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Sunday 30 October 2011

Best of the Fest 2011

So, what was the best of the London Film Festival 2011? Of the 28 different films I saw, which should you see at the cinema?

Well, I’ve kept the list short, and it’s in order of their general release dates (thanks to IMDb.com, but subject to acts of dog, etc).

We Need To Talk About Kevin: on release now; 7.5/10
The Ides Of March: on release now; 8/10
The Awakening: opens 11 November; 7.5/10
50/50: on release 25 November; 9/10
Take Shelter: opens 25 November; 9/10
Coriolanus: on release 20 January 2012; 8.5/10
The Descendants: opens 27 January 2012; 8/10
Carnage : opens 3 February 2012; 7.5/10
A Dangerous Method: opens 10 February 2012; 7/10
Chicken With Plums: no release date scheduled yet; 7.5/10
Nobody Else But You: no release date scheduled yet; 8.5/10

Roll on LFF 2012!

LFF 2011: Anonymous, The Awakening, and This Must Be The Place

Anonymous
Director Roland Emmerich is best known for the likes of Independence Day, the Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, so it comes as something of a shock to see him knocking out this Shakespearean thriller.

Working from Jon Orloff’s slightly crazy script, the film focuses on the authorship question surrounding Shakespeare’s work. Now, every schoolboy knows the basic rumour – Shakespeare was a hack whose work was improved (especially the tragedies) by the likes of Marlowe – but here Orloff runs amok, giving us a Jack The Ripper-style mystery with the central Macguffin going all the way to the Queen.

The script may or may not be utter nonsense in terms of its accuracy, but that doesn’t hold the cast back, especially its lead, Rhys Ifans, who turns in quite the best performance of his career. Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, and David Thewlis lend solid gold support.

Where Shakespeare In Love presented a Hollywood Elizabethan London, Emmerich miraculously conjures a gritty evocation of the capital without resorting to buckets of shit being thrown from windows (every member of the cast has dirty fingers); the production design is spot on, and the cinematography from Anna Foerster is good as anything you’d expect from a mid-90s BBC costume drama, working with the limited light provided by sunlight through windows and candlelight.

If nothing else, this is a ripping yarn that every kid should be compelled to watch because Shakespeare and his time is brought to life with such vibrance, and it highlights the importance and the power of great art.
Score: 7/10

The Awakening
This classy British super natural chiller highlights Rebecca Hall’s credentials as a leading actress (a BAFTA nom will surely be her reward) and heralds the arrival of great British director in the shape of debutant Nick Murphy.

Post-WW I, Hall is a ghost-hunter/ghost-debunker called in by a boys’ school to solve the riddle of the recent death of one of its pupils. His death seems linked to a death that happened many years before, and the school is rife with rumours/sightings of a ghost. Hall’s Florence Cathcart is a thoroughly modern woman, educated and emancipated, yet haunted by her own demons. And thus as she strives to solve the mystery at the school, so she must unravel the riddle of her own life.

The tension builds throughout, and there are chills and shocks aplenty – Sneezy next to me spent much of the film hiding behind her scarf. However, Murphy and co-writer Stephen Volk are not as successful at achieving the emotional highs that would help lift this more than commendable effort into the territory owned by The Sixth Sense and The Others. Indeed, the precision evident throughout the film is cast aside in the final act as the story and characters’ journeys unravel somewhat.

The work of cinematographer Eduard Grau (who shot A Single Man) certainly helps Murhpy realise his cinematic ambitions in full (there’s no hint of his TV background here), bringing great compositions and use of light and darkness to the fore.
Score: 7.5/10

This Must Be The Place
And thus my 2011 London Film Festival concluded with a whimper rather than a bang. Sean Penn’s presence in the lead was the hook, but it’s not enough.

Penn plays a washed-up, retired rock star (part Robert Smith from the Cure, part Michael Jackson) living in Dublin, who returns to the States on family business, bent on discovery, redemption and revenge.

The early scenes in Dublin are amusing enough, but, as soon as Penn’s Stateside roadtrip begins, the film loses its drive and its charm. Supporting perfrmances and cameos from Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Harry Dean Stanton, and David Byrne add lustre, but little else.

