London Film Festival and me

So, here’s the list of every film I’ve seen at the London Film Festival since 1993. With the 2016 Festival completed, I have seen 421 films.

Only once I have managed the holy trinity of the opening night and closing night galas and the surprise film (in 1999). However, I have seen the surprise (highlighted in bold) eight times.

1993:
The Accompanist
The Wrong Trousers
The Tin Line, The Cross and The Curve
Short Cuts
Twenty Bucks
Silent Tongue

1995:
Dangerous Minds
Smoke
Dead Presidents
In The Bleak Mid-Winter
Clockers

1996:
American Buffalo
Bound
She’s The One
Sleepers
Crimetime
The Long Kiss Goodnight

1997:
Afterglow
Mojo
Mimic
Affliction
Regeneration
Metroland
Shooting Stars
The Winner
The James Gang
Stiff Upper Lips

1998:
The Mighty
B Monkey
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Victory
Playing God
Rounders
Final Cut
Gods & Monsters
The Opposite Of Sex
Two Girls And A guy

1999:
Opening night: Ride With The Devil
The Bridge
Girl On The Bridge
Happy Texas
Summer Of Sam
Legend Of 1900
The Insider
Onegin
The Criminal
Tube Tales
The Straight Story
Hurlyburly
Simpatico
Closing night: American Beauty

2000:
Shadow Of The Vampire
Sade
Animal Factory
Requiem For A Dream
The Big Kahuna
Prime Gig
The Yards
The Dish
Way Of The Gun
American Nightmare
Verbal Assault
Cecil B Demented
About Adam
Small Time Crooks
Beautiful Creatures
Trixie
Weight Of Water
The Exorcist: The Director’s Cut

2001:
The Piano Teacher
The Cat’s Meow
The Pornographer
Pollock
Last Orders
And Your Mother Too
Bank
Dark Blue World
Lakeboat
Bandits
Mulholland Drive
The Warrior
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Apocalypse Now Redux
Sex And Lucia
IVANSXTC
Birthday Girl

2002:
Opening night: Dirty Pretty Things
Leo
Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven
The Quiet American
The Magdalene Sisters
Bowling For Columbine
Antwone Fisher
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Four Feathers
My Mother’s Smile
The Kid Stays in The Picture
Full Frontal
The Pianist
8 Mile
The Dancer Upstairs
Lundi Matin
Punch Drunk Love
The Other Side Of The Bed
Far From Heaven
Welcome To Collinwood

2003:
Opening night: In The Cut
Seabiscuit
The Human Stain
Touching The Void
Strayed
Lost In Translation
Girl With A Pearl Earring
I’m Not Scared
21 Grams
The Shape Of Things
A Mighty Wind
School Of Rock
Perfect Strangers
The Dreamers
It’s All About Love
Grand Theft Parsons

2004:
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Garden State
Bad Santa
Osmosis
Tarnation
Hotel
Napoleon Dynamite
Stander
Maria Full Of Grace
2046
Paths Of Glory
The Woodsman
Sideways
Melinda And Melinda
DEBS
Closing night: I Heart Huckabees

2005:
Elizabethtown
Election
L’Enfer
The Matador
Separate Lies
Bubble
Burnt Out
Tapas
The Proposition
Les Revenants
Walk The Line
The King
Hidden
Mirrormask
Mrs Henderson Presents
Keane
Lower City
Closing night: Good Night, And Good Luck

2006:
The Singer
Born And Bred
The Missing Star
A Soap
Black Book
The Caiman
Little Children
Shortbus
As The Shadow
Bobby
Half Nelson
For Your Consideration
Fast Food Nation
Dr Strangelove
Buenos Aires 1977
Lola
Hollywoodland

2007:
Opening night: Eastern Promises
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Lions For Lambs
I Always Wanted To Be A Gangster
Sicko
Things We Lost In The Fire
Into The Wild
Rescue Dawn
Grace Is Gone
Son Of Rambow
Talk To Me
Mataharis
Savage Grace
No Country For Old Men
Mister Lonely
I’m Not There
The Savages
Chaotic Anna
Far North
Juno
Reservation Road

