London Film Festival

DVD/Blu-ray: Shiraz

Tuesday, 13 March 2018

The subtitle of Franz Osten’s 1928 film, A Romance of India, says it all: this Indian silent film is a tremendous watch, a revelation of screen energy and visual delight. An epic love story-cum-weepie with lashings of action and intrigue thrown in,...

Best of 2017: Film

Friday, 29 December 2017

It was the night Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, those old robbers on the run, will want to forget. Thanks to a clerical error, the Oscar for Best Picture briefly ended up in the clutch of the overwhelming favourite. Then the mistake was spotted and...

LFF 2017: Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool / Professor Marston and the Wonder Women reviews - stellar turns by Annette Bening and Rebecca Hall

Saturday, 14 October 2017

Screen biographies are tricky things to pull off when the person portrayed has left behind an indelible screen presence. It was hard to love Michelle Williams dragging up for My Week with Marilyn; Grace of Monaco was far from Nicole Kidman...

LFF 2017: Mindhunter / My Generation - Fincher comes to Netflix, Caine does Swinging London

Friday, 13 October 2017

They’re all going into TV nowadays, and here amid the cinematic runners and riders at the LFF is David Fincher directing Mindhunter. It's Netflix’s new series about the FBI in the Seventies, when the Bureau was slowly starting to realise that...

LFF 2017: Blade of the Immortal / Redoubtable - Samurai slasher versus the Nouvelle Vague

Thursday, 12 October 2017

This is the 100th feature film by Takashi Miike, Japan’s fabled maestro of sex, horror and ultra-violent Yakuza flicks, and here he has found his subject in Hiroake Samura’s Blade of the Immortal manga comics. Manji (Takuya Kimura) is a veteran...

LFF 2017: Last Flag Flying review - anti-war film without a bite

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Richard Linklater’s sort-of sequel to one of the great American films of the Seventies, shown at London Film Festival, stars Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne as old Vietnam buddies reunited as America is embroiled in another...

LFF 2017: Good Time review - heist movie with standout performance by Robert Pattinson

Monday, 09 October 2017

This is not a movie to see in the front row – intrusive close-ups, hand-held camerawork, colour saturated night shots and a relentless synthesiser score all conspire to make Good Time, shown at London Film Festival, a wild ride. An unrecognisable...

LFF 2017: Journey's End review - classic play becomes cracking film

Saturday, 07 October 2017

There have been several film and TV versions of RC Sherriff’s World War One play since it debuted on the London stage in 1928, but Saul Dibb’s new incarnation, shown at London Film Festival, is testament to the lingering potency of the piece. Armed...

LFF 2017: Breathe review - overdosing on good intentions

Thursday, 05 October 2017

The curtain-raiser for the 61st London Film Festival was Breathe, not only Andy Serkis’s debut as a director, but also a film based on the family experiences of its producer, Jonathan Cavendish. It was the story of how his father Robin, a tea...

LFF 2016: Elle/Paterson

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

Paul Verhoeven directing Isabelle Huppert as a woman seemingly unfazed by a violent rape sounds a recipe for outrage. Elle (★★★★) , though, provokes in subtle, lingering, sometimes comic ways. The rape of Michele (Huppert) mostly happens off-screen...