LFF 4: Meet the filmmakers

I've reached that point in the London Film Festival when my backlog of reviews begins to swell, and my lack of sleep begins to affect my ability to carry on a coherent conversation. But it's been a good weekend of movies, wrapped up with Pawel Pawlikowski (above with festival director Claire Stewart, photo by me on the front row) presenting his gorgeous new film Ida, one of my favourites so far. The stars and filmmakers were out in force over the weekend, enjoying the crisp sunshine on Saturday and the gloomy rainshowers on Sunday. Here are some more highlights...

All Is Lost 
dir JC Chandor; with Robert Redford 13/US ***.
Shot with an astounding attention to detail, this film puts us right in the middle of a life-or-death situation with its only character, a sailor whose boat founders in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But Chandor's remarkable skill as a director is slightly undone by a plot that piles on too many disasters... FULL REVIEW >

Enough Said 
dir-scr Nicole Holofcener; with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini13/US ****
With her usual style of off-handed honesty, writer-director Holofcener gives the rom-com formula a welcome grown-up twist. And even if the story is somewhat simple, the characters bring out layers of insight in every scene. It's smart and often very funny, with brittle, flawed people we can easily identify with... FULL REVIEW >

The Zero Theorem 
dir Terry Gilliam; with Christoph Waltz, Melanie Thierry 13/Rom *** 
Terry Gilliam updates the look and feel of Brazil to the digital age with this lively and raucously imaginative adventure-drama. So it's a shame that the plot runs out of steam about halfway through, leaving us unable to piece together the big ideas that flood through every corner of the script... FULL REVIEW >

Closed Curtain 
dir Jafar Panahi, Kambuzia Partovi; with Kambuzia Partovi, Maryam Moqadam 13/Irn *** 
Banned filmmaker Panahi continues to work by making movies with other filmmakers and distributing them outside Iran. Packed with clever ideas, this feels more like an expression of his frustration than a fully formed feature. After an intriguingly provocative first half, it turns surreal and far too metaphorical... FULL REVIEW >

Teenage
dir Matt Wolf; with Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw 13/US **. 
An odd hybrid, this film mixes authentic newsreel footage with fictional re-creations to explore the concept of the teenager, which didn't exist before World War II. But ultimately the film merely traces American and European history from 1904 to 1945, only offering a flash of insight in its final moment... FULL REVIEW >

Critical Week: Riding the rails

London critics got to see Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman in the true story The Railway Man this past week - a deeply relevant, perhaps too-emotional drama about reconciliation and understanding. Another highlight was Denis Villeneuve's haunting, exquisitely well-made Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal as men who react very differently to a child kidnapping. We also had a chance to see the fractured JFK assassination drama Parkland, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in the smart and mature rom-com Enough Said and DeNiro and Pfeiffer going all Besson on us in The Family.

Screenings began this week for the upcoming 57th London Film Festival. The first two were James Franco's bleakly artful but rather off-putting Faulkner adaptation As I Lay Dying and the surehanded but extremely low-key Aussie thriller Mystery Road. More on those soon. We also saw the sequel to an animated film we'd forgotten about, the goofy but engaging The Reef 2: High Tide, the super-pretentious arthouse hit Leviathan, and the talky, intriguing Argentine gay drama Solo.

This coming week we'll catch up with Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck in Runner Runner, Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, Shailene Woodley in The Spectacular Now, Sheridan Smith in The Powder Room, Francois Ozon's Jeune et Jolie, the British immigration drama Leave to Remain, the quirky festival film Floating Skyscrapers and Alex Gibney's doc The Armstrong Lie. We were also supposed to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, but the distributor has uninvited most critics from the press screening for some reason. Finally, the Raindance Film Festival kicks off on Wednesday and runs until 6th October in Piccadilly. Updates to come!