For such arty whimsy, the film is far too long (and loses a point as a result). This is really for hardcore Penn fans only.
Score: 4/10

LFF 2011: Uncle Kent, Silver Bullets, and A Dangerous Method

Uncle Kent and Silver Bullets
So a double-bill of the most recent works from twenty-something/thirty-something mumblecore god Joe Swanberg greeted me on the penultimate day of my stint at the LFF – and what a waste of mine and Dunkini’s time and money.

At the end, we were actually speechless – we barely uttered a word for half an hour as we struggled to comprehend how these ‘films’ (are they films as anyone would define that term?) got programmed at the festival.

The less said about these low-fi ruminations on relationships and movie-making, the better…
Score: 1/10 and 2/10 respectively

A Dangerous Method
After three failures (the two Swanbergs and the previous night’s surprise film), we were desperate for a cracker, and while David Cronenberg’s latest is not an absolute cracker, it nevertheless generated plenty of debate in the aftermath.

On the face of it this story of the tensions between Carl Jung, his patient Sabina Spielrein, and his mentor/rival Sigmund Freud seems to fit perfectly within Cronenberg’s psycho-sexual oeuvre, but the great director approaches it with uncharacteristic restraint.

While nominally a three-hander, Viggo Mortensen’s Freud is a supporting role (and just as well as he seems ill at ease with the part): it is Michael Fassbender’s Jung and Keira Knightley’s Sabina who are front and centre. Fassbender is predictably brilliant, adding further evidence for my claim that he is the best actor in the world right now, as he struggles with admiration and then disgust for Freud, and his desire for Sabina.

Reaction to Knightley’s performance could go either way among professional critics: for the record, I can’t help but feel that Naomi Watts would have been better at the role (certainly its darker sexual aspects), but there’s no doubt that Knightley leaves nothing on the table – she’s convincingly mad, emotionally, physically and psychologically crippled by the social mores of the day, but – and it is a significant but – whether through her choice or Cronenberg’s direction, there is no blood and thunder when she is finally able to give herself over to her darkest desires. I was convinced that if anyone could uncover a dark sexuality within Knightley, then Cronenberg would be the man to do it, but unfortunately this is not the case.

The film looks great, with nice period detail and locations, but I can’t help but feel it needs some of the psycho-sexual fairy dust that Patrick Marber sprinkled on his adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie in order to achieve greatness.
Score: 7/10 (subject to confirmation from second viewing)

Tuesday 25 October 2011

LFF 2011: Take Shelter, The Monk and Damsels In Distress

Take Shelter
Gripping, chilling, moving, and frequently astonishingly powerful: Take Shelter was the film that caught LFF-goers unawares. With hints of both early Spielberg and Shyamalan, this second film by writer/director Jeff Nichols has been gathering momentum all year since picking up two awards at Cannes.

In brief, the film’s hero, played with compelling conviction by Michael Shannon, is a simple family man in a nowheresville in the heartland of the US who suffers from visions of an apocalyptic storm.

The intensity of the storm and its impact increases with each night’s vision, and each morning the damage inflicted on him in the dream has a half-life in his waking world.

Inevitably the intensity of the visions, the disturbed sleep and his worry about his mother’s medical history now blossoming anew within his brain drive him into paranoia and madness.

Initially, his wife (played impeccably by actress of the year Jessica Chastain) and best friend are supportive, but soon his erratic behaviour puts those relationships in jeopardy.

Ultimately he has to make a choice to be consumed by his visions and lose everything or suffer medium-term sacrifices to ensure he can work his way back to a normal life.

Nicholls, with the help of some astonishing special effects work, great cinematography, and a stirring Clint Mansell-esque score, grasps the audience in his hands and takes you into the hero’s nightmare. The visions had me gripping my chair even as I jumped out of it, and in at least one case the vision was too much and I had to close my eyes rather than face the expected (but not delivered) outcome.

This is no frightfest though: Nichols cleverly ramps down the shocks once he’s got you in his grips – after the first few visions, your imagination takes over and you assume the worse, allowing the director to concentrate his focus on the hero’s psychological and emotional journey.

If there’s any justice, Nichols, Shannon and the film itself will be strewn with awards nominations that will allow this small film ($5m budget, says IMDb) to break out and to be seen by the huge audience it thoroughly deserves to enthral.

