Critical Week(s): In the picture

Yes, as usual at a Sunday morning press screening, I was placed into the world of Megamind yesterday morning. And the film wasn't too bad either. It's been a busy week or so since the London Film Festival wrapped up, as I've been catching up on screenings and doing rather a lot of writing as I get ready to take a break next week. And it's been such a strange mix of films that I've stopped trying to get in the right mood before a screening. Not that I really do that...

I'll start with the high-minded fare - the better quality movies that make me happy to do this job. I quite enjoyed Clint Eastwood's new drama Hereafter, a moving and thoroughly involving drama that's an intriguing departure for him as a director (and for Peter Morgan as a writer). Peter Weir's The Way Back is a beautifully made epic adventure with an amazing story and a solid cast. Fernando Trueba's Chico & Rita is a stunningly animated epic romance from Cuba that really gets under the skin. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's new film Biutiful is a little more problematic - Javier Bardem's performance is razor sharp, but the film's a little too dense and gloomy. Even more troubling is Rowan Joffe's remake of Brighton Rock, inventively filmed but too bleak to connect with.

There were also a few ambitious little films. One documentary held the interest effortlessly while telling a disturbing story: Into Eternity is an ethereal exploration of how we protect the distant future from our toxic nuclear waste. The internet thriller Chatroom is a great idea but doesn't quite work, while the Indonesian war drama Red & White is inspirational but derivative.

Moving to the more low-brow offerings, we had Robert Downey Jr and Zach Galifianakis on the road in the angry and strangely unfunny Due Date, which will no doubt make more money than every other film I've mentioned today. Zombies of Mass Destruction is a riotous satire of both zombie movies and American politics. And then there was Jackass 3D, which was exactly what we expected from these boneheads. Pity they didn't let us put ourselves into a still from that one!

Only a few screenings ahead for me this week: Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway star in Love and Other Drugs; Cher and Christina Aguilera give it their all in Burlesque; An Ordinary Execution is about the last days of Stalin; Men on the Bridge is a documentary about people working on the Bosphorus; and then there's a little movie called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I.

LFF16: Out with a bang

Aleksei Popogrebsky receives the Best Film prize from jury president Patricia Clarkson at last night's London Film Festival awards ceremony at LSO St Lukes. Other prizes included best documentary (the Grierson Award) for Armadillo and two awards for Clio Barnard's The Arbor: best first feature (the Sutherland Award) and British newcomer. In addition, Danny Boyle, director of tonight's closing film 127 Hours, was awarded a BFI Fellowship. The starry ceremony was attended by virtually every filmmaker and actor in London at the moment, including Martin Scorsese. Alas, mere journalists weren't invited to cover it.

Here are three more highlights from today: the closing night film, the big winner and my last film at this year's festival...

127 Hours

dir Danny Boyle; with James Franco, Kate Mara 10/UK *****

Danny Boyle brings his considerable filmmaking energy to bear on this claustrophobic true story, and the result is a bracing thriller that puts us right into the mind of a man trapped in an unthinkable situation... MORE >

How I Ended This Summer
dir Aleksei Popogrebsky; with Grigoriy Dobrygin, Sergei Puskepalis 10/Rus
Gorgeously shot and edited, this subdued dramatic thriller closes in on us through skilful filmmaking, sharply believable performances and an astonishing use of a natural setting that's both expansive and claustrophobic. It's about two scientists at an isolated Arctic outpost - one is young and bored and the other is more experienced and annoyed. Their interaction is a thoroughly engaging mixture of comedy and tension, and as the story progresses things get surprisingly emotional and scary, even though the film never abandons its earthy, realistic tone. These two men are so different that we wonder if they can ever connect on a meaningful level, and clearly they are beginning to feel the same.

Inside Job

dir Charles Ferguson; with Barney Frank, Eliot Spitzer 10/US ***

Easily a contender for the year's most depressing documentary, at least this film is sharply well made. It's also the first of the docs about the financial crisis that actually helps us understand what has happened and what is going on now. This is a lucid and thoroughly researched exploration of the economic system that caused this global mess, and as we begin to understand it we wonder why the people responsible aren't in prison, frankly. But no, they're still either earning multi-million dollar bonuses at still-thriving financial institutions or working at the very highest offices of politics. Meanwhile, the entire system is slanted to take money from the hard-working middle classes and give it to the most wealthy - thanks to laws enacted by Reagan and both Bushes and inaction from Clinton and Obama. Which is why America now has the largest disparity between rich and poor in the industrialised world. In other words, this is a film that gets our blood boiling in all the right ways - and it's not a polemic: it's all too true.

LFF15: The ladykillers

Alejandro González Iñárritu and Javier Bardem take to the red carpet at the London Film Festival last night for their film Biutiful, which has won awards at various other festivals this year. Strangely, the film wasn't shown to the press here. Along with a lot of other critics, I tried to get into various public screenings of the film, but they were all sold out. So I'll catch up with it after the festival ends.

