LFF 7: Run for your life

The London Film Festival is now fully in its stride, dazzling audiences with the best films from the year's festivals while keeping the journalists hopping with an intense schedule of press screenings (I am seeing three or four films a day, others are seeing five or six). Somewhere I'm sure there's something festive happening, but I haven't really spotted it, aside from a press drinks hour the other night at Picturehouse Central's gorgeous new members' bar. And most of the films have been great, including these four...

The Lobster
dir Yorgos Lanthimos; with Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz 15/Ire ****
Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) makes his English-language debut with this blackly comical satire about how society pressures us into relationships. It's telling and complex, and it feels like two movies mashed together, plus a very dark coda. But an up-for-it-cast brings out layers of meaning while keeping us laughing brittlely... MORE >;

The Lady in the Van

dir Nicholas Hytner; with Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings 15/UK ****

Alan Bennett adapts his own memoir for the big screen, cleverly playing with the idea that he is writing his own story. Yes, a homeless woman really did live in a van in his driveway for 15 years. And since the great Maggie Smith plays her on-screen, the film is not only entertaining, but its message has a spiky bite. 

The Wave [Bølgen]
dir Roar Uthaug; with Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp 15/Nor ****
Structured exactly like a classic disaster movie, this Norwegian dramatic thriller is particularly well-made, with vivid characters and a believable sense of the science behind it. The premise is a picturesque fjord that has long been at risk of a mountainside collapse, which would trigger a devastating tsunami. And in this solidly crafted, only slightly corny movie, an entire village's day has come.

The Endless River
dir Oliver Hermanus; with Nicolas Duvauchelle, Crystal-Donna Roberts 15/SA ****
A harrowing drama about the cycle of violence in South Africa, this film certainly isn't easy to watch as it continually challenges the viewer's preconceptions. Dark and tough, it's evocative and simply gorgeous to watch, even though the story is relentlessly painful. Filmmaker Hermanus finds real resonance using period-style touches in a present-day story. Although it somewhat heavy and over-serious for some viewers.

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C R I T I C A L   W E E K

I only had a few of non-LFF screenings this week, including a very late press screening for Guillermo Del Toro's visually ravishing but otherwise disappointing Crimson Peak; the nutty British werewolf thriller Howl; the offbeat Argentine road movie Jess & James; and the acrobatic documentary Grazing the Sky, which is a must see for fans of physical movement. I have a glut of LFF films to come, and won't be back in non-festival mode until after this coming week.

Critical Week: It was all yellow

We had an early press screening this week of the Alan Bennett engaging comedy-drama The Lady in the Van, based on the true story of a homeless woman (Maggie Smith) who asked Bennett (Alex Jennings) if she could live in her van in his Camden driveway for a few months, and stayed for 15 years. Then there was Ed Skrein in The Transporter Refuelled, a reboot of the Jason Statham franchise that's oddly drier and cornier, and still a guilty pleasure. And the Sundance-winning Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a strikingly honest teen comedy-drama with a terrific cast and a snappy, slightly overwritten script.

A little further afield, we had the low-budget British thriller Containment, which is fiendishly clever in the way it traps a group of neighbours in a council block sealed by people in hazmat suits. Leading Lady is an awkward blend of comedy and drama from South Africa about a British actress (Katie McGrath) researching a role in the Transvaal, where she of course has a life-changing experience. And the fascinating doc How to Change the World uses extensive home movies and present-day interviews to trace the early years of Greenpeace, from a gang of Canadian hippies to a global movement.

There was also the launch event for the upcoming 58th BFI London Film Festival, with its flurry of big-name premieres and lots of smaller festival-winning movies. Press screenings for that kick off on September 21st, with the festival itself starting on October 9th. My most anticipated films include opening night's Suffragette, closing night's Steve Jobs, Todd Haynes' Carol, Jay Roach's Trumbo, Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, Ben Wheatley's High-rise, Terence Davies' Sunset Song, and Cannes prize winners Son of Saul and Dheepan. I've already seen eight or nine of the 250 films.

I'm taking three days off around this coming weekend, so I have fewer screenings in the diary. Annoyingly, I'm missing the first two screenings of Everest, but I'll catch up with it in a week or so. What I am seeing are Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette in Miss You Already, Woody Allen's Irrational Man, the youth-dystopia sequel Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the true Romanian drama Closer to the Moon and the British comedy Superbob.