Critical Week: Eavesdropping

During our second short work week in a row, there were once again fewer press screenings than usual. But I still kept busy, and caught several things. Most notable perhaps is last year's acclaimed Belgian drama Julie Keeps Quiet, a powerfully well-observed film about a teen girl (Tessa Van den Broeck, above) navigating a very tricky situation. On a much larger scale, Ben Affleck is back with the action sequel The Accountant 2, which features more sparky sibling banter between the autistic finance/battle savant and his live-wire brother (Jon Bernthal). It's a lot of fun, even more engaging this time around, and still preposterous.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Treading Water • Julie Keeps Quiet
Wind, Tide & Oar
ALL REVIEWS >

Lily Collias is excellent in Good One, a relaxed drama about a teen girl on a hiking trip with her dad (James Le Gros). It's a stunner of a film from first-time feature writer-director India Donaldson. David Mamet is back with the talky but intriguing drama, Henry Johnson, starring Evan Jonigkeit as a young lawyer who has a series of very pointed conversations with various men as his life goes off the rails. Christopher Abbott has lots of internal angst in the moody, mopey drama Swimming Home, beautifully filmed in Greek locations. Sandra Huller has fun in the engaging but overlong German caper comedy-drama Two to One, based on a true story set in newly post-communist East Berlin. I also attended a big-screen preview of Apple's new adventure/conservationist series The Wild Ones, and am now looking forward to further episodes in the summer. And I saw the stage shows Snow White: The Sacrifice at Sadler's Wells and Neil LaBute's How to Fight Loneliness at the Park.

This coming week, I'll be watching Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan in Thunderbolts, Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in Another Simple Favour, Nicolas Cage in The Surfer, Jack Lowden in Tornado, Charlie Tahan in Things Like This, Karim Ainouz's Motel Destino and Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope.

Critical Week: I feel pretty

While all eyes continue to be on Los Angeles as the extent of the fire damage becomes even more horrifically clear, the film industry here in London continues relatively as normal. Bafta announced their film awards nominations on Wednesday, the usual expected lists with idiosyncratic touches here and there. And among screenings this week, Michelle Yeoh popped in (on great form) for a lively Q&A at a press screening for Star Trek: Section 31, which spins her Discovery character Philippa Georgiou off for her own action-comedy mayhem. It will be interesting to see how franchise fans take on the film's riotous tone.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
I'm Still Here • The Writer
A Complete Unknown
ALL REVIEWS >

There was also a late screening of Leigh Whannell's latest reworking of a monster classic: Wolf Man. Stars Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner make the most of the emotional angles in the somewhat thin script, and the grisly suspense will keep fans entertained. Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite with Robert Zemeckis for Here, a gimmicky experimental film that places a camera in one place for millions of years. The effects and imagery is impressive, but the mini-melodramas feel arch. From Lithuania, the New York-set drama The Writer features just two actors as they talk over the course of one afternoon, and it's properly gripping stuff, taking on big issues and quietly intimate emotion. Finally there was Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project, documenting the film he never got to make. It's witty and inventive, and premieres at Sundance.

This coming week, among the films I'll be watching are Steven Soderbergh's Presence, the Irish drama Four Mothers, the musician doc Luther: Never Too Much and a restored screening of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I've never seen projected.

LFF: Find your feet

And that's a wrap on the 67th London Film Festival. I enjoyed taking a slightly less involved approach this year, seeing lots of great movies without trying to see everything I wanted to see. There are still several big titles I need to catch over the coming months before awards voting deadlines, so I have lots to look forward to. The closing night party was great fun too. Here are some final highlights, including the closing film The Kitchen. My favourites are below, along with the award winners...

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
dir Sam Fell; voices Thandiwe Newton, Zachary Levi 23/UK ****
After their great escape in the 2000 classic, the gang returns for an impossible mission. Every moment in the film is packed with throwaway gags, sharp comedy and thrills that riff on heist and action movies. Of course, Aardman's attention to detail shines in the painstaking stop-motion animation, as characters and sets overflow with personality. And the film reminds us to find the bravery to do the right thing.

Poor Things
dir Yorgos Lanthimos; with Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe 23/UK *****
Taking on another fantastical story, Yorgos Lanthimos grounds and deepens this wildly stylised fable with darkly provocative themes. It may be visually extravagant, often going wildly over the top with full-on performances from a daring cast of excellent actors, and yet everything remains grounded in sympathetic emotions. So what the story is saying about polite society becomes almost revolutionary, encouraging us to go against the grain and speak the truth.

The Kitchen
dir Kibwe Tavares, Daniel Kaluuya; with Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman 23/UK ***.
Set in the near-future, this British film combines elements of comedy, drama and thriller to tell the warm story of a father-son relationship between a man and a teen boy. It's a bit repetitive and takes its time getting to the point, but the characters are beautifully written and played, and the film is directed with understated skill by first-timers Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya. Brimming with energy, it's engaging and entertaining, with a sharp point.

Chasing Chasing Amy
dir-scr Sav Rodgers; with Sav Rodgers, Kevin Smith 23/US ***.
Kevin Smith's 1997 comedy Chasing Amy stars Ben Affleck as a comic writer who falls in love with a lesbian played by Joey Lauren Adams. It's been considered problematic for its gender politics, but filmmaker Sav Rodgers found it inspiring because of its honest depiction of openly queer people. So he made this documentary both to say thank you and to understand why the movie generated so much controversy.

All full festival reviews will be linked to Shadows' LFF PAGE >

RICH'S BEST OF THE FEST

1. 
   All of Us Strangers
2. Poor Things
3. The Zone of Interest
4. The Eternal Memory
5. Robot Dreams
6. In Restless Dreams
7. May December
8. In Camera
9. Saltburn
10. Tiger Stripes

Honourable mention: Nyad, Samsara, Totem, The Lost Boys, Fingernails, Shortcomings, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Anselm, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

OFFICIAL LFF AWARDS

• Best Film: Evil Does Not Exist
• Sutherland Award for First Feature: Mika Gustafson for Paradise Is Burning 
• Grierson Award for Documentary: Bye Bye Tiberias
• Audience Award: tbc

LFF: Get a grip

So we're in the final days of the very odd 64th London Film Festival, which has had in-person events right through its run, not that I've witnessed anything firsthand. There have been quite a few great films - I'll list my favourites tomorrow, along with the award winners and comments on the closing film, Francis Lee's Ammonite. The only big-name movie I've missed at the festival is Pixar's Soul, which the press was blocked from watching (except for major outlets Disney likes). Here are four more highlights for Saturday...

The Human Voice

dir-scr Pedro Almodovar; with Tilda Swinton, Agustin Almodovar 20/Sp ****.

Based on the Jean Cocteau play, this is Pedro Almodovar's first English-language film, and it's a remarkable bit of surrealism with a sustained emotional intensity. It's also as sumptuously designed as you'd expect, with lashings of primary red and a fiercely dedicated performance from Tilda Swinton. Boldly conceived and directed, this is a remarkable exploration of the messiness of romantic emotion and how reality fades away when there's passion involved... FULL REVIEW >

Possessor

dir-scr Brandon Cronenberg; with Christopher Abbott, Andrea Riseborough 20/Can ****

Echoing the work of his father David, writer-director Brandon Cronenberg weaves intriguing themes into a compelling horror movie that's both sexy and hyper-grisly. Ideas of identity and free will swirl through each scene, punctuated with wildly inventive visual touches that disorient the audience, keeping us on our toes. The film's unsettling tone and pulsing pace are darkly riveting, and the inventiveness of the premise makes it impossible to predict... FULL REVIEW >

New Order [Nuevo Orden]

dir-scr Michel Franco; with Naian Gonzalez Norvind, Diego Boneta 20/Mex ***

A dryly vicious satire, this Mexican drama opens with a wealthy crowd holding a lavish party while the city around them burns. And where it goes is deeply unnerving. Filmmaker Michel Franco deliberately shocks the audience by placing a horrific uprising in a major Western capital. What happens is familiar from news stories about places like Syria or Bosnia, so seeing it in a more familiar location is indeed chilling.

African Apocalypse

dir Rob Lemkin; with Femi Nylander, Amina Weira 20/UK ****

Activist Femi Nylander delves into his Nigerian heritage, exploring the real-life inspiration for a literary icon while learning history they don't teach in school. The focus is on the route taken by the English and French as they conquered Africa's interior village by village. It's a fascinating travelog tracing a line from the present into the past. And it adds firsthand accounts to events mainly known only through fiction.

NB. My anchor page for the LFF is HERE and full reviews will appear in between these daily blog entries. They're coming.

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.