Spike Island Written by Chris Coghill Directed by Mat Whitecross UK, 2013 Are you ‘mad’ for it? Up for getting on ‘one’, boshing a few pills, caning a few spliffs and tripping the light fantastic? That’s the nostalgic premise of Spike Island, the new film of Mat Whitecross (previously known for the admired Ian Dury bio-pic Sex & …
Robot & Frank Directed by Jake Schreier Written by Christopher D. Ford Starring Frank Langella, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, Peter Sarsgaard The near future, and aging grouch Frank (Frank Langella, superb) is slipping into the early stages of dementia. When his son Hunter (James Marsden) visits and finds his father living in a state of …
Grassroots Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal Written by Stephen Gyllenhaal & Justin Rhodes Starring Jason Bigs, Joel David Moore, Lauren Ambrose, Cobie Smulders, Cedric The Entertainer In a break from tradition the London Film Festival has grouped its numerous screenings into themed strands for the first time this year, with permeating titles such as ‘love’, ‘comedy’, ‘cult’ and …
Amour Directed by Michael Haneke Written by Michael Haneke Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert Love is a many splendored thing, and never was the promise of ‘until death do us part’ more ruthlessly examined that in Amour, one of the most highly anticipated films of this years London Film Festival. Taking the prestigious Palme D’Or …
Tomorrow Directed by Andrey Gryazev Written by Andrey Gryazev Starring Vor, Kozlenok, Kasper Sokol The London Film Festival, like it’s host city is a cosmopolitan blend of nationalities and creeds, featuring films culled from a vivacious variety of styles and genres, from countries pole to pole. One of the more left-field prospects in this years programme …
Antiviral Written by Brandon Cronenberg Directed by Brandon Cronenberg USA, 2012 It can’t be easy growing up in the shadow of your critically lauded father, especially if you harbour the same artistic ambitions to express yourself through an identical communicative medium, telling tales that can either frighten and terrify, to provoke glee or grins, a striving for …
Doomsday Book Written by Kim Jee-Woon & Yim Pil-Sung Directed by Kim Jee-Woon & Yim Pil-Sung South Korea, 2012 The triumvirate anthology film gets a welcome revival in this South Korean horror / SF hybrid picture, with a mixture of social criticism thrown in for oriental larks. After filming two segments of the tale back in …
West Of Memphis Directed by Amy Berg With Peter Jackson, Henry Rollins, Eddie Vedder In 1993 the small town of West Memphis in Arkansas was rocked by the horrific triple murder of three eight year old boys. Stripped naked, trussed and bound, one of them had been subjected to a severe sexual assault before being beaten …
Room 237 Directed by Rodney Ascher With Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns It’s inevitable really. Whenever you get a gaggle of film fanatics together soon the impenetrable argot of a celluloid subculture will come to the fore, with fiery debates on the merits of diagetic sound or Academy ratios, dolly zooms and chiaroscuro lighting …
Zaytoun Directed by Eran Riklis Written by Nader Rizq Starring Stephen Dorff, Alice Taglioni, Ashraf Barhom, Abdallah El Akal If you like me you sometimes despair of the power of cinema, or how a single inept, obviously inciteful piece of so called ‘film’ is able to inflame a portion of the world to murderous violence then …
L’enfant d’en haut Directed by Ursula Meier Written by Antoine Jaccoud & Ursula Meier Starring Kacey Mottet Klien, Lea Seydoux, Gillian Anderson Channeling the social anxieties of the Dardenne Brothers with a nod to the political posturing of ultra-realist Ken Loach, Ursula Meier’s second feature is a distanced, distracting fable on the modern family structure. Like her 2008 debut Home the simply titled …
“An existential comedy with a skewed vision of the cult of celebrity, Somewhere knows where it is, and those that find it will be glad they did.” Somewhere Directed by Sofia Coppola Written by Sofia Coppola Starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Michelle Monaghan 2010. USA I think it’s fair to say that the work of …
Neds Directed by Peter Mullan Written by Peter Mullan 2010 – UK, France, Italy Peter Mullan’s last film, the award-winning The Magdalene Sisters, was about vulnerable young women suffering oppression and brutality at the hands of some over-zealous nuns. Here he presents sarcasm, cynicism and the oft-wielded strap as the chief weapons of Scottish educators …
“Some viewers will be bored and others entranced, but in either case La Quattro Volte seems destined to provoke discussion…” La Quattro Volte Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino Under its Cinema Europa programme strand, the London Film Festival strives to screen the best of the world’s contemporary European cinema, an experience that can either swing from …
Never Let Me Go Directed by Mark Romanek In the five years since its Booker prize nomination, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go has collected a cadre of devoted fans who were quietly reassured that despite the recruitment of an American director – Mark Romanek – to bring this literary favourite to the big …
“There’s plenty of proof here that given a screenplay with real substance rather than just a bare-bones structure, Dolan could turn out to be a truly impressive independent film maker…” Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires) Directed by Xavier Dolan Written, directed and starring Xavier Dolan, whose previous directing credit was the acclaimed I Killed My Mother …
Everything Must Go Directed by Dan Rush Based on a short story by Raymond Carver, Dan Rush’s directorial debut is a refreshingly alternative role for the usually type-cast Will Ferrell. Here, he plays a recovering alcoholic who relapses and subsequently loses his wife, his job and indeed his house as his ex leaves town, locking …
“An unnerving sense of anxiety permeates The American from its opening frames to final conclusion…” The American Directed by Anton Corbijn Following on from his critically acclaimed debut, Control director Anton Corbjn has graduated to the big leagues and recruited one of the world’s biggest stars to anchor his sophomore feature, a paranoid tale of deception and …