Miss it at your peril.
Score: 9/10

The Monk
Director Dominik Moll made his name with Harry, He’s Here To Help and Lemming, and now’s he’s back with this adaptation of key early Gothic horror story, The Monk.

It’s an atmospheric, occasionally chilling critique of the moral constrictions of Catholicism, with Vincent Cassel as the titular monk Ambrosio, who falls from the highest state of piety to being prey for the devil.

Cassel is utterly convincing as usual, but for the first time in his career plays a completely restricted character, with no freedom of expression, movement or emotion. Even as he falls from grace, Cassel’s monk can’t break free from his shackles.

However, this adaptation, while rigorous in its execution, seems to leave several threads hanging come its conclusion, while the score is a little too predictable.

Ultimately this is a European arthouse take on a Hammer horror.
Score: 6.5/10

Damsels In Distress
Well this was the surprise movie – and unfortunately for me it was a bit of a dud.

I was seriously disappointed by this, and my score reflects not the intentions or hard work of any of those involved in the production of the film, nor the decision of festival director Sandra Hebron to screen it; no, my score reflects the fact that I just didn’t ‘get’ it.

The only way to describe it is, in the words of Dunkini, the ‘anti-Heathers’. New girl starts at college, and is embraced by a clique of doo-gooding simpletons. Delivery of dialogue is intentionally flat, while the cast do their best to breathe life into characters that are deliberately drawn without it.

There are some funny moments, not least the anal sex gag, but other than that the film totally failed to engage me.
Score: 2/10

LFF 2011: Ides of March, Carnage, and Bernie

The Ides of March
Top quality, if a little cold, political drama from George Clooney, this time directing while taking a key supporting role.

As the title suggests, there are strong Shakespearean overtones in the film’s story of Ryan Gosling’s Stephen Myers, the deputy campaign manager for Clooney’s Democrat would-be presidential candidate: he is the idealist in the cesspool of political campaigning – does he fight clean and face failure, or do the means justify the ends? Dirty or not, does he even have the guts and the nous for the fight? Can he square his morality with his own ambition?

Gosling is in award-winning form, visibly ageing through the film, becoming wiser with each slap in the face as he confronts his direct boss Philip Seymour Hoffman, his rival Paul Giamatti, his lover Evan Rachel Wood, and his newspaper contact Marisa Tomei. This supporting cast is as brilliant as ever.

The technical credits are off the chart too: the great score from Alexandre ‘King’s Speech’ Desplat, and lovely cinematography from Phedon Papamichael (who shot The Descendants) should meet with awards recognition too.

Overall the film has a very 70s, post-Watergate feel, its depth of character study, realism and cool detachment being reminiscent of Lumet or Pakula. Nevertheless, the film is nothing less than timely and current, and yet another feather in Clooney’s bulging cap.
Score: 8/10

Carnage
I never thought I would laugh intentionally at a Roman Polanski film, but Carnage is the film that has made the improbable real.
Laceratingly funny, Carnage’s raison d’etre is the outstanding performances from three-quarters of its four-strong cast that positively demand awards recognition.

John C Reilly and Jodie Foster invite Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet round to discuss a playground altercation between the two couples’ boys. The tension between the two couples is obvious from the start, but swiftly the film lays bear the internal rivalries within each marriage and highlights the eternal battle of the sexes.

While the four characters have been created to generate maximum friction, they are fully developed across the film’s short running time (just 80 minutes), ensuring their behaviour (for the most part) is utterly believable.

Jodie Foster rants and raves with aplomb, Reilly deftly plays out his passive/aggressive role, while Waltz imbues his lawyer with an intelligent yet childish streak of evil. The only false note is la Winslet: she’s one of my favourite actresses, but I’m never convinced by her American accent, plus seeing her, always a strong female lead, as the unequal half in her marriage is jarring. Having said that, Winslet generates probably the film’s biggest gut-wrenching laugh…

As the four squabble and fight, the insults and insights become sharper, funnier and more painful, the hypocrisies of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois well and truly skewered. As the verbal punches fly faster and with increasing intensity, it becomes like a tagteam boxing match.

