London Film Festival
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Footnote’
★★★☆☆ Following his Oscar-nominated, deeply moving anti-war film Beaufort (2007), director Joseph Cedar continues to raise his profile with Footnote (2011), a uniquely comedic exploration into issues of pride, sacrifice and jealousy through a fragile family dynamic which won him the prestigious best screenplay award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.The story of a fierce…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘We Have a Pope’
★★★★★ Italian director Nanni Moretti has been making films since 1973 and is often labelled as the ‘Italian Woody Allen’ by lazy critics with a passion for tenuous comparisons. Yet Allen, even on his best day, couldn’t match the skill, humour and ambition Moretti displays in his latest effort We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam,…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘A Dangerous Method’
★★★☆☆ Initial critical responses to David Cronenberg’s latest effort A Dangerous Method (2011) were less than positive following the film’s premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Now screening in the UK for the first time at the BFI London Film Festival, Cronenberg’s psychoanalytical drama is markedly flat and even unremarkable, yet is lifted by…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘W.E.’
★☆☆☆☆ W.E. (2011) attempts to explore the remarkable love affair between King Edward VIII and the infamous Wallis Simpson (played by James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough respectively), yet told with a twist. The film receives its UK premiere tonight at the 55th BFI London Film Festival after a barrage of critical condemnation, but before we…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Old Dog’
★★★★☆ Director Pema Tseden has almost single-handedly reinvented Tibetan cinema. His previous two films, The Silent Holy Stones (2005) and The Search (2009), both screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival to great critical acclaim. Like his previous efforts, Old Dog (2011) is set in the Tibetan region of the Chinese province of Qinghai, however,…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Wild Bill’
★★★☆☆ Dexter Fletcher has a fine film pedigree: Bugsy Malone (1976), The Elephant Man (1980), The Long Good Friday (1980) and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) are just a few of the movies on his 30-year CV, and his directorial debut Wild Bill (2011) – starring Charlie Creed-Miles, Will Poulter and Liz White…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Trishna’
★★☆☆☆ Acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom is renowned for his ability to switch between genres with relative ease, with past successes including Jude (1996), 24 Hour Party People (2002) and The Killer Inside Me (2010). His latest venture is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s penultimate novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles set in present day India and…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘The Monster of Nix’
★★★☆☆ The Monster of Nix (2011) is an entertaining and quirky existential animation from Rosto, featuring the voices of Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits, and is one of the highlights of the 55th BFI London Film Festival’s animation programme. Willy (Joe Eshuis) lives with his grandmother in Nix – a peaceful, secluded community – until…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai’
★★☆☆☆ Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Ichimei, 2011) – starring Kôji Yakusho, Naoto Takenaka and Hikari Mitsushima – can best be described as troublesome; a remake (based on Masaki Kobayashi Harakiri [1962]) that is full of potential, yet ultimately fails to deliver. The plot is your usual fair of revenge and honour that…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’
★★★★★ Criminally overlooked at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s seminal psychological drama We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) – starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly – receives its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival tonight and stands as not only one of the truly outstanding…