London Film Festival 2014

[scootermcc]

I'll be catching Tom Hardy's new film 'The Drop' and and 'It Follows' which is a new highly raved about horror film I've been following.

Caught "The Drop" whilst on holiday in the USA recently and enjoyed it, Tom Hardy was particularly good. It's a bit of a slow burner but stick with it.

[FBS]

More tickets been released for films showing at Odeon Covent Garden

[Beate]

My friend booked us tickets for "Bypass". Woohoo, George Mackay!

[kevinknapman]

Guess I'll offer up a quick(ish) run through of the films I saw at the festival this year.
I saw 11 films in total and thankfully didn't dislike any of them.

Best film was Whiplash. An intense and electrifying film with two stunning lead performances from Miles Teller and JK Simmons. Who knew the world of jazz drumming and the volatile relationship between a student and teacher could be so exciting and dangerous? Hank Levy's track Whiplash unsurprisingly makes an appearance though it's Duke Ellington's Caravan that you'll never listen to in the same way again that's for sure (a piece of music you'll probably have heard even if you don't know the name). Impressive, essential and supremely confident cinema.
It's not out until January but there's another chance to catch it in London on the 20th November at the Barbican as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. It's well worth catching.

Second favourite film was Russian drama Leviathan. A bleak and powerful story of corruption, god and vodka. Lots and lots of vodka. Though if a 140 min Russian film partly inspired by the book of Job and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes sounds too daunting, a surprising and welcome vein of humour running throughout makes it a lot less heavy than it could have been. It's also impressively shot and very well acted.

Other highlights include the wonderfully titled Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. A very funny & incredibly entertaining documentary. Pretty much essential for anyone who grew up in the 80s and spent their youth renting exciting sounding films out of video shops that invariably turned out to be awful and inept. Worth it for the Clyde the orangutan anecdote alone. Lots of fascinating stuff I was unaware of (though the fact Michael Winner was a pretty vile unpleasant person came as no surprise). If you've seen Mark Hartley's doc on Ozploitation films Not Quite Hollywood, you'll know what to expect. Great fun.

Sequel Monsters: Dark Continent was pretty good. I'm not a huge fan of the first film, which though it had plenty to admire was also a little dull at times. The sequel is a completely different beast (though the end of the first film hinted at the direction it could take). A combat movie in the same vein as Black Hawk Down and The Hurt Locker. Impressively shot and with a little more monster action than the first (though they still act as more of a backdrop to the human story). Great performances from the always excellent Johnny Harris (This Is England '86, Welcome to the Punch), Sam Keeley and Joe Dempsie. It should act as a decent calling card for director Tom Green in much the same way that the first film did for Gareth Edwards.

Daniel Monzon's follow-up to the excellent Cell 211, called El Nino. A very impressive and gripping Spanish thriller with Luis Tosar, Sergi Lopez and, oddly, Ian McShane. Primarily about drug trafficking in the Strait of Gibraltar as seen from both sides of the law but being a film starring Luis Tosar, it's also inevitably a film about Luis Tosar's eyebrows. They deserve a screen credit of their own. Not sure when this is getting a UK release but it's well worth seeing.

It Follows. An impressive, smart and deeply unnerving horror film with a strong retro feel and a fantastic career-making performance from Maika Monroe. A film that manages the rare feat of being in small ways reminiscent of many previous horror films (Japanese horror, the 80s work of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg etc) but still has a fresh and distinctive voice of its own. It's also the kind of film it's best to know as little as possible about before going in. Not least because the barest description (um...STD horror) will just make it sound a lot worse than it actually is. Perhaps not the masterpiece some are claiming it to be but a very strong film nonetheless.

Rosewater. Jon Stewart's impressive directorial debut based on Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari's book about being arrested in Tehran during the 2009 Iranian election protests and held and interrogated for over 100 days supposedly on the charge of being a spy for the west.
A powerful and moving story with excellent performances from Gael Garcia Bernal and Kim Bodnia.

The Surprise film this year was Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Which was definitely surprising considering the Leeds International Film Festival were supposedly screening its UK premiere as the closing film next month.
The film is bizarre, audacious, hard to pin down and completely unhinged. I would expect it to divide opinion on here when it's released next January.
Michael Keaton is outstanding but then the whole cast (which includes Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Zach Galifianakis) are excellent. It doesn't always work but it's a bold and distinctive work that's worth seeing.

Robot Overlords. A family sci-fi action adventure from the director of Grabbers. Not quite as much fun as that but a decent, entertaining film nonetheless with a solid cast including Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley. Impressive special effects too considering its modest budget. Think of a British Transformers without the headache-inducing brash arrogance.

Two digitally remastered rereleases round off my LFF films. King Hu's excellent 60s martial arts/swordsplay classic Dragon Inn and the always glorious musical Guys and Dolls. Such a pleasure to see both films looking so good on the big screen.