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.