LFF: See the wonder on Day 6

Another busy day at the 61st BFI London Film Festival, with some extra colour in the middle as I attended a meet-the-filmmakers event and got a chance to visit with Takashi Miike (Blade of the Immortals), Anne Fontaine (Reinventing Marvin) and David Batty (My Generation), among others. Here are some more highlights from the festival - note that full reviews will be up on the site as soon as I can get them there. Finding time to write in between films can be a bit tricky...

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
dir-scr Angela Robinson; with Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall 17/US ****
If you've never read about how the Wonder Woman comics were created, you might need to brace yourself for this film. Because in exploring the lives of the Harvard brainiacs behind the first and most popular female superhero, the filmmakers dip into a counterculture lifestyle that would probably have tongues wagging now, let alone in the 1940s. It's also a sharply well written and directed film, with a solid cast that brings depth to the characters.

Thoroughbred
dir-scr Cory Finley; with Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Cooke 17/US ***.
Brittle and very bleak, this black comedy takes a rather unnecessary swipe at the vacuous life of privileged teens, as if there's anything else to say on the topic. Even so, it's strikingly written and directed by newcomer Corey Finley, while rising stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke make the most of the twisted dialog. It also explores an aspect of Millennial culture that's rarely depicted on-screen.

Call Me By Your Name
dir Luca Guadagnino; with Armie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet 17/It ****.
With a sunny dose of nostalgia, this drama traces a pivotal summer in a young man's life. Characters and situations are complex, challenging the viewer to share the experience. And while this may seem to be a film about sexuality, it's actually more potently an exploration of how important it is to embrace our emotions, even the ones that hurt.

Loving Vincent
dir Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman; with Douglas Booth, Saoirse Ronan 17/UK ***.
Like Richard Linklater's Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, this film was hand animated frame-by-frame from live-action footage, although in this case it was done by some 100 artists working with oil paints. A look into the final days of Vincent van Gogh, the exquisitely rendered imagery is a swirling odyssey through his work, echoing characters and settings while exploring his tragic and mysterious death at age 37 in 1890.

Funny Cow
dir Adrian Shergold; with Maxine Peake, Paddy Considine 17/UK ***
This is a sharply well-made drama about a woman going against the current in her culture. It's beautifully filmed and performed with energy and attitude. On the other hand, for a movie about a stand-up comic, it's relentlessly dour. There are some riotous moments along the way, and the acting is riveting enough to hold the interest all the way through, but the overall tone is seriously grim.

A Prayer Before Dawn
dir Jean-Stephane Sauvaire; with Joe Cole, Pornchanok Mabklang 17/UK ****
Based on Billy Moore's memoir, this is a harrowing true account of a young British man's experience in a Thai prison. There isn't much context, actually no background at all, and therefore no real sense of any of the characters. Still, the film is utterly riveting, as director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire takes the audience on a jarring, unforgettable odyssey that leaves us with some big themes to chew on.

LFF 6: Preach it, brother

Tonight's red carpet at the 60th London Film Festival was for The Birth of a Nation, a biopic about Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt in the early 19th century. Armie Hammer and Nat Turner (above) were on the red carpet, along with several other costars. Today was my busiest day of the festival so far, with five films. That's too much even for me! I'll try to take it a bit easier tomorrow. Highlights from Tuesday...

The Birth of a Nation
dir-scr Nate Parker; with Nate Parker, Armie Hammer 16/US ***.
Actor-filmmaker Nate Parker pours his soul into this engaging true story about a slave uprising in early 19th century Virginia. It's a slickly produced and only slightly over-egged period drama packed with present-day resonance as a young preacher finally realises he can't ignore the injustice any longer. Yes, aside from being a powerfully involving film, it has a lot to say to us today.

Porto
dir Gabe Klinger; with Anton Yelchin, Lucie Lucas 16/Por ***
Offbeat and so wispy thin that it barely seems to exist at all, this gentle drama traces circles around a romance that flares briefly. It takes its name from the northern Portuguese city where it's set, and where two young foreigners connect in an offhanded way. And while the film is beautifully shot and acted with a warm introspection, it's also somewhat indulgent in its insistence that this kind of romance has sent ripples through past and future.

I Am Not a Serial Killer
dir Billy O'Brien; with Max Records, Laura Fraser 16/Ire ***.
Irish filmmaker Billy O'Brien brings a snappy sensibility to this drama set in Middle America, never allowing the story's larger issues to become bigger than they need to be. It centres on a sociopathic teen trying to live a "normal" life, but there's also a subtle supernatural plot element that adds a whiff of horror. And while the pacing is too artful for the mainstream, the film feels fresh and original enough to hold the interest.

Taekwondo
dir-scr Marco Berger; with Gabriel Epstein, Lucas Papa 16/Arg ***.
Essentially a mash-up of writer-director Marco Berger's Hawaii and producer-codirector Martin Farina's Fulboy, this film places nine athletic young men in an isolated resort-style house for a sweltering summer holiday and observes the physicality between them. There's a hint of a plot between two of the guys, and a few traits emerge here and there, but the movie is basically a tactile, tantalising tease that pays off only in the final moments.

Critical Week: Team America to the rescue

London-based critics caught up with Michael Bay's Benghazi thriller 13 Hours this week. It's skilfully assembled with a strong cast, but bombastic and frustratingly simplistic. There was also a very late press screening for The 5th Wave, the latest teen-dystopia thriller. Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, it's a lot better than anyone expected. And then there was Ride Along 2, a lazy sequel reuniting Ice Cube and Kevin Hart for a new buddy-cop action-comedy in Miami.

Charlize Theron and Tye Sheridan are terrific in the creepy thriller Dark Places, which loses its way in melodramatic excess. Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room is one of the sharpest, most original horror thrillers in recent memory, propelling the audience into an unnervingly realistic nightmare. British filmmaker Stephen Fingleton is getting awards for his debut post-apocalyptic drama The Survivalist, a strikingly well-acted, inventive film that kind of gets stuck in its own rut. The Spanish animated moon-race adventure Capture the Flag makes up for its low-tech imagery with a quick-paced story and witty characters. And the understated Brazilian drama Aya Arcos makes up for its super-low budget with realistic, involving characters. I also caught up with a movie that doesn't seem to have a UK release planned at all...

Stonewall
dir Roland Emmerich; with Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers 15/US *.
Director Emmerich really needs to stick to those big, tongue-in-cheek action movies he's so famous for (like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow or my personal guilty pleasure 2012). His last foray into "serious" filmmaking was the appalling revisionist Shakespeare bio Anonymous (2011), and now he has made this even more insulting drama about the roots of the gay pride movement. The film was criticised for not telling the whole story, but that's not the worst thing about it. The problem is that the movie is an endless stream of misguided cliches and trite moralising. There isn't a single scene that rings true, and it's not the fault of the actors (they're actually rather good, including Irvine in the focal role). Not only does Emmerich flatten each dramatic moment with awkwardly pushy direction, but Jon Robin Baitz's script rings false, trivialising what should be some darkly personal events and leaving real-life people lurking pointlessly around the edges of a narrative that tries to be the story of Everyman (or more accurately, every young white man). Please stick to blowing up the White House, Roland.

Coming up next week: Julianne Moore and Ellen Page in Freeheld, Adrien Brody in Backtrack, Blythe Danner in I'll See You in My Dreams, the animated romp Oddball and the Penguins, the cycling doc Battle Mountain, and the Israeli horror movie JeruZalem.