2008:
Dean Spanley
The Other Man
Frost/Nixon
Religulous
The Class
A Perfect Day
A Christmas Tale
Warlords
Anvil! The Story Of Anvil
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Broken Lines
W
Frozen River
Waltz With Bashir
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Not Quite Hollywood
Genova
Hamlet 2
The Wrestler
Che Part 1
Gonzo
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Brothers Bloom
Revanche
Che Part 2
Synecdoche, New York
Closing night: Slumdog Millionaire

2009:
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Cold Souls
Micmacs
The Double Hour
44-Inch Chest
Bellamy
Up In The Air
Balibo
London River
Kicks
Valhalla Rising
American: The Bill Hicks Story
Chloe
A Grand Day Out
Don’t Worry About Me
The Disappearance Of Alice Creed
Air Doll
The Traveller
Vincere
The Informant!
Regrets
Taking Woodstock
Lebanon
Giulia Doesn’t Date At Night

2010:
Carlos Parts One, Two & Three
Blue Valentine
Home By Christmas
Everything Must Go
The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople
Cold Weather
The American
Womb
The King’s Speech
Submarine
Sensation
Lemmy
Deep In The Woods
Black Swan
How I Ended This Summer
Puzzle
The Kids Are All Right
Copacabana
Biutiful

2011:
50/50
360
Rampart
Restless
The Loneliest Planet
Wreckers
Coriolanus
Dark Horse
Nobody Else But You
Snowtown
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Superheroes
Chicken With Plums
Terri
Let The Bullets Fly
The Descendants
The Ides Of March
Carnage
Bernie
Take Shelter
The Descendants
The Monk
Damsels In Distress
Uncle Kent
Silver Bullets
A Dangerous Method
Anonymous
The Awakening
This Must Be The Place

2012:
Blood
Spike Island
Robot And Frank
A Fish
For No Good Reason
Grassroots
End Of Watch
Room 237
Beware Of Mr Baker
Rust And Bone
In The House
I, Anna
Dead Europe
A Liar's Autobiography
Everybody Has A Plan
Argo
Hyde Park On Hudson
Compliance
The Late Great Graham Chapman
Jeffrey Dahmer
Seven Psychopaths
Song For Marion
Lawrence Of Arabia
Sightseers
Celeste And Jesse Forever
Kiss Of The Damned

2013:
Adore
Doll & Em
Mystery Road
Nebraska
Gravity
The Congress
Jodorowsky's Dune
All Cheerleaders Die
The Double
Under The Skin
The Zero Theorem
11.6
Jeune et Jolie
All Is Lost
Labor Day
Night Moves
Philomena
Don Jon
Parkland
Inside Llewyn Davis
1
Weekend Of A Champion
12 Years A Slave
The Invisible Woman

2014:
The Imitation Game
Monsters: Dark Continent
Men, Women & Children
In Darkness We Fall
French Riviera
The Drop
The New Girlfriend
Queen And Country
The Mule
Rosewater
Zero Motivation
The Keeping Room
The Salvation
A Second Chance
Whiplash
Love Is Strange
Serena
The Green Prince
Son Of A Gun
The Face Of An Angel
The White-haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom
The Silent Storm
A Little Chaos

2015:
Grandma
21 Nights With Pattie
Trumbo
Land Of Mine
High-Rise
A Bigger Splash
The Program
Bone Tomahawk
Elstree 1976
My Nazi Legacy
Very Big Shot
Black Mass
11 Minutes
The Assassin
The Lobster
The Lady In The Van
Carol
Desierto
Youth
Steve McQueen & Le Mans
Victoria
Schneider vs Bax
Ruben Guthrie
Guilty
Truth
Remember

2016:
The Tower
La La Land
Frantz
Private Property
Manchester By The Sea
Mindhorn
Bleed For This
Scribe
Christine
Arrival
Elle
Lovesong
Goldstone
Fury Of A Patient Man
Planetarium
Porto
The Reunion
Their Finest
The Autopsy Of Jane Doe
Brimstone
The Ghoul
Nocturnal Animals
Don't Think Twice
Dog Eat Dog
Prevenge
Trespass Against Us
Free Fire

Best of the festival part 3

How I Ended This Summer
This is a Russian examination of the impact of cabin fever on two scientists working in the Arctic Circle.

With nothing but themselves, the howling wind and a hungry polar bear for company, veteran Sergei and summer-jobbing Pavel oh-so gradually descend into madness. No good can come of the secrets Pavel is keeping from Sergei and inevitably violence erupts.