I did manage to catch a few films today, and at the Howl screening this afternoon, directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman gave a terrific Q&A after the film, talking about how they turned the iconic Allen Ginsberg poem into such a groundbreaking film, their first narrative feature. Here are comments on three films showing today and tomorrow...

Somewhere

dir Sofia Coppola; with Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning 10/US ***

Coppola returns to the premise of Lost in Translation with another gentle exploration of celebrity, this time a hot star (Dorff) who lives in Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, flirts with an endless stream of women and spends his free time with his 11-year-old daughter (Fanning). While Dorff isn't hugely engaging, which leaves the film feeling rather cold, his scenes with Fanning are warm and enjoyable. And the overall style of the film still makes it watchable, with its long scenes, unhurried pace, offbeat score and gorgeous Harris Savides cinematography. And even if the closing scenes aren't hugely convincing, there's a strong commentary along thw way about the limbo of fame.

Howl

dir Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman; with James Franco, David Strathairn 10/US *****

Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers Epstein and Friedman turn their skills to a narrative feature, sort of. This is essentially a movie based on a poem, which is vividly animated in a variety of styles by Eric Drooker. Stirred in with this is a doc-style dramatisation of Allen Ginsberg's life that runs in parallel with both the poem and recreates scenes from the Howl obscenity trial. What emerges is a remarkable look both at the man and his work, and also what makes his work so important more than 50 years later. In Franco's performance, Ginsberg comes to vivid life in a remarkably complex way that balances the beat poetry with wry humour and political controversy. This is fiercely original cinema worthy of one of the 20th century's most fiercely original artists.

The First Grader

dir Justin Chadwick; with Naomie Harris, Oliver Litondo 10/Ken ***

Based on a true story, this drama from Kenya reflects on the legacy of colonialism and tribal warfare in a nation trying to get its feet on the ground. As the government introduces free education for all, 84-year-old Maruge (Litondo) shows up at primary school hoping to learn to read. When a caring teacher (Harris) takes him in, neither suspects that their actions will both ripple around the world and dredge up old wounds at home. The film has a dark undercurrent taken from historical events, but the central story is warm and sentimental, as Maruge bonds with his young fellow students and takes a stand for the importance of education. It's not a hugely complicated film, but it's a real crowd-pleaser.

LFF14: Glamour puss

Julianne Moore seems to have worn two dresses at once as she took to the Leicester Square red carpet for the UK premiere of her new film The Kids Are All Right at the London Film Festival last night. Of course, she gets away with it because she's so obscenely talented. And her film is currently my favourite from the festival.

And at the Abel screening this afternoon there was a terrific post-film Q&A with director Diego Luna and his young star Christopher Ruiz-Esparza - it was a lively, very funny session in which Luna was open about his interest in making such a personal film about family relationships. We all left just a little in love with both of them. Here are some comments about Abel and two other films today...

Abel

dir Diego Luna; with Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, Karina Gidi 10/Mex ****

For his first narrative feature as director, Luna takes an offbeat look at parenthood through the eyes of an unusual child. Abel (the remarkable Ruiz-Esparza) has been in hospital for the past two years and returns home not quite healed: he thinks he's his own missing father and starts parenting his big sister and little brother. His mother (Gidi) goes along with it out of concern for Abel's mental health, but things start getting out of hand. The film stirs together a warm sense of humour with a growing sense of unease about what might happen. It's a constantly surprising story that reveals truths about family interaction in ways that are both endearing and thoughtful.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

dir Jalmari Helander; with Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, 10/Fin *****

Leave it to Finland, "the land of the original Santa Claus", to come up with a fiendishly clever way to twist the holiday legend into something that's both dryly hilarious and more than a little deranged. When a multinational corporation drills into a mountain in Lapland, they make a rather freaky discovery: the original Father Christmas is encased in a buried block of ice. And it will be up to a trio of local farmers and two of their sons to set things right. The problem is that they've all been a bit naughty, and Santa knows it. Endlessly inventive, darkly amusing and startlingly scary, this film has cult hit written all over it. See it before the inevitable half-baked American remake.

The Taqwacores

dir Eyad Zahra; with Bobby Naderi, Noureen DeWulf 10/US ****

Set in a subculture most people would never guess even exists, this important film shatters stereotypes in every scene. It's centred on good Muslim boy Yusef (Naderi) who heads to university in Buffalo, where his Islamic home isn't quite what he expects: his flatmates are a collection of skaters, rockers and anarchists who faithfully attend a mosque in their living room. Their views on sex and drugs are also far from orthodox, but Yusef finds a way to fit in, and they begin planning a party of Taqwacore bands - a musical movement of Muslim punks (think stars of David instead of swastikas). The film has a loose, scruffy tone and lively, likeable characters who continually challenge media portrayals of Islam.

LFF13: Prince of darkness

Yes, that's Britain's infamously Machiavellian political puppetmaster Peter Mandelson on the London Film Festival red carpet last night for the premiere of a documentary about him, Mandelson: The Real PM? The film debunks Mandelson's "evil genius" reputation as filmmaker Hannah Rothschild shadows the then-cabinet minister for eight months, right through May's general election.

