Tag: London Film Festival

Suffragette is a worthy but overly respectable

 

As with The Imitation Game, which kicked off last year’s London Film Festival, Suffragette — another period drama — is a quintessential work of British cinema. It too tells an important story.

Instead of the huts of Bletchley Park, we find ourselves at an East End laundry circa 1913, the workplace of Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) and dozens of other industrious women.…

Don’t Grow Up is a conflicted kid torn between arthouse and genre

 

The challenge with “genre fiction” is how to to blend the recognizable tropes, the cliches even, with  new and exciting elements. Take Don’t Grow Up, the latest film from director Thierry Pouiard.

Opening at a mysterious youth facility amidst a misty forest of dark evergreens, six troubled teens find themselves abandoned and alone.…

Ryūzō and His Seven Henchmen is a bit of a rabble

 

For those among us who know him only for cult TV export Takeshi’s Castle, the news that Takeshi Kitano has just made an absurdist comedy might not be surprising.

For fans of both his double-act “Beat” persona and his work starring in/directing the resurrected Zatoichi franchise, Ryūzō and His Seven Henchmen promises cinematic mana.…

James White is a compelling study of Millennial lostness

 

James White, the film, is the directorial debut of James Mond, third member of the Borderline Collective (he worked as producer on Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene and Antonio Campos’ Simon Killer).

James White, the character, stunningly captured by Chris Abbott, is a twenty-something washout whose look recalls both Josh Hartnett and Kit Harrington.…

The Tribe envelops you in a world of silence

 

What makes a film “brave”? Is it telling a type of story that hasn’t been told before? Is it doing something innovative technically? By either definition, The Tribe is brave film-making.

The feature debut of Ukrainian writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, it takes place in a time and place where sound is, by and large, irrelevant, and features “No translation, no subtitles, no voice-over”, only sign language.…

It Follows is a brilliant, terrifying paean to the Carpenter tradition

 

Is there any genre that has defined a decade as much as horror defined the ‘80s – and visa versa, of course

From The Thing to Day of the Dead, they brought psychological insight to a form otherwise defined by B-movie schlock.…

Whiplash might be my film of the decade

 

A tense, astonishing drama about precision, obsession, and determination, Whiplash seizes you from its opening moment – a snare drum, like a quickening heartbeat, over black – to the final crash of cymbals.

Miles Teller stars as Andrew Neyman, an awkward drumming prodigy who finds himself thrown in at the deep end when he’s invited to join a band led by conductor Miles Fletcher.…

Foxcatcher is a frigid masterpiece about the pursuit of championship

 

Of all the things to confront in life, failure is perhaps the hardest.

How it reflects on us, and we on it, and our desperation to avoid it are universal facts of human existence. Foxcatcher is the second title to feature at this year’s London Film Festival that can be aptly summarized as a “psychotic coach drama” – the first being Whiplash; though the two films are in many ways polar opposites.…

Yakuza Apocalypse is a reheated V-Cinema shambles

 

What’s worse than a simply bad film? A film that utterly squanders its potential.

Director Takashi Miike’s filmography is far ranging — from the sadistic Ichi the Killer to vivid family comedy Ninja Kids!!!. With close to 100 credits to his name, a supernatural gangster film seems right up Miike’s street.…

’71 is a Greengrassian blast from the past

 

The sound of boxing over black – the thuds, the grunts, the heavy breathing – sounds very much like war.

When ’71 opens, however, our young squaddie, Gary Hook (Starred Up’s Jack O’Connell) has not been deployed to Northern Ireland, but is participating in an officially mandated bout.…