London Film Festival
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LFF 2013: ‘Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia’ review
★★★☆☆ If you want to read about how former US president John F. Kennedy liked to have sex in the bath, then Palimpsest, the first volume of Gore Vidal’s memoirs, is the book for you. It manages to be a splendidly outrageous document of literary mythmaking and lurid gossip-mongering whilst also being a confessional book…
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LFF 2013: ‘Philomena’ review
★★★☆☆ The Queen director Stephen Frears’ latest offering Philomena (2013), one of a plethora of Oscar hopefuls at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, is a heartfelt and nicely poised dramatisation following the true story of Philomena Lee. Its further bolstered by two classy performances from the ever-reliable, but utterly brilliant Judi Dench as the…
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LFF 2013: ‘Night Moves’ review
★★★★☆ Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard star in Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), an eco-terrorism thriller that, whilst more accessible than her past works, loses none of that distinctive minimalist flare and vigilant style. Josh (Eisenberg) and Dena (Fanning) are a pair of protesters intent of making a difference. Dena works in a…
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LFF 2013: ‘L’intrepido’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Italian director Gianni Amelio returns to the fray with the hugely disappointing L’intrepido (A Lonely Hero, 2013), a hopelessly drab character study and alleged social satire. Celebrated comic actor Antonio Albanese plays Antonio, a Milanese Jack of all trades who subs for other workers when they need a few hours (or, indeed, a day…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Double’ review
★★★☆☆ British comic actor Richard Ayoade grabbed the attention of the UK industry back in 2010 with feature debut Submarine, a sharp, cineliterate adaptation of the Joe Dunthorne novel of the same name. His follow-up, The Double (2013), is once again based upon a literary source, this time taking its inspiration from Russian author Fyodor…
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LFF 2013: ‘Short Term 12’ review
★★★★☆ Debut director Destin Daniel Cretton shows a level of assurance far beyond his years with Short Term 12 (2013), circumnavigating the tantalisingly obvious to create a work that is both warm and heartrending, all while jumping through some well-worn hoops. The film takes events right to the edge of cliché, but the director makes…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Rooftops’ review
★★★☆☆ One of several African efforts to screen at this year’s London Film Festival, Merzak Allouache’s The Rooftops (2013) presents a day in the life of Algiers as seen through the lives of a wide cast of characters and from a distinctly privileged perspective. Playing like an Algerian Short Cuts, the drama recounts the various…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Police Officer’s Wife’ review
★★★☆☆ A follow-up to his own fascinating 2005 documentary Into the Silence, Philip Gröning’s LFF offering The Police Officer’s Wife (2013) is a demanding, stylistically eccentric and often gruelling exploration of the insidious cost of domestic violence, told in a series of 59 short chapters. A jigsaw puzzle is spotted in the kitchen early on,…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas’ review
★★★★☆ Hellenic cinema has, for the past few years, been dominated by the Greek Weird Wave. It’s a movement that has sought to encapsulate a confused and disorientated country, and which arguably peaked early with Yorgos Lanthimos’ familial oddity Dogtooth (2009). Elina Psykou’s The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013) manages to just about adhere…
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LFF 2013: ‘Abuse of Weakness’ review
★★☆☆☆ Isabelle Huppert surmounts the emotional and physical restraints of her character to breathe life into Catherine Breillat’s Abuse of Weakness (2013), an autobiographical drama about deception and dependency from a director whose oeuvre often focuses on women in peril. Huppert plays Maud, a middle-aged filmmaker of some notoriety. We first meet her as she…