Crowds in the venues today were very strong, with people braving the cold weather to catch a glimpse of tonight's red carpet guests and see some offbeat movies too. Here are comments on two films I saw...

The Sleeping Beauty

dir Catherine Breillat; with Carla Besnainou, Julia Artamonov 10/Fr ***

Breillat continues to subvert fairy tales with this riff on the classic fable. Although there's little recognisable in this movie beyond continual references to the original story. Instead, it's more like Alice in Wonderland as a young princess roams through a series of crazy landscapes looking for her lost prince. Is this the dream she's having while she's sleeping for 100 years? Possibly. Although Breillat would never tell us. Instead we get a series of random encounters and adventures that are wonderful simply because they're so strange (children feature heavily in the story as princes and queens, and there are also a few little people to keep us on our toes). But what it's all about is anyone's guess.

Kaboom

dir Gregg Araki; with Thomas Dekker, Juno Temple 10/US ****

As this scruffy coming-of-age sex comedy turns into a horror movie, the combination is completely disarming. It's both silly and creepy, with honest subtext about youthful searching and the complexities of human sexuality. Araki assembles the film with lurid colours and lots of visual trickery to keep us as off balance as the characters, who are young university students trying to figure out who they are when their vivid dreams start invading real life. As the film goes along, the darkly creepy subtext begins to take over. It's funny, unnerving and impossible to predict where it goes from here. And while it's a bit madcap, it's also thoroughly engaging.

LFF12: In the line of fire

Actors Jamie Michie, Trevor Williams, Andrea Lowe and Mark Womack, producer Rebecca O'Brien and director Ken Loach were on hand to introduce the UK premiere screening of Route Irish at the London Film Festival last night (snapped on my phone from the front row). We've had Q&As at every public screening except one so far in the festival, which is pretty impressive. Here are a few more highlights from today and tomorrow...

Route Irish

dir Ken Loach; with Mark Womack, Andrea Lowe 10/UK ***

After the relative whimsy of Looking for Eric, Loach is back in angry political mode for this gritty revenge thriller set around the war in Iraq. The story centres on Fergus (Womack), an ex-SAS officer who's trying to find out what happened to his best friend, who died on Route Irish, the road between Baghdad airport and the Green Zone. But Fergus is such a hothead that it's a wonder he has ever managed to do anything in his life. And his friend's widow (Lowe) also operates on pure emotion. The film starts out extremely well, but gets rather overwrought in the final act, when the script starts piling on clunky plot points. Still, it's nice to see a film about the conflict that centres on the human cost, especially the innocent Iraqis who have been caught in the crossfire.

Carancho

dir Pablo Trapero; with Ricardo Darin, Martina Gusman 10/Arg ***

Bold and muscular filmmaking lifts this noir-style thriller above the murky nastiness of its storyline. And even though everyone's a little too morally compromised, the cast and crew give us plenty to chew on. The plot centres on a corrupt syndicate of lawyers, policemen, doctors and judges who are all out to defraud the insurance system (and the real victims) of anything they can get. It's a pretty nasty scenario, and we're thrown into it through gritty, saturated filmmaking that immerses us in this world through the eyes of one lawyer (Darin) and one doctor (Gusman) who are trying to keep their hands clean. Fat chance.

Submarino

dir Thomas Vinterberg; with Jakob Cedergren, Peter Plaugborg 10/Den ****

Grim almost to the point of despair, this is like a Danish version of Requiem for a Dream, except that there's a tiny spark of hope deep inside it. And it's filmed and performed with raw honesty by the cast and crew. The two-part plot centres on two brothers separated by the circumstances of their life and both going through harrowing situations beyond what they can bear. It's quite painful to watch them flail to survive when their decisions contribute nothing but pain and tragedy. But there's a refreshingly mordant vein of humour running through the whole film, and the actors are remarkably sympathetic even when they're not very likeable.

LFF11: A chill in the air

It was Black Swan night on the London Film Festival red carpet yesterday, as producer Scott Franklin, costars Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis and director Darren Aronofsky lined up for the cameras. The evening was pretty chilly, although Aronofsky's scarf might be a slight overstatement. As we head into the festival's final weekend, there's definitely a sense that things are winding down - only five days to go. And the journalists are beginning to look like the walking dead after 10 days of sleep deprivation and too many movies. Here are two film highlights from this weekend...

The Kids Are All Right

dir Lisa Cholodenko; with Annette Bening, Julianne Moore 10/US *****

Five of this year's best screen characters appear in this comedy-drama about a relatively ordinary family facing some unusual challenges. And while the premise seems extremely offbeat, it's actually beside the point... MORE >

Archipelago

dir Joanna Hogg; with Tom Hiddleston, Lydia Leonard 10/UK ****

A gruelling exploration of middle class angst, this observant film tells its story in a minimalistic, abstract way that may be frustrating for some filmgoers. But it'll chill most audiences to the bone... MORE >