Festivals
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘After Lucía’ review
★★★★☆ Screening at this year’s London Film Festival is After Lucía (Después de Lucía, 2012), Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at next year’s Academy Awards and Michel Franco’s deeply harrowing follow-up to Daniel & Ana (2009). Franco’s latest is a captivating, if not quite tortuous expose of school-yard bullying, told…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘West of Memphis’ review
★★★☆☆ In 1994, three US teens were convicted of the murder of three children in the state of Memphis, with the authorities believing the deaths to be related to a series of satanic rituals. Over a decade later, new forensic evidence was presented that suggested that the men were wrongly convicted. This lengthy battle for…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘The Loves of Pharaoh’ review
★★★☆☆ When Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb back in 1922, a sensation swept the entire European continent, resulting in a great deal of public fascination towards all things Ancient Egyptian. It would be tempting to compare this discovery to the restoration of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Loves of Pharaoh (thought lost for many years), but…
-
LFF 2012: ‘Shell’ review
★★★★☆ Edinburgh’s loss, it appears, is London’s gain with the festival ensnaring Scott Graham’s superb Shell (2012), a beautifully rendered, incredibly haunting example of gritty British cinema concocted by a refreshing fusion of intelligence and artistic refinement. Set within the sparse, yet desolately beautiful countryside of the Scottish Highlands, Shell (Chloe Pirrie) is a 17-year-old…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘I, Anna’ review
★★☆☆☆ I, Anna (2012) director Barnaby Southcombe, son of actress Charlotte Rampling (who takes the lead role as a femme fatale in this, his feature debut), attempts to adapt Elsa Lewin’s novel of the same name in what is a disappointing thriller set in London’s Barbican. After a man is brutally murdered in his apartment,…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Keep the Lights On’ review
★★★☆☆ From American director Ira Sachs (best known for previous efforts Married Life and Forty Shades of Blue) comes Keep the Lights On (2012), a sensitive, meandering drama set amongst the bohemian cafés and art galleries of New York City. Brought together through a hedonistic cocktail of sex and drugs, Danish filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhart)…
-
BF London Film Festival 2012: ‘The Wall’ review
★★★★☆ Well-known in her native Germany, Martina Gedeck is perhaps best recalled for her role in Oscar-winning Stasi drama The Lives of Others (2006). However, with a sprinkling of luck this may soon change, as recent New Wave Films acquisition The Wall (Die Wand, 2012) gears up for a 2013 theatrical release thanks to a…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘The Interval’ review
★★★☆☆ One of eight Italian films to screen at this year’s London Film Festival, director Leonardo di Costanzo’s The Interval (L’intervallo, 2012) boasts Gomorrah (2008) screenwriter Maurizio Braucci as one of its co-writers – predictably presenting an exceedingly unfavourable depiction of Naples. Salvatore (Alessio Gallo), 17, is ripped away from the Lemon Ice stand he…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’ review
★★☆☆☆ Desperately clinging to the fading memory of last year’s Academy Award-sweeping The King’s Speech (2010), Roger Michel’s Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) tells the story of an important weekend in the summer of 1939, when president Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) played host to King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Coleman),…
-
BFI London Film Festival 2012: ‘Gimme the Loot’ review
★★★☆☆ Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot (2012) is a brisk and refreshingly jolly look at life on the streets of New York from the perspective of two young graffiti artists, Sofia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson) aka Shakes. We are introduced to the characters as they shoplift paint canisters from a DIY shop, aided…