London Film Festival
LFF 2014: Winter SleepSunday, 19 October 2014
Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner is an epic chamber piece by a contemporary great. From the moment a stone suddenly smashes the car window of landlord Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), physical threat darkens the corners of the remote Anatolian... Read more... |
LFF 2014: A Little ChaosSaturday, 18 October 2014
Alan Rickman returns to film directing 17 years after he first stepped behind the camera with a film as pulpy and bodice-ripping as his debut feature, The Winter Guest, was chilly and austere. Visually enticing and packed with a blue-chip... Read more... |
LFF 2014: FoxcatcherFriday, 17 October 2014
There is loud Oscar talk surrounding the stellar performance by Steve Carell in director Bennett Miller’s genuinely unsettling Foxcatcher. Miller (Capote) tackles yet another true crime drama, this time following the steps leading to the murder of... Read more... |
LFF 2014: MommyFriday, 17 October 2014
Motherly love is stretched to its very limits in Xavier Dolan’s deeply affecting melodrama. It's pitched to perfection and shot in a claustrophobic 1:1 aspect ratio, which is occasionally opened up to evoke a rush of liberating joy. This... Read more... |
LFF 2014: PhoenixThursday, 16 October 2014
Director Christian Petzold avoided Germany’s grim version of heritage cinema – the war, the Wall – until last year’s Cold War hit Barbara. His fascination with his country’s present suppressions, though, helps him peel away its past’s familiar... Read more... |
LFF 2014: The Keeping RoomWednesday, 15 October 2014
Indie actress Brit Marling takes aim at a rigid power structure in this tense and pared down female-led revisionist Western from British director Daniel Barber. Set towards the end of the American Civil war three women are grappling to survive... Read more... |
LFF 2014: It FollowsTuesday, 14 October 2014
Few films this frightening are also so kind. David Robert Mitchell’s second feature starts with a pretty teenage girl suffering inexplicable, bone-snapping terror. He makes us wait to find out why, lingering in the lives of 19-year-old Jay (Maika... Read more... |
LFF 2014: Goodbye to LanguageMonday, 13 October 2014
Jean-Luc Godard is still masterfully riding new waves, more than 50 years after Breathless. Following Film Socialisme’s epic engagement with digital cinema, here 3D becomes a dazzling illusionist’s trick. Goodbye to Language drew laughs when I saw... Read more... |
LFF 2014: Wild TalesMonday, 13 October 2014
Argentine cinema is best known for its serious side – finely-honed arthouse fare from the likes of Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero and Lisandro Alonso. But the Argentines can do mainstream very well. And this is a big, bold, glossily-produced, highly... Read more... |
LFF 2014: The CutSaturday, 11 October 2014
There have been pitifully few films about the Ottoman Turks’ genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in World War One, surely thanks to the strategic usefulness of a modern Turkey which denies the genocide’s existence. Fatih Akin, the fierce German-... Read more... |
LFF 2014: Listen Up PhilipSaturday, 11 October 2014
Listen Up Philip is so successful in its retro stylings that it comes across like a lost New Hollywood gem. Told in close-ups viewed through the grainy filter of Super 16 film stock, Alex Ross Perry's third feature takes its influences from the best... Read more... |
LFF 2014: The Duke of BurgundyFriday, 10 October 2014
Love is a many-splendored thing but it can also be a cruel mistress, as British auteur Peter Strickland so exquisitely illuminates in this startlingly beautiful Seventies-style European erotica, which centres around power and desire.The... Read more... |