However, the script, adapted from a play, never truly escapes its origins and nor does it rise to Mamet-esque or LaBute-esque levels of black comedy – but then again not much does!
Score: 7.5/10

Bernie
This is the latest, slightly disappointing curio from director Richard Linklater, working with his School of Rock cohort Jack Black. It’s based on the true story of a funeral director, unanimously loved in his adopted Texas town of Carthage, who murders the wealthy humourless widow (Shirely MacLaine) whom he has befriended.

The film does successfully combine biopic elements with documentary-style talking heads, mixing actors and real people. However, Black is front and centre – and his schtick here doesn’t quite work – while MacLaine replays a role she has played too many times before.

On the bright side, Matthew McConaughey reveals a previously hidden talent for character comedy as the DA out to take Black’s Bernie down – and on the evidence presented here should be fighting for Paul Giamatti- and Sam Rockwell-type roles rather than action-adventure and romcom leads.

But the stand-out character in this film is not an actor, it’s one of the locals, who dispatches his wisdom and opinions with perfect comic timing.
Score: 6.5 /10

LFF 2011: Terri, Bullets, and The Descendants

Terri
This is worth seeing for John C Reilly’s supporting performance as a school headmaster (quite probably) exorcising his own demons by trying to help the good-hearted fuck up kids at his school.

Reilly’s Mr Fitzgerald is introduced us as we watch the misadventures of the titular Terri, a tall, overweight teenager, who has become insular and withdrawn following years of teasing and bullying. Living alone with his medicated uncle in a cottage in the woods, Terri is singled out by the headmaster as a pupil needing special help and encouragement.

The film follows the John Hughes high school format, with the outsider making their journey to acceptance, but gently subverts it.

Terri is charmingly played by newcomer Jacob Wysocki, while director Azazel Jacobs maintains the melancholy beautifully throughout.
Score: 6.5/10

Let The Bullets Fly
Too long and trying to hard, but still strangely enjoyable: that’s my thoughts on this mad Chinese-Hong Kong eastern Western from director/star Jiang Wen.

Wen is a bandit who connives his way into being declared mayor of Goose Town, where he intends to make his fortune through taxation and bribes. But he hasn’t accounted for the local godfather, played for laughs by Chow Yun-Fat.

With manic gunplay, and a touch of wu-fu, the bandit and his gang repeatedly face off against the godfather and his gang – and ‘repeatedly’ is the key word here, as the plot keeps twisting, generating more and more battles.

Mood shifts are frequent and they jar: Wen lends enormous gravitas to his role as the noble bandit, but this sits ill with Yun-Fat’s constant manic mugging; we are expected to mourn gang members who we have been barely sketched out in comic tones, and so it goes on.

Some set pieces are brilliantly executed, while others are pedestrian or let down by poor effects.

If this had been cut to 90 minutes, its foibles might be forgiven. If nothing else, I want to check out Wen’s back catalogue – he has real screen presence.
Score: 6/10

The Descendants
Alexander ‘Sideways’ Payne delivers another funny yet painful look at the male mid-life crisis, buoyed by awards-worthy performances from a strong, indie-friendly cast, led by George Clooney.

Clooney is Matt King, a wealthy lawyer in Hawaii, who must cope with his wife’s coma and be the father he’s never been to his two daughters (both played with aplomb by Shailene Woodley – watch out for her in the future - and Amara Miller), while handling the most important decision he will ever make.

With pressure bearing down, and family truths revealing themselves, Clooney’s King is by turns angry, happy, disgusted and comforted as he deals with his troubled daughters, the in-laws (led by a scene-stealing Robert Forster) and business stakeholders (cue Beau Bridges).

The film skips lightly along never over-playing the humour, the drama nor the tragedy: the laughs are genuine and perfectly timed, the heartaches are razor-sharp and leave lasting cuts. Clooney, long the master of the insular everyman, delivers yet another fine performance, marked out by subtle facial reactions that speak of more hurt and remorse than any dialogue could possibly convey.

Much of what makes the film work is the life-like nature of the characters: nobody is that funny, good, evil, sad, etc – they are all composed unequally of those facets. And thus some Hollywood clichés and schmaltz are entirely avoided – and clearly the film is all the better for that.

I saw this twice – and it certainly more than withstood a second watch. Don’t wait for it to appear on DVD: see it at the cinema with a crowd; you won’t regret it. And you'll come away with a few new swearwords too!
Score: 8/10

Friday 21 October 2011

LFF 2011: Superheroes, and Chicken With Plums

Superheroes
Surprise, surprise, superheroes do exist. They don’t have any powers, but they do wear costumes, they do have funny names and they do good deeds.