The emotions of Sergei and Pavel, and indeed the approach of director Alexei Popopgrebsky, are as cold as their surroundings. This is an almost tortuously slow two-hander that nevertheless is possessed of its own power.

Worth checking it out if it appears on TV and you’ve got two hours to kill. No need to seek it out at the cinema though.
Score: 6/10

Puzzle
This low key Argentine drama seemed to lose a lot in translation.

It focuses on a traditional Argentine mousewife, Maria and her journey to independence (well, of sorts). As the film opens, we see her working her socks off, catering at her own birthday party. It swiftly emerges that she’s obsessed with puzzles – an obsession that is barely tolerated by her husband.

She slowly begins to liberate herself from her shackles by answering an ad from a puzzle-solving champion seeking a partner to enter the next national tournament. Inevitably, this sparks further unexpected changes in her life.

Occasionally interesting, but Maria’s journey fails to hold attention.
Score: 4/10

The Kids Are All Right
Over-hyped and over here! This comedy-drama arrives with a strong wind behind it, but don’t be fooled: this is simply enjoyable, nothing more and nothing less.

Uptight Annette Bening and free spirit Julianne Moore are the apparently perfect lesbian couple, each having used the same sperm donor to get pregnant a few years apart: they have the perfect sports-loving son and diligent daughter. Their idyll is thrown into chaos when the children decide to meet their ‘father’ – whom Moore falls for.

The chaos Mark Ruffalo creates changes the children and their mothers, gradually revealing the seething resentment below the surface in any long-lasting relationship. Consequences are both funny and dramatic.

But don’t believe the hype: it is not hilariously funny, nor is it a tear-jerker – it is simply funny and touching.

Ruffalo and Moore are predictably excellent, but Bening is the star: it’s so long since I’ve seen her on screen that I had forgotten just how good she can be.

However, I’ve docked a point from the film’s score for some of its clichéd touches and also for its final treatment of Ruffalo (which seems entirely unfair).
Score: 6.5/10

Copacabana
Shock, horror, hold the front page, etc: Isabelle Huppert does comedy! France’s darkest actress has a lighter side!

Copacabana is effectively a French spin on the Ab Fab set-up: Babou, the immature, wild child mother, and Esme, the mature, uptight daughter (played by Huppert’s real daughter Lolita Chammah).

After one particularly painful fall-out between the two, Babou takes a job trying to sell timeshare apartments to tourists in bracing Ostend. Almost in spite of herself, she begins to succeed – but that can’t last for long… Nevertheless, a happy ending is fashioned.

Enjoyable but really for Huppert watchers only.
Score: 6/10

Biutiful
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: I’m calling you out! With each film, this director gets worse! Look at his downward spiral: Amores Peros, 21 Grams, Babel, and now Biutiful.

It would appear that the combination of the very best talent in front of and behind the camera is obscuring this very clear case of the emporer’s new clothes.

Let’s deal with the positives: this tale of a petty criminal having to deal with grievous issues not only in his ‘professional’ and love lives but also with his health is carried by the brooding presence of Javier Bardem (the world’s greatest actor since de Niro turned to comedy?) – you cannot take your eyes off him; Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is predictably excellent; and the view of Barcelona’s rancid underbelly is refreshing as Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s picture postcard view was clichéd and embarrassing.

Let’s deal with the negatives: Inarritu is co-writer and director as thus the script and the film’s structural weaknesses lie with him. The ‘spiritual’ element he brings to bear falls entirely limp, while his attempt at conjuring a grand, modern tragedy is dashed on the rocks of his own pretension and his need to pile so many concepts into one film.

But at least he’s learnt to tell a story in sequence… for what it’s worth!

Watch it for Bardem if you must, but do not be fooled: this is not great art.
My suggestion to Inarritu is simple: just concentrate on directing and let someone else come up with the idea and the script.
Score: 4/10

Review: Black Swan

Without a doubt, Black Swan is not only the best film of the 2010 London Film Festival, but possibly the best film I have seen at any LFF since my first in 1993.

Black Swan is a psychological chiller directed with control and panache by Darren Aronofsky. It features a career-best performance from Natalie Portman that demands an Oscar, arresting visuals, precise editing, exacting sound, and a stirring score (both adapted and original by Aronofsky’s soundtrack artist of choice, Clint Mansell). It is the very essence of cinema; all the crucial elements of film are shown off to their maximum effect, creating a piece that is never less than utterly compelling – you forget you are watching a film in a cinema; it is a transformative, immersive experience.

