London Film Festival
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LFF 2013: ‘Thy Womb’ review
★★★★☆ Filipino national treasure Brillante Mendoza has arguably directed one of the most poignant and intimate films screening at this year’s 57th London Film Festival. Thy Womb (2012) follows the story of a midwife, Shaleha (Nora Aunor), who cannot have children. The film follows her and her husband Bangas An (Bembol Rocco) on their search…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Spectacular Now’ review
★★★★☆ Director James Ponsoldt delivers on the promise of 2012’s Smashed with The Spectacular Now (2013), a brilliant fin-de-siècle teen film that’s soaring, heartfelt and encouragingly devoid of any unwarranted sentimentality. It’s a film that’s truthful and frank while remaining firmly within the bounds of cinematic grammar. The ace up the film’s sleeve is its…
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LFF 2013: ‘Jeune & Jolie’ review
★★★☆☆ Following on from the Kristen Scott-Thomas-starring In the House (2012), which hit screens back in March, prolific French director François Ozon returns to UK cinemas for the second time this year with Jeune & Jolie (2013). Playing at the London Film Festival ahead of a wider cinematic release, it is an elusive study of…
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LFF 2013: ‘Durban Poison’ review
★★☆☆☆ In the late 1980s, maverick filmmaker Andrew Worsdale gained immediate cult status when his debut feature, the ultra-provocative Shot Down (1988), was banned by the apartheid government in South Africa. Having maintained radio silence for the best part of two decades, the director returned to screens to great acclaim, with his new film, Durban…
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LFF 2013: ‘Gravity’ review
★★★★☆ Sound and vision combine to momentous effect in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013), a grand technical touchstone that the next generation of CGI-reliant blockbusters could and should be measured against. Fortunately, Cuarón’s latest also proves to be more than just a ‘look-at-me’ tech demo for computer-generated visual advancement, grounded as it is by a winning…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Fear’ review
★★☆☆☆ Whilst Jordi Cadena’s The Fear (2013) boasts a sensational performance from young talent Igor Szpakowski and a palpable sense of dread, this oppressive meditation on Spain’s ‘pact of forgetting’ and Basque separatism ultimately proves an insensitive and tactless exploration of domestic violence. Shot almost entirely from the vantage point of teenager Manel (Szpakowski), we…
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LFF 2013: ‘Child’s Pose’ review
★★★★☆ Winner of the coveted Golden Bear prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and now picked up for UK distribution, Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose (2013) is a raw and unflinching drama, smothered by the unconditional love of a mother. Despite her privileged lifestyle and obvious material wealth, 60-year-old Cornelia’s (Luminita Gheorghiu)…
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LFF 2013: ‘Story of My Death’ review
★★★☆☆ Winner of the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Albert Serra’s mischievous period drama Story of my Death (2013) depicts the tempestuous epoch where Enlightenment gave way to the passions and frivolity of Romanticism. Falsely marketed as an encounter between Casanova and Dracula, this playful but narratively benign riff on history’s most…
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LFF 2013: ‘Harmony Lessons’ review
★★★★☆ A beautiful yet also vehemently hostile Darwinian drama set within the confines of a rural Kazakh school, Emire Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (2013) is an austere and haunting tale of childhood hierarchy and the psychological suffocation of a world governed by violence. We’re first introduced to 13-year-old Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov) as he’s seen merrily chasing…
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LFF 2013: ‘As I Lay Dying’ review
★★☆☆☆ The fact that James Franco is the subject of frequent mockery is sadly indicative of the cynicism of our times. A modern day renaissance man, Franco’s numerous endeavours may appear scattered and disorderly but, in an age where every artistic step is carefully calculated, they should nonetheless be applauded as the unshakable compulsion of…