Conan Doyle trained.
From that fertile wellspring there are, of course, innumerable adaptations, both period and modern, as well as House, weekly detective stories well-disguised as a medical procedural.…
The major PR push for Your Name is that it was and remains a smash hit in Japan, making 15 billion yen ($170 million) at the box office over only 10 weeks, a base stat only made more impressive given that it’s a major Japanese animation not from Studio Ghibli.
Say what you want about overvaulting cinematic ambitions – I’m looking at you, Terrence – it’s sometimes refreshing to see a talented filmmaker take on a simple concept and carry it off with flair and aplomb.
In the case of Free Fire, the latest from British auteur Ben Wheatley, the concept is this: the third-act shootout, with which any self-respecting crime thriller must surely culminate, instead kicks off less than twenty minutes in and occupies the rest of its ninety-minute run-time.…