The film charts the progress of a young ballerina, Nina (Portman), as she strives to attain perfection – in order to satisfy herself and her domineering mother (a really rather scary Barbara Hershey). Picked for the part of the White Queen in Swan Lake, she and her artistic director Vincent Cassel have concerns about her ability to unleash her dark side in order to convincingly play the Black Swan.

Under pressure from herself, her mother, her artistic director and the other ballerinas, Nina’s psyche begins to disintegrate. Both she and we the audience struggle to discern her dreams and nightmares from reality. But as her psyche collapses, so her dark side emerges, apparently egged on in an ever decreasing circle by her confused relationship with fellow ballerina, possible rival and lover Lily (Mila Kunis).

Lily is all that Nina isn’t: confident, avowedly sexual, a risk-taker, possessed of greater freedom of artistic expression while dancing. Lily is the polar opposite of Nina: black to white. Is Lily the Black Swan? Is Lily just a projection of Nina’s desire, Fight Club-style?

Just as the film’s plot structure explicitly mirrors the plot of Swan Lake, so mirrors are a key feature of the film’s visual style, Nina gazing at her own reflection as a swan would at its own image in the water.

As with his previous effort, The Wrestler, Aronofsky focuses on the damage the art of ballet inflicts on both body and soul. Portman, naturally petite and slim, has perfected the ballerina’s ridiculous physique: slimmer still, but all muscle. Aronofsky then details unsparingly the corruption of her body: broken toe nails (that need to be removed – all too graphically, you have been warned), cracked bones, strained muscles, etc. In this unrelenting examination of her body and the associated body horror (I can’t recall a film that has caused me to look away from the screen so many times), Aronofsky’s approach strongly evokes the psycho-sexual analyses of dark cinemas three greatest artists: Cronenberg, Polanski and Lynch.

Indeed, the way in which Aronofsky and Portman conjure eroticism and horror within frames of each other is pure Cronenberg and Lynch. The masturbation scene ends unexpectedly with a primal shock, while the Nina/Lily seduction scene (who’s seducing who?) is possessed of a charge that knocks Atom Egoyan’s lesbian stalker drama Chloe into a cocked hat.

As much as all the supporting cast are excellent, this is Portman’s movie. I cannot think of any other actress that could have summoned the performance that Portman does. In a sense, what she does with Nina is what Heath Ledger did with The Joker in The Dark Knight.

You don’t have to like ballet to enjoy Black Swan, but you’ll need a strong stomach to watch it. It will scare you (you’re never more than 60 seconds away from a shock), but it will move you too.

Don’t wait for the DVD: Black Swan demands to be seen on the best cinema screen you can find.
Score: 10/10

Best of the festival part 2

The King's Speech
Consumate populist film-making lifted to another level by an Oscar-worthy and possibly career-best performance from Colin Firth.

Director Tom Hooper follows up his portrayal of Cloughie in The Damned United with this moving, stirring tale of a man rising to his destiny, overcoming his stammer, and finding friendship (the key issue in focus in The Damned United).

Firth is Prince Albert, the Duke of York, crippled by an appalling stammer that makes the public speaking part of his job intolerably painful for him and any audience. As his father's health falters and his brother's adbication crisis looms, so the duke is persuaded to have one last attempt at speech therapy, this time putting his voice in the hands of Geoffrey Rush's controversial therapist, Lionel Logue.

It's a matter of historical record that Logue's approach worked, so the enjoyment in the film is the journey. And what enjoyment: the burgeoning friendship between Logue and the Duke, the underplayed banter between the two, the splendid support from the rest of the cast (notably Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon and Guy Pearce), and the crisp direction from Hooper.

There are a few hokey, painting royalty biopic by numbers scenes, and the post-modern approach to some scenes and dialogue may be a little too knowing, but they don't detract from the film's impact.

Ultimately, the reason to see this is Firth (and Rush) - this should land him the Best Actor Oscar he should have won this year for A Single Man. As with Tom Ford's directorial debut, Firth's performance is all about the unspoken that's revealed by his face. A superb performance. A superb film that adds to cinema's rare analysis of male friendships.
Score: 9/10

Submarine
This is the first film directed by IT Crowd star Richard Ayoade. It’s a mostly heartwarming, occasionally curious, frequently laugh out loud funny coming of age story, adapted from the novel by Joe Dunthorne.

