London Film Festival
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Le Grand Soir’ review
★★★☆☆ Following last year’s underwhelming Mammuth (2010), directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern present their latest oddball comedy Le Grand Soir (2012) in the ‘Laugh’ section of the 56th London Film Festival. Our protagonist is Not (Benoît Poelvoorde), “the oldest punk in Europe with a dog” as he describes himself. Despite his ostensible claims…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Helter Skelter’ review
★★☆☆☆ Directed by former photographer Mika Ninagawa, Helter Skelter (2012) is based on the 2003 manga of the same name and tells the story of a model whose faultless beauty and doll like form ultimately becomes her downfall. Nurtured by vanity but driven by greed and success Ninagawa constantly keeps the spotlight on LiLiCo (Erika…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Normal School’ review
★★★☆☆ LFF veteran Celina Murga returns to the festival this year (after previous appearances in 2003 and 2008) with non-fiction outing Normal School (Escuela Normal, 2012), a calm and non-intrusive documentary set in an Argentine state school. Whilst there’s nothing particularly new or innovative about Murga’s latest, the opportunity to witness the next generation showing…
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LFF 2012: Picks of the programme
With the 56th BFI London Film Festival just around the corner (beginning on 10 October), the team here at CineVue thought we’d save you the time and effort of trawling through the festival’s eclectic programme to bring you ten of the smaller, most promising titles to feature at this year’s festival. Whilst most have made…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: Programme announced
The official programme for this year’s 56th BFI London Film Festival was announced to the press today at the Odeon Leicester Square. As previously revealed, Tim Burton’s stop-motion animation Frankenweenie 3D will open the 12-day festival, with Mike Newell’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations closing. With only 14 World Premieres across the 225-strong…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ’50/50′
★★☆☆☆ Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 (2011) stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen in a tragic comedy about a young man who discovers he has a rare form of spinal cancer, yet is unwilling to let it ruin his life. It is loosely based on the similar experiences of the film’s screenwriter Will Reiser, who himself suffered…
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LFF 2011: ‘Wuthering Heights’
★★★☆☆ Wuthering Heights (2011), Andrea Arnold’s re-telling of Emily Brontë’s classic, is clever and full of passion and intensity; very little of which, unfortunately, is communicated to the viewer. Filmed in a social realist style, the film’s handheld aesthetic blends with close up footage of British flora and fauna as Arnold presents the doomed love…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’
★★★★☆ Labelled the French Gone with the Wind (1939) when it was first released amid the victory celebrations of post World War II France, Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) is a wonderful and rarely-seen slice of 1940s art cinema, and this newly-restored version is a treat for old fans and willing converts. The…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘The Future’
★★☆☆☆ Miranda July’s 2005 surreal debut feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know showcased her enormous potential, with fans of quirky, independent, cinema desperate to see what she’d produce next. Narrated by a caged, injured cat, The Future (2011) expands upon July’s unique ability to capture the difficulties of developing relationships and the awkwardness…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Sleeping Sickness’
★★☆☆☆ Ulrich Köhler’s latest drama Sleeping Sickness (2011) is a difficult and tiresome film that leaves a sour taste of lethargy and disappointment in the mouth. Set in Cameroon, it focuses on Dr. Velten (Pierre Bokma), who for the past five years has been managing a sleeping sickness programme. His wife and child return to…