Ron Swanson rounds up his highlights from the LFF.
Dispatches From The LFF: The Morning After
Tag Archives: London Film Festival
Dispatches from the LFF: The Second Review Round-Up
Laura Morgan and Ron Swanson delve further into the London Film Festival’s schedule and report on what they find…
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Dispatches from the LFF: The First Review Round-Up
At the midpoint (or thereabouts) of the 58th London Film Festival, some of our regular contributors talk a little about what they’ve seen so far…
It Follows by Ron Swanson
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A History Of The LFF In 26 Objects
The 58th BFI London Film Festival opens tonight. Spank The Monkey has probably been to more of them than you have.
London Film Festival 2012 reviews II
Hot off the press, a fresh new batch of reviews from the London Film Festival.
Rust and Bone
Reviewed by Ron Swanson
Rust and Bone is the quintessential festival film: French, with a ‘name’ director, a rising star and an art-house darling. It’s also muscular, brutal and frequently beguilingly beautiful. Jacques Audiard’s follow up to A Prophet was conceived as a response to that film; all open spaces and romantic entanglements.
Attack of the Killer Brummies: Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers
Ben Wheatley’s eagerly anticipated new film, Sightseers, is a black comedy about a couple on a caravanning holiday across England who start a killing spree. Written by its two stars, Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, the film is receiving regular comparisons to Mike Leigh and Natural Born Killers. What’s interesting is that, although he did not originate the project, the film is so clearly the work of the man who last directed Kill List.
In September, Mostly Film’s Gareth Negus attended a press conference with Ben Wheatley, Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who talked about the creation of the film, its production and their choice of eccentric tourist spots.
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London Film Festival reviews
Mostly Film’s intrepid reviewers have been out and about at the London Film Festival. Here is the first of two reports this week of what they’ve been watching.
John Dies At The End
Reviewed by Clare Dean
During his introduction to the late night screening of John Dies at the End, director Don Coscarelli told how he was mulling over a sequel to 2002 cult hit, Bubba Ho-Tep, when he received an email from a ‘robot’ – one of those automated Amazon messages that recommends on past purchases, ‘you bought this, so you might like this’ etc. The suggestion was David Wong’s book, John Dies at the End and for once, the robot was spot on.
John Dies at the End is a fun midnight movie. Told in confessional flashback as a potential story to journalist Arnie Blandstone (Paul Giamatti), two paranormal investigators (Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes) have to save the universe from a gigantic evil demon called Korrock, helped by a mind opening drug called (and looks like) Soy Sauce. Once the Soy Sauce takes hold, nothing is as it seems. Characters develop psychic abilities and cross time and reality. The dead have telephone conversations with the living. At least, I think that’s what happens.
London Film Festival: Best of British
With the 2012 London Film Festival in full swing, Siobhan Callas of Britflicks.com looks at the British productions in this year’s programme.
It’s time once again for the UK’s biggest (and possibly longest titled) film event of the year, The 56th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express.
The festival sees a total of 225 feature films from 68 different countries playing across the capital city’s cinemas for 12 days throughout October. And much to my own personal joy, one sixth of this year’s chosen screen outings are home-grown.
Are You Still Alive?
On the eve of the world premiere at the London Film Festival of his debut fiction feature Kelly + Victor – a raw and intimate romantic drama with a dark side, set in an evocatively captured contemporary Liverpool – Indy Datta interviews writer-director Kieran Evans.
On the genesis of Kelly + Victor
I came into film during the early days of acid house. I was studying fine art, and acid house had just sort of crash-landed, and in that kind of great way that the e culture made happen, you try something different, so I picked up a film camera and found myself enjoying that much more, so I became an art school dropout, and moved to London with the idea of making films rather than becoming an artist.
Ten of the Best Films From the 2012 San Sebastian Film Festival
by Matthew Turner
As regular readers of Europe’s Best Website may remember, this time last year I attended the San Sebastian Film Festival and had such a great time that I vowed to go back every year until death. Well, so far, so good. For the truly curious, pictures and a tweet-by-tweet account of the entire festival can be found here and here respectively, but let’s keep this blog post mostly about film. Here, then, are some notes on the ten best films I saw at San Sebastian this year (out of a total of 35). Note that a) I would have included The Imposter on this list if I hadn’t already seen it at Edinburgh and b) I deemed retrospective films ineligible for the top ten, otherwise Franju’s Judex would have been on the list too.
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