Oliver Tate is a 15-year old boy, anxious to win over the girl of his dreams, his classmate Jordana; he’s also anxious to help his parents through the rough patch they’re in and to ensure his mum (a delightful Sally Hawkins) doesn’t have an affair with an old flame (a scene-stealing Paddy Considine) who has moved in next door.

Ayoade directs with beginner’s verve, pulling stunts and failing to observe unwritten rules with abandon.

The two young leads – Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige – are outstanding. Oliver’s attempt to seduce Jordana is possibly the most toe-curlingly embarrassing scene of the year.

However, everyone in the film is ‘unconventional’ as is the storytelling – and this deviation from the norm may put some off.
Score: 7.5/10

Sensation
This Irish farming sex comedy walks a very thin line – and just pulls it off.
Domhall Gleeson plays Donal, a sex-starved farmer’s son. The death of his father prompts him to meet a call-girl, Kim (Luanne Gordon), who wants to run her own ‘agency’.

Together, with the funds from the sale of the farm, the two become partners, both in romance and business – or are they? The leads’ true motivations are never entirely clear, and there are many bumps along the way for the pair.

Ultimately this plays like a more realistic, downbeat Risky Business. The two leads are great throughout, but their characters have considerably more depth than Tom Cruise’s and Rebecca de Mornay’s in that 80s classic. Indeed, there are many points in the film where the leads become unlikeable. The film delights in the machinations of a call girl setting up her own agency, but also has Kim reveal that having spent too long servicing clients’ desires means she is unable to reach orgasm with a boyfriend.

Patrick Ryan, who looks like Colin Farrell’s fat brother, is great as Donal’s slob of a mate Karl, always ready with a disgusting line to pop any pretension/apprehension on Donal’s part.
Score: 7.5/10

Lemmy
This documentary is neither fish nor fowl: it’s neither an authoritative history of the great man nor an insightful dissection of his character and psyche.
The filmmakers purport that this doc should be accessible to anyone, but, if you have no concept of Lemmy, Hawkwind, Motorhead and the world of heavy metal, this will be entirely lost on you.

The filmmakers spent three years filming Lemmy going about his life: playing computer games, drinking with Billy Bob Thornton, gambling in his local bar, touring with Motorhead, recording his soon to be released solo album, and discussing all the nick-nacks he’s collected (including that controversial mountain of Nazi memorabilia).

These sections are interspersed with both his peers (Hawkwind and Motorhead members alike) and those musicians who claim to have been inspired by Lemmy talking about him.

Lemmy is more approachable, less suspicious of the camera, than he appears in the film of the making of Ace of Spades. But the question remains after two hours: what have we learnt about Lemmy, and what, if anything, has he revealed about himself? The answer is: not a lot. A more fascinating, rigorous dissection of Lemmy is still required.
Score: 7/10

Deep In The Woods
Fearless performances from its two leads drive this psychological drama set in the rural France in the 1860s. Newcomer Nahuel Perez Biscayart is the near feral loner who is taken in by doctor’s daughter Isild le Besco’s father.

This act of kindness is almost immediately soiled by the loner apparently casting a spell over le Besco, she totally at his will even as she is conscious that she does not want to submit to his whims.

Effectively he kidnaps her, at which point the film becomes a race against time: will the authorities catch up with them before he has so entirely subjugated her that he no longer needs his magic to control her? Will she, in fact, turn tables on him?

The two leads are compelling screen presences – you can’t ignore them nor avert your gaze no matter how depraved their relationship becomes. More than Biscayart, Le Besco is astonishing: she may just be the new Isabelle Huppert – almost incapable of taking on a role that doesn’t push her to the darkest psychological places and seemingly comfortable with her body being used in all manner of ways.

However, this is a slow film, and has an air of nastiness about that it drives the viewer away. This came across to me as nothing more than a French period remake of Brimstone & Treacle.
Score: 5/10

Best of the festival part 1

Carlos
That’s Carlos the Jackal to you and me, one of the most notorious terrorists of the previous century.
Coming in at 5.5 hours, this is not a single movie, but a TV series that comprises three feature length parts. And it’s great ‘entertainment’.

