By The 54th BFI London Film Festival concluded this week and with it, Flixist’s coverage. Spanning fourteen films over the past eleven days – some good, some bad, some foreign – with their own full reviews and coverage of numerous Q&A sessions, it has been at times exhausting (over 15,000 words written), agonising (you try sitting through Young Girls In Black) and anxious (thank you, British Rail, for your hopeless timekeeping), but always entertaining.
Hit the jump to discover the winners (and losers) of the first ever Flixist London Film Festival Awards, with categories for the Most Entertaining film, Most Stimulating, Most Beautiful, Most Hilarious and of course, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and the Best Film of the Festival, as well as a full round-up of Flixist’s London Film Festival coverage.
The 54th BFI London Film Festival concluded this week and with it, Flixist’s coverage. Spanning fourteen films over the past eleven days – some good, some bad, some foreign – with their own full reviews and coverage of numerous Q&A sessions, it has been at times exhausting (over 15,000 words written), agonising (you try sitting through Young Girls In Black) and anxious (thank you, British Rail, for your hopeless timekeeping), but always entertaining.
Hit the jump to discover the winners (and losers) of the first ever Flixist London Film Festival Awards, with categories for the Most Entertaining film, Most Stimulating, Most Beautiful, Most Hilarious and of course, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and the Best Film of the Festival, as well as a full round-up of Flixist’s London Film Festival coverage.
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AND THE WORST…
MOST DISAPPOINTING: 13 Assassins
MOST BORING: Young Girls In Black
MOST INCOMPREHENSIBLE: Sleeping Beauty
MOST PRETENTIOUS: Young Girls In Black
WORST FILM: Young Girls In Black
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THE FULL LIST OF LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ARTICLES
Conviction Review – “If I’ve been too subtle up until this point, Conviction is Oscar bait of the most obvious variety. It’s not that it’s a particularly terrible picture, just one so blatant in its intentions that its story beats are calculated to the point that any savvy filmgoer will be able to predict the narrative path from beginning to end by little more than past experience with this type of film. Fans will of course point out that it’s a true story, that single-mother Betty Ann Waters really did rise from nothing to become a lawyer and free her brother from wrongful conviction after an eighteen-year battle to prove his innocence. But that doesn’t mean the story had to be adapted for the screen in such a clichéd and insubstantial way. Neither writer Pamela Gray nor director Tony Gilroy seem to have any grasp of exactly what they’re trying to say, only that it’s Very Uplifting And Important.” Score: 5.80
Never Let Me Go Review – “Despite exceptional work from the actors and the brilliance of Kazuo Ishiguro’s narrative conceit, Never Let Me Go is an adaptation too surface to convey the intimacy required to do the story justice, exemplifying the fallacy of the expectation that the depths of a celebrated novel will translate naturally to the big screen. Set in a phony simulacrum of England populated by characters who seem to exist only as far as the story needs them, Romanek and Garland want to offer audiences a moving contemplation on identity and the nature of the soul, but fail to find either in their own film.” 6.10
Let Me In: stars and director Q&A
Of Gods And Men Review – “Of Gods And Men is arthouse cinema at its most exquisite. It is slow, but uses that gradual pace to create an interdependence between the characters and the audience. As the monks conquer their doubts and discover a new conviction in their beliefs and decisions, it is a victory for everyone who has ever felt alone in time of need. he performances are uniformly flawless, with Lambