Patrick Gamble
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Faust’
★★★★☆ Acclaimed Russian director Alexander Sokurov looks set to divide audiences at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival with his deeply profound, Venice Golden Lion-winning variation on Goethe’s tragedy Faust (2011) – a unique and transcendental adaptation, with all the characteristic flare and style we’ve come to expect from this pioneering director.After a dreamlike…
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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: ‘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: ‘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 Kid with a Bike’
★★★★★ Directed by two time Palme d’Or-winning Belgium duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo, 2011) continues this remarkably consistent sibling partnership’s ability to capture the poetic essence beneath the misery which often consumes life.We’re thrust straight into the action as the film opens with a young boy…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Take Shelter’
★★★☆☆ Screening at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival, Take Shelter (2011) once again unites Shotgun Stories (2007) director Jeff Nichols and actor Michael Shannon. Set against a backdrop of Middle American domestic life, Take Shelter is a far more visual film, combining elements of terror with a kitchen sink drama that confirms both…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Guilty’
★★★★☆ Concerning the most horrific legal scandal in modern French history, director Vincent Garenq’s Guilty (Présumé coupable, 2011) is a gripping drama based on the memoirs of Alain Marecaux (Philippe Torreton) who was wrongly accused of several accounts of child molestation and thrust into a terrifying web of false testimonies and heavy handed police investigations.Early…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Dragonslayer’
★★★☆☆ Director Tristan Patterson’s award-winning documentary Dragonslayer (2011) (SXSW Grand Jury Prize for best documentary feature) documents the life of Josh ‘Skreech’ Sandoval, a jaded skateboarding veteran living in the sun-drenched, extreme sports-loving town of Fullerton, California.Skreech’s skateboarding career has almost grounded to a complete halt and despite his local fame his sponsorship deals have…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Headhunters’
★★☆☆☆ Adapted from Jo Nesbø’s international bestselling novel Headhunters (2011), director Morten Tyldum’s third full length feature is a taut Norwegian thriller, full of Scandinavian humour that’s already lined up for an invertible Hollywood remake.Despite his diminutive stature, Roger (Aksel Hennie) is a corporate recruiter who seems to have it all. He dresses in the…
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BFI London Film Festival 2011: ‘Return’
★★☆☆☆ Following the recent influx of anti-war films with a more inwardly-looking perspective, Liza Johnson’s debut feature Return (2011) – which screens at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival – stars Linda Cardellini as a female officer unable to reintegrate into society after the horrors she witnessed in Afghanistan, alongside Michael Shannon and John…