Parts one and two are absolutely cracking, galloping along at a rate of knots that still leaves room for character development. We see the ‘birth’ of Carlos – the adopted nom de guerre and personality of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – and follow his early years closely – almost too closely because you begin to cheer for him, as he moves from one terrorist atrocity to another.

As with so many other filmed fictions of gangsters/terrorists (Mesrine for example), the final part is not as strong as what came earlier – the bloated, paranoid petit bourgeois is revealed as Carlos drops off the media’s and security agencies’ radars. In the end, he’s as hollow as the next man.

Edgar Ramirez is simply astonishing in the lead role, speaking half a dozen languages with ease, capturing the insane charm that was supposedly typical of the man, and nailing Carlos’s physical changes without resorting to CGI.

This could easily be seen as a companion piece to the Baader Meinhof Complex, although it is not quite as strong and as satisfactory an experience as that German faction.
Score: 8/10

Blue Valentine
This US indie relationship drama is lifted from its emotional trauma by two searing performances from its attractive leads: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

The film charts – in cross-cut, almost Memento-style fashion – the end and the beginning of the pair’s relationship. The beginning is, not unexpectedly, a more beguiling experience, the sparks flying as the two meet for the first time. The more challenging experience (for the viewer and the performers) is the end of the relationship: Gosling’s Dean has turned from passionate dreamer and romantic into an alcoholic and a waster, while Williams’ Cindy has disintegrated from the perfect girl next door to a bitter, loveless shell.

Both actors are at the top of the game, but it’s Williams who makes more an impact – I’ve never seen a duff performance from her, although it must be said that she is drawn to darker material than most actresses.

Definitely not a date movie! Or a post-break up movie!
Score: 6.5/10

Home By Christmas
This documentary about the memories of a New Zealand WWII veteran fails to scale the heights I expected.

Director Gaylene Preston made audio recordings of a series of interviews she conducted with her late father, Ed, shortly before he died in the early 90s. In those interviews, he discussed for the first time his war experiences – for the first time.
For it appears there is a skeleton in the national closet: nobody in NZ talks about the war, it’s a dark secret that doesn’t get discussed.

Actor Tony Barry brings Preston’s father’s monologues to life, the interviews recreated on screen.

From what we see on screen, Ed is a natural born story teller – and therein lies the film’s weakness: we never know whether what he is recalling is the whole truth, part-truth or a complete lie. The real story is not in what he says, but what he doesn’t.

That’s not to say the film isn’t affecting – it is, but not enormously so. But that reinforces the fact that it’s a daughter’s film about her own father, a man she clearly admired anyway.

A further, fuller, more objective investigation is required if this scar on the Kiwi national conscience is to be addressed.
Score: 6.5/10

Everything Must Go
This drama-comedy/comedy-drama (delete as appropriate) about an alcoholic salesman who loses his job and wife on the same day is anchored by an outstanding performance from Will Ferrell.

Locked out of his own home, all his possessions strewn across the front lawn, Ferrell’s Nick decides to live outside. Suspicious neighbours rightly assume the worst even as he lies to them, and ultimately he is forced to conduct a yard sale and sell off his possessions (apparently it’s illegal to live on your front lawn in Arizona!).

In the sale, he is abetted by a thoughtful neighbour (played by Rebecca Hall) and an innocent child, both of whom also aid him in his journey back to life.

Frequently very funny, and touching too, this is immensely enjoyable adult movie-making. It’s likely to be compared favourably to Up In The Air, although it’s not in the latter’s league: its slightly more contrived storyline means it falls short of the George Clooney-starrer.

Nevertheless, Ferrell’s Nick is one of cinema’s great losers who finds he can make his way back to being a winner.
Score: 8/10

The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople
Great documentary charting the all-too short life and times of Mott The Hoople.

The band members themselves tell the story of how they met, scaled up rock’s ladder to the summit, only to fall into oblivion after a very short time at the summit.

The film reinforces the band’s roots, and gives ample scope for revealing the true characters beneath all the rock n roll excess.

