Critical Week: Feeling blue

After a few big movies recently, this was a rather offbeat week at the movies for me. All but one were watched on screening links, which is also how I attended the programme launch for the 64th London Film Festival (which runs 7-18 Oct) - at which much of the festival and all press screenings will be virtual. But there's definitely a sense that the industry continues to slowly wake up.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Buoyancy • The Roads Not Taken
The Painted Bird • Lucid
PERHAPS AVOID:
Up on the Glass • The Lost Husband
FULL REVIEWS >>

Probably the biggest film I saw this week was the brain-bending horror thriller Possessor, starring Andrea Riseborough as a body-invading assassin and Christopher Abbott (pictured above with Tuppence Middleton) as a host who fights back. It's violent and downright stunning. Charlie Kaufman's new brain-bender I'm Thinking of Ending Things is also pretty stunning, with its existential surrealism expertly played by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons. By contrast, the sappy romantic comedy Love Guaranteed is relentlessly cute and annoyingly likeable.

The other films I saw this past week were a random grab bag: Spiral is a queer horror movie that has a powerful thematic sting in its tail; the scruffy British indie Rocks carries a proper kick in its realistic depiction of a teen trying to solve problems on her own; the kaleidoscopic drama Residue is elusive but pointed as a filmmaker tries to go home again; the broad comedy Teenage Badass follows a young guy who joins a riotously silly, but also rather talented, band; Up on the Glass is an awkward thriller with some intriguing emotions; Buoyancy is a gorgeously well made odyssey about a young Cambodian sold into slavery on a Thai fishing trawler; The Acrobat is a darkly explicit French-Canadian drama about two men starting a tough relationship; and Ixcanul is a gorgeously well-made drama from Guatemala about an indigenous family living on a volcano.

Movies coming up in another busy week include Tom Holland in the thriller The Devil All the Time, Dan Levy in the pandemic comedy Coastal Elites, Ciaran Hinds in the comedy The Man in the Hat, David Cross in the adventure The Dark Divide, the topical comedy-drama The Wall of Mexico, the British indie Hurt by Paradise, and two actual screenings: Francois Ozon's Summer of '85 and the Chinese blockbuster The Eight Hundred.

LFF 11: Surprise us

The surprise film at this year's London Film Festival was Anomalisa, and directors Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman, plus actor David Thewlis, were on hand to present their film to the audience. Alas, I wasn't able to attend this year, so I'll have to wait until the film is screened to the press prior to its UK release. Meanwhile, the parade on the red carpet is continuing with tonight's awards ceremony, at which Cate Blanchett will be presented the BFI Fellowship. The last day of the festival is tomorrow, and it will be all about Michael Fassbender. Here are a few more highlights...

Truth
dir James Vanderbilt; with Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford 15/US ****
Cate Blanchett's gives yet another storming performance in this smart, enlightening backstage drama about the 2004 scandal at CBS News, which ended the career of iconic newscaster Dan Rather. Like a populist blending of The Newsroom with Good Night and Good Luck, the film is talky and a bit too obvious in the points it makes, but it's also important...  MORE >

Ruben Guthrie
dir Brendan Cowell; with Patrick Brammall, Alex Dimitriades 15/Aus ****
It seems obvious that an Australian filmmaker would make a movie about alcoholism into a blackly hilarious comedy. What's surprising here is that the serious undercurrents are just as pungent, and that the film never slips into the usual simplistic approach to the topic. As a result, it's both entertaining and thought provoking.

Victoria
dir Sebastian Schipper; with Laia Costa, Frederick Lau 15/Ger ****.
German filmmaker Sebastian Schipper took a big risk shooting this epic romantic thriller in a single unbroken take, and the resulting film not only wows the audience with its technical audacity but also fully engages the emotions. This story of a young expat's two-hour odyssey is genuinely terrifying, darkly touching and thumping entertainment.

From A to B
dir Ali Mostafa; with Fadi Rifaai, Fahad Albutairi 14/UAE ****
This is a lively road movie with an unusually sharp script that combines character-based humour, introspective drama and a sharp sense of the political scene as three 25-year-olds drive from Abu Dhabi to Beirut, recreating a trip they were supposed to take five years earlier. It's also cleverly timely, connecting with political realities while keeping the audience laughing, then hitting us with an emotional whammy.