Festivals
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ review
★★★★☆ A big-screen adaptation of Lucy Alibar’s play Juicy and Delicious, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) is a picturesque coming of age tale imbued with an aura of magical realism and an underlying cultural message about our fluctuating global environment. Precocious six-year-old Hush Puppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) lives with her father Wink (Bwight…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Here and There’ review
★★☆☆☆ Nobody would question the fact that Antonio Mendez Esperanza’s Here and There (Aquí y Allá, 2012) raises some extremely important and relevant points about the challenges faced by Latin American migrant workers. Yet, even the most ardent fans of slow cinema may well find Esperanza’s film a chore. The narrative follows protagonist Pedro, who…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Just the Wind’ review
★★★★☆ Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf’s bleak and brutally affecting Eastern block drama Just the Wind (Csak a szél, 2011) was one of the very best films screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, rightfully finding itself in the running for the top Golden Bear award. Fliegauf’s latest may still be looking to secure UK distribution, but…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Spike Island’ review
★★☆☆☆ The 90s were great, weren’t they? You had Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and of course The Stone Roses, who are given near mythical status in Mat Whitecross’ love letter to band frontman Ian Brown, in Spike Island (2012). A group of lads from Manchester spend their days rehearsing together in their unsigned band, covering their…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Captive’ review
★★☆☆☆ Directed by Brillante Mendoza and starring the incredibly watchable Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher [2001], White Material [2009]), 2012’s Captive (also referred to as Captured) is loosely based on the true story of an accidental kidnapping of a group of holiday makers and missionaries in the Philippines in 2001. A group of masked, armed…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Save Your Legs!’ review
★☆☆☆☆ The comedy feature debut from Aussie born director Boyd Hicklin, Save Your Legs! (2013) is an odd choice for a festival film, even if it is categorised under ‘Laugh’ in the new London Film Festival groupings, where it will undoubtedly find few friends on the festival circuit. Edward ‘Teddy’ Brown (Stephen Curry) is something…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘The We and the I’ review
★★★☆☆ Michel Gondry’s London Film Festival select The We and the I (2012) is the product of a recent after-school program the French filmmaker coordinated, taking the lessons learnt and ideas that were formed from these workshops to create a fascinatingly naturalistic insight into the lives of a varied cross section of Brooklyn teenagers. Set…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Accession’ review
★★☆☆☆ Issue movies are always problematic. It is rare that the cause that they champion is not an important and worthy one, but their very nature mean that the art of storytelling and the creation of drama can often play second fiddle to making their point. This is absolutely the case with Michael J. Rix’s…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Laurence Anyways’ review
★★★☆☆ LFF entry Laurence Anyways (2012) is Québécois director Xavier Dolan’s third full-length feature. Renowned for his exquisite visual style and sumptuous cinematography, there’s always been the feeling that Dolan is something of a cinematic narcissist, far more concerned with proving his technical ability than presenting a truly absorbing story – even going as far…
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Amour’ review
★★★★★ Winner of the coveted Palme d’Or prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Michael Haneke’s heartbreaking Amour (2012) makes its UK debut in LFF’s newly created ‘Love’ strand this week. A minimalistic masterpiece of quiet majesty, Haneke has once again confounded his naysayers by creating a film of genuine heartfelt warmth and unconditional affection,…