There’s some great live footage from throughout their brief career (this film reminds the audience of what a classy guitarist Mick Ralphs is and that Ian Hunter is among the top five rock singers this country has ever produced), but the film fails to take the time to chart what happened to the various band members in the intervening years until their belated reunion in 2009.
Score: 7.5/10

Cold Weather
This US indie is occasionally inspired, yet all-too-frequently beset by writer-director Aaron Katz’s amateurish student aesthetic.

This gentle character comedy focuses on Doug, a college drop-out with a passion for Sherlock Holmes and forensic science.
The set up is slow, but once the McGuffin is established, Doug sets up his own Scooby Gang (fellow factory worker Carlos, and his sister) to solve the mystery.

Each of the lead actors quietly impress, but it’s Trieste Kelly Dunn as Doug’s sister who does so the most – a greater career beckons than she has achieved so far, methinks.

The film has many genuinely funning WTF scenes – but against these must be weighed the many pretentious WTF scenes that serve no purpose in terms of plot or character progression, hence the score below.
Score: 6.5/10

The American
Anton Corbijn follows up Control with this fantastic thriller, in which George Clooney delivers another finely nuanced performance as a man at war with his past, clawing desperately at a dream of a brighter future.

The film opens almost Bond-style in the sense that we meet Clooney’s Jack Clarke and his girlfriend enjoying each other’s company and the scenery in their snowbound chalet in Sweden, only for their reverie to be cut short by sniper fire.

But Clarke is no Bond – he’s a working assassin and gunsmith, not a super hero. Forced into going on the run, he holes up in Castel del Monte in Italy, posing as a photographer.

With his regular but sinister broker offering him more work, Clarke’s would-be vacation is cut short as it becomes apparent the trouble he thought he’d left behind in Sweden has found him in autumnal Abruzzo.

Indeed, trouble won’t leave him alone: whether it’s the happy hooker from the next village, or his new client (a devastatingly beautiful assassin), or the shadowy figure watching him by night, or the local priest trying to get under his skin, Clarke’s abilities and conscience are beset on all sides.

Does he love the hooker? Can he trust the client? Is he paranoid? Does he want to confess? He must answer all these questions if he is to survive to see the future he desires.

Just as outstanding as Clooney’s conflicted Clarke is Corbijn’s assured and stylish direction. Almost every shot is beautifully composed and lit (especially the night shoots through the winding, rising and falling streets of Castel del Monte), no doubt helped by DoP Martin Ruhe (who lensed Control for Corbijn).

There are echoes of Day of the Jackal and other fine, grounded thrillers of the 70s throughout, although thankfully Corbijn’s direction and Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of Martin Booth’s source novel avoid the pitfalls of the Euro-pudding actioner.
Score: 9/10

Womb
This is a slow, morally questionable, small scale sci-fi investigation into the impact of human cloning.

Set on an unidentified barren, windswept coast, we watch a boy and girl meet; they get along like a house on fire; girl moves away; girl comes back 12 years later in the shape of Eva Green and reignites her relationship with the boy, now in the shape of Matt ‘Dr Who’ Smith.

All too seen, he dies. She can’t handle his loss, so has him cloned. This is achieved by her giving birth to her former lover.
The film then charts the psychological minefield the pair inhabit as the baby grows into a boy, and then into a man (Matt Smith again).

The Oedipal overtones are strong, and yet the writer-director Benedek Fliegauf contrives a happy ending (well, of sorts).
Eva Green suffers impeccably, and like so many beautiful foreign actresses before her seems hellbent on wallowing in the darker parts of the human psyche. Matt Smith, cast in the film before he secured Who, seems ill at ease with the role and its demands.

A curio best avoided, I’m afraid.
Score: 5/10

London Film Festival 2010 preview

So, this year’s London Film Festival is my 17th in 18 years. Between 1993 and 2009, I saw 245 films at the festival…which is close to 429 hours (or nearly 18 days!) sat staring at moving images on a screen.

The breakdown by year looks like this:
• 1993 – 6
• 1994 – 0
• 1995 – 5
• 1996 – 6
• 1997 – 10
• 1998 – 10
• 1999 – 14
• 2000 – 18
• 2001 – 17
• 2002 – 20
• 2003 - 16
• 2004 – 16
• 2005 – 18
• 2006 – 17
• 2007 – 21
• 2008 – 27
• 2007 – 24

Combine the running total with the 21 I expect to see this year and I reach 266, meaning I should reach the 300 mark during the 2012 festival. I can’t wait!