This timely documentary talks to and spends time with your average Joe American who for one reason or another decides they should ape Superman, Spider-Man, etc. We meet Mr Extreme in San Diego, Master Legend in Orlando, Thanatos in Canada, and the New York Initiative: they discuss their origins, the reasons for their actions and the camera follows them on nightly patrols.

Director Mike Barnett originally started research on more than 1,000 real life superheroes before concentrating on this handful, and they are an interesting bunch, their origins strangely similar to well-known heroes, their language and their thought processes ripped straight from the comic strip page.

A bunch of losers? May be, but they’re doing good deeds in the community for no reward.

The film is objective, offering no insight of its own, only the insight from the heroes themselves. The final scene, as thousands of fanboys descend on San Diego’s convention centre for the annual geekfest that is Comic-Con, while the real-life heroes from across the USA team up to help the homeless just a mile away from that convention centre, says more than the film achieves in its previous 80 minutes.
Score: 6.5/10

Chicken With Plums
This heart-breaking film from the mind of Marjane Satrapi will inevitably – and unfairly – be compared with the adaptation of her graphic novel Persepolis. Where the latter combined winning animation and social history, the former is a beautifully acted part-animation/part-live action fable.

Leading the cast is Mathieu Amalric as Nasser Ali a temperamental violinist in Tehran in the late 50s, a brilliant Maria de Medeiros his long-suffering wife. The film charts, across the eight days that lead to his death, the reasons for his failed marriage, his failed career and his deathwish.

Never less than charming, this eloquent, melancholy tale has a Tim Burton-esque edge to it – the humour is both black and slickly sweet, leavened with pain. The climax to the film delivers a firm kick to the gut that should wring tears from even the stoniest heart.
Score: 7.5/10

Wednesday 19 October 2011

LFF 2011: Kevin, and Snowtown

Snowtown
This grim, bleak, horrific Aussie film recreates in almost merciless detail the motivations and actions of a real-life serial killer and his entourage in a small town.

Like Wreckers, this film revels in revealing the dark underbelly at the heart of any small community: everyone has secrets – and some are more disturbing than others.

All the actors, especially the two leads, put themselves through the ringer, and the film is well directed by Justin Kurzel, but unless you have a keen interest in serial killers (and don’t mistake this for a police procedural – it isn’t), then I would strongly advise avoiding it.

The film has points to make about the powers that be not caring about what the working class do to each other, and about absolute power corrupting absolutely, and it may serve as something of a wake-up call to Australia, warning of what’s going on in its far-flung communities, but the film is definitely not entertainment.
Score: 3/10

We Need To Talk About Kevin
We do, don’t we? So, let’s get the first thing out of the way: the film features no letter-writing, so fans of the book your first question is answered. What it does feature is a gently cross-cut, elliptical, dream-like narrative, reminiscent of a more audience-friendly David Lynch.

Some key plot beats from the book have necessarily been exorcised, but not having read the book, this made no impact on my viewing – nor should it on anybody’s for this adaptation truly stands on its own.

Second thing, yes, Tilda Swinton is stunning in the lead (awards season should be good to her); she completely immerses herself in the role and its meaning – that some women though capable of bearing children are not capable of rearing them; indeed does her own ambivalence towards maternity affect Kevin as he gestates in her womb?

Of course she’s not helped by an absent, absurdly positive husband, nor the authorities who fail to diagnose Kevin’s never-diagnosed-in-the-film condition.

And really, what chance does she stand against such a well-formed sociopath? Ezra Miller is astounding as Kevin, conjuring the quite the most horrific mother’s son since Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates. The question for Miller is how to ensure this film does not become a millstone around his neck.

Kevin is much cleverer than everyone around him, and finds it both easy and enjoyable to manipulate the emotions of those around him – and he revels in confusing people as well by switching his obvious emotional responses on and off.

While Swinton’s Eva is thoroughly life-like, Kevin, although depicted brilliantly by Miller, is just a little too serial killer fiction for a film so wedded to the real. He’s a little too Hannibal Lecter.

