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: I'll be right here

It was a bit of a mixed bag of screenings this past week, with a variety of expectations leading to so-so movies. Paper Towns has a terrific lead in Nat Wolff, with plenty of presence from Cara Delevingne, but the story never quite develops into anything truly meaningful. Amy Schumer brings her distinct brand of comedy to the big-screen in Trainwreck, with a superior leading-man performance from Bill Hader, but the script hedges too many bets, ultimately winding up as a standard rom-com. And Pixels proves that Adam Sandler needs to take a long break and work out if he wants to make movies anymore. According to this evidence, he gave up long ago.

More intriguing, The Lobster is the latest bit of amazing weirdness from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), a pointed relationship satire with Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and Ben Whishaw. Max is a predictably slushy boy-and-his-dog movie sideswiped by an unnecessary arms-trade thriller subplot. Captain Webb is an enjoyably quirky low-budget British drama about the first man to swim the Channel, in 1875, but the narrative is pointlessly fragmented. From Ukraine, Stand is a harrowing Moscow-set drama about the result of government-sponsored bigotry against gay men. And the documentary Unity blends 100 starry narrators into a swirling collage about the meaning of humanity, concluding that we should all be vegetarians.

This coming week we have Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong in The Program, and very, very late press screenings for the superhero remake Fantastic Four, the 60s-TV inspired action romp The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the Monty Python gang's alien-invasion comedy Absolutely Anything.