Raindance: Don't give up

Watching Raindance Film Festival movies is a great tonic as both the US election takes place and London braces for a new month-long lockdown starting tomorrow. All of the films at Raindance are available for free online this year, so hopefully audiences are discovering lots of new movies that will be very difficult to see outside a festival setting. More highlights...

He Dreams of Giants

dir Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe; with Terry Gilliam, Adam Driver 19/UK ****

After documenting Terry Gilliam's ill-fated attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 2002's Lost in La Mancha, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe are back to cover the film's ultimate production 17 years later. It's a story of artistic tenacity that echoes Cervantes' classic tale of a man on a mission. And it's an intriguing echo of Cervantes himself, who published his masterwork after two decades of struggle... FULL REVIEW > 

Antarctica

dir-scr Keith Bearden; with Chloe Levine, Clea Lewis 20/US **.

With a scattershot approach to teenage life, this loose comedy follows two teens through the school year, confronting big issues from body image to pregnancy. It all feels a bit random, struggling to build momentum without much sense of narrative drive. Filmmaker Keith Bearden takes a deliberately quirky approach, bringing out comedy in both fragile characters and even the most serious situations. And his sense of humour is lacerating.

The Woman With Leopard Shoes

dir-scr Alexis Bruchonl with Paul Bruchon, Pauline Morel 20/Fr ****

Shot in deeply shadowed black and white, this French thriller has a saucy tone that's both gripping and enjoyable. With a strong mystery at the centre, it provides proper intrigue and suspense. The film demonstrates how much can be accomplished with a tiny crew, as ambitious writer-director Alexis Bruchon and family seems to have done pretty everything on a reported budget of just €3,000. And it looks like a million... FULL REVIEW > 

True North

dir-scr Eiji Han Shimizu; voices Joel Sutton, Michael Sasaki 20/Jpn ****

This English-language animated film is certainly not meant for children, as it depicts the horrors of the North Korean prison system. Based on firsthand accounts, the story unfolds in a series of set-pieces that reveal hideous inhumanity. Often painful to watch, this is a terrific example of the kind of movie that can only be made with animation, revealing a truth that very few have lived to tell about... FULL REVIEW > 

NB. My anchor page for Raindance is HERE and full reviews will appear in between these daily blog entries. Much more to come...

Critical Week: On the warpath

Since I've seen most of movies that were screening to the press this past week, I've been catching up on awards season films like Steven Soderbergh's The Laundromat, a bizarrely comical farce circling around the Panama Papers scandal. The material is strong, but even an A-list cast (led by Meryl Streep, above) can't ground this kind of overambitious approach. Also somewhat uneven, Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote boasts great performances from Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce and fabulously freewheeling production design, with deep themes running under a meandering narrative.

The low-budget Spell was a nice surprise, a scruffy horror romp about a quirky American in Iceland. From Netherlands, Bloody Marie is an internalised drama that takes place during a freaky crime thriller. From Brazil, the bracingly naturalistic Copa 181 explores people who live on the fringe of decency, and are quite happy there. There were also three docs: packed with awesome archival material, Sid & Judy is a lovely look at Judy Garland's life through the eyes of third husband Sid Luft; American Factory is a striking exploration of the cultural collision between China and the US in Ohiol and Anton Corbijn's Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest is a superbly engaging blend of concert film and fan doc.

Coming up next week are screenings of Paul Feig's holiday rom-com Last Christmas, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in The Good Liar, Shia LaBeouf in Honey Boy, the all-star war action Midway, Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, the British drama Into the Mirror, the rather self-explanatory The Amazing Johnathan Documentary and a reissue of the landmark 1985 Aids drama Buddies.

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 >