Lynne Ramsay directs the film with panache (any of the rough edges of her early career entirely absent here), ably supported by Atonement DoP Seamus McGarvey and editor Joe Bini (the pair’s careers in documentaries help give this film its realistic edge).

This is brilliant stuff, although right now I’m not sure if ever want to see it again!

People thinking of having children should be compelled to watch this; women already pregnant or who have recently given birth should avoid the film at all costs.
Score: 7.5/10

Tuesday 18 October 2011

LFF 2011: Coriolanus, Dark Horse, and Nobody Else But You

Coriolanus
Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut is a muscular adaptation of one of Shakey’s least likeable works – and is timely to say the least. Awards noms, both for the strong cast and the exceptional technical credits, will undoubtedly follow.
Fiennes is predictably excellent in the war-mongering title role, backed by mother from hell Vanessa Redgrave (surely a Best Supporting Actress Oscar will be winging its way to her), Brian Cox as the slimey Menenius and a surprisingly strong Gerard Butler as Aufidius, foe of the Roman people.
Set in modern times, complete with 24/7 newsflash inserts and filmed in shell-shocked Serbia, the film’s portrayal of the eternal battle between soldiers and politicians carries considerable resonance. The devastation inflicted on the landscape is likewise wrought on the souls of the soldiers - great Coriolanus is no exception, any heart he once might have had apparently eviscerated by lifetime of combat.
Fiennes is not only in command of his performance and the script, but also of the entire production. The film is never less than cinematic, buoyed by Barry ‘Hurt Locker’ Ackroyd being the DoP.
I must confess to not enjoying Coriolanus when compelled to read it at school, but I really got to grips with the text this time round. Thanks Ralph!
(No doubt my appreciation of this was aided and abetted by a Mexican breakfast at The Diner!)
Score: 8.5/10

Dark Horse
The latest from Todd Solonz is undoubtedly the ‘what the fuck?!’ film of the festival, its crazy impact heightened by screening with Italian subtitles (WTF?!).
Jordan Gelber is the 30-something who’s never grown up – he works for his dad’s real estate company, lives with his parents, his bedroom is full of toys… His normality is turned upside down by meeting the heavily medicated Selma Blair, also living with her parents.
Before too long this arch fantasist has declared his love for the distant and disbelieving Blair - and then things really start to go wrong…
Very funny (especially office secretary Donna Murphy) and occasionally painful.
Score: 7/10

Meal break: with much time to kill, we headed to Pix again for some cracking tapas, with me attacking a cracking white rioja. We then moved to Curzon Soho for Konditor & Cook desserts!

Nobody Else But You
Touched by the spirit of Bill Forsyth, this character comedy/murder mystery is a winner in my book.
Set in the frozen snowscape of a Nowheresville town in Alpine France, our downbeat hero, hack policier writer Jean-Paul Rouve, up against the deadline to deliver his next book, stumbles upon the death of a local girl.
Taking light-hearted pot-shots at current thriller successes (our hero suggests a new Nordic pseudonym!), the film follows our hero’s encounters with the locals, each with secrets, as he attempts to solve the mystery of the Marilyn Monroe-like life and murder of Candice Lecouer (Sophie Quintin effectively channelling Norma Jean).
He is helped by a young policeman, whose motives are not entirely clear.
Like the films of Bill Forsyth, the comedy here is gentle and unforced, but no character is there simply to provide laughs.
All this is backed by great music and sumptuous cinematography. Oh, and a skinny goth girl with a thing for older writers…
A film I would happily watch time and time again.
Score: 8.5/10

LFF 2011: Restless, Loneliest Planet, and Wreckers

Restless
Restless, like 50/50, could so easily have been a tweenie disease of the week melodrama; thankfully, this Tim Burton-esque fairytale is offbeat, rarely delivers the expected and boasts strong performances from its two tweenie leads – Henry Hopper (son of Denis) and Mia Wasikowska.
Hopper is marked by death (in the family), while Wasikowska is marked for death (she’s got terminal cancer). The plot beats are not dissimilar to 50/50, but in this it is the friend of the patient who goes on the journey (rather than vice-versa in 50/50).
Director Gus Van Sant occasionally strays too far into indie twee, but saves his best punch for last.
Score: 6.5/10

Meal break: possibly my view of the film was informed by the consumption of pepper squid at Yo Sushi beforehand!

The Loneliest Planet
Gael Garcia Bernal is the big draw for this pretentious tosh. Langorously paced with long takes and with little dialogue, this is an exercise in dislocation.
Bernal and his girlfriend are trekking in Georgia’s Caucasus mountains and over the course of the very best part of two hours very little happens.
We see them trekking in close up, we see them trekking in long shots where they are just dots on the landscape, we watch them trek from one side of the screen to the other…
Yawn…
When the incident comes that effectively drives what passes for a plot, I was already begging for the film to end…
They’re just middle class hippies shatting their ennui on a beautiful landscape.
Avoid this crap!
Score: 0/10

Meal break: in search of some meaning, we headed towards the Punjab curryhouse at the top of Covent Garden, but instead ended up at Pix tapas bar. What a find! Mahou beer (they were out of Estrella), and top quality, proper, fresh San Sebastien-style tapas

Wreckers
By contrast, this British film of relationships set against a lonely landscape was immensely more enjoyable. With hints of Pinter and Shane Meadows, and with the ghost of Straw Dogs hovering in the background, this analysis of village life and of the dangers of returning home to right wrongs long buried beneath physical and psychological scars is compelling stuff – all the more so as it’s based on truth.
Told largely from the POV of Claire Foy’s newly wed, the story focuses on her impression of her and her husband (the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch) returning to the village in which he grew up.
When his war-damaged brother appears unexpectedly, we know the newlyweds home will never be the same again.
The simmering passions, both for and against people, bubble up – and the unlikely twists and turns of the script are met with realistic reactions and consequences.
Score: 6.5/10

LFF 2011: 50/50, 360, and Rampart

50/50
What a cracking opening to my 2011 London Film Festival: 50/50 made me laugh and cry – and both at the same time more than once.
This could so easily have a disease of the week melodrama, but instead it reaches unexpected heights of poignancy and reality without ever being grim and depressing nor falling between stools the way Love And Other Drugs does.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on top form as the anal do-goody 33-year-old who suddenly finds himself diagnosed with an unpronounceable cancer. The comedy and the drama then unfold as he, his best friend (Seth Rogen), his mother (Anjelica Huston), his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), and his counsellor (the wonderful Anna Kendrick channelling some her schtick from Up In The Air) come to grips with the reality of his condition.
Directed with a commendably light touch by Jonathan Levine, the film may seem too American indie twee at the start, but as it gets under the skin of its main characters, so something greater emerges.
The relationship between the two friends is the underscore of the movie – so much is left unsaid by the pair, even at the death, but a chance discovery reveals the true depth of their bond.
A Golden Globe nom awaits Gordon-Levitt, and possibly Kendrick and Rogen.
Quite simply, this is great entertainment.
Score: 9/10

360
Is Fernando ‘City of God’ Meirelles’ the new Minghella or even worse the new Inarritu?
This is a self-indulgent, self-obsessed, meaningless work – just like the later output of Minghella and Innaritu.
Technically the film is great, with one or two good performances – most notably Anthony Hopkins who steals the movie and will probably garner some awards heat.
But otherwise it is a hollow exercise not deserving of your pennies. The more I think about, the more disappointed I am.
Score: 3/10

Meal break: after a beer at the Blue Posts, it was time to hit Ganton Street and The Diner - arguably the best burger bar in town. Wolf down a bacon cheeseburger with Diner fries (love those spices), aided by a bottle or two of Coopers ale and some great music, and I'm ready for the third film of the day...

Rampart
Woody Harrelson is on fire, full of rage and loathing, in this take on late 90s LAPD corruption. Some major awards recognition is likely.
Harrelson’s Officer Brown is a career cop after surviving Vietnam and is king of all he surveys – local bums and LAPD raw recruits quake in his wake.
The film charts his descent in paranoia and yet more rage as he is caught on film beating a man, Rodney King-style.
Unhappy at work, unhappy at home, and unable to score the blood money he needs to get by on, Brown is very much an Abel Ferrara character as the pressure on him mounts, although there is no redemption for him at all.
The entire production is well-thought out, and the high contrast cinematography presents us with an LA we rarely see on screen.
Gripping throughout, but no joyride.
Score: 7/10