LFF 3: London goes starry

The red carpet parade continues this weekend at the 57th London Film Festival. Running the gauntlet tonight at the festival are Julia Jouis-Dreyfus and Nicole Holofcener with their film Enough Said; Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige and Richard Ayoade with The Double; and Charlie Cox, Jodie Whittaker and Christian Cooke with Hello Carter; plus Japanese maestro Hirokazu Kore-eda, French filmmaker Cedric Klapisch and Norwegian actor Pal Sverre-Hagen (of Oscar-nominee Kon-Tiki, below). Here are some of today's film highlights...

Starred Up
dir David Mackenzie; with Jack O'Connell (pictured), Ben Mendelsohn 13/UK ***.
Even though this film deploys just about every cliche in the prison-thriller genre, it continually twists its story in more personal directions, which allows the fine cast to create vividly intense characters. So although the plot has some nagging holes in it, we are gripped to the action unfolding on-screen... [review coming soon]

Nebraska
dir Alexander Payne; with Bruce Dern, Will Forte 13/US ****
Harking back to his own About Schmidt as well as David Lynch's The Straight Story, Payne gently explores Middle America with equal doses of spiky observational wit and soft-hearted sentiment. With bristlingly detailed performances, the film worms its way under our skin as it reveals some awkward truths about family connections... [review coming soon]

Camille Claudel: 1915
dir Bruno Dumont; with Juliette Binoche, Jean-Luc Vincent 13/Fr ****
Bruno Dumont continues his provocative exploration of religion in society with this true story, which plays out like a sequel to the 1988 biopic. Like the film itself, Binoche plays the title role in a stripped down, unadorned way that forces us to listen to her words and look beneath the surface... [review coming soon]

Hello Carter
dir Anthony Wilcox; with Charlie Cox, Jodie Whittaker 13/UK **
With its charming tone and a likeable cast, this warm British comedy draws us into a gentle story about a young guy trying to get his life back in track. But about halfway in the script pivots suddenly into into implausibility, leaving the characters looking so idiotic that we cease to care what happens to them... [review coming soon]

Kon-Tiki
dir Joachim Ronning, Espen Sandberg; with Pal Sverre-Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen 12/Nor ***.
The astonishing story of a man who risked his life to prove a scientific theory, this biopic has a strong sense of passion and tenacity that makes it utterly riveting. It's also a staggeringly well-made film, grounded both in the vivid characters and a skilful attention to detail... FULL REVIEW >

Critical Week: Out of the closet

That's Domhnall Gleeson emerging from a wardrobe in the time-travelling romance About Time, which was the surprise film at June's Edinburgh International Film Festival and has been screening to London press this past week. It's what you'd expect from writer-director Richard Curtis, including a terrific cast that features Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy and Lindsay Duncan. Tilting more toward the comical end of the rom-com spectrum, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis star in We're the Millers, a rude drug-smuggling romp that's more amusing than riotous

We also had two indie comedy-dramas: Aubrey Plaza stars in the sex-focussed coming-of-age comedy The To Do List, which is much smarter than expected; and Kristen Bell gets a more serious role than usual in The Lifeguard, as a 29-year-old who reverts to her teen life in a moment of panic, complete with her old summer job and a 16-year-old boyfriend (the superb David Lambert). Both films are strongly involving, and likely to provoke different reactions in audiences.

A little further afield, Uwantme2killhim? is a chillingly clever British thriller based on a true story about an internet-based crime; Kon-Tiki is the spectacularly photographed Oscar-nominated epic about Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 raft journey proving that Incas populated Polynesia; and Una Noche is a disarmingly engaging drama about three young Cubans planning a dangerous journey to Miami. And I also revisited one of my all-time favourites: Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, which is getting a digitally restored release.

This coming week we catch up with the 3D doc One Direction: This Is Us just before its release. There's also Saoirse Ronan in the WWIII thriller How I Live Now, the Cannes-winning romance Blue Is the Warmest Colour, the British youth-crime comedy Borrowed Time, the British-Indian comedy Jadoo, and the restored final cut of the 1973 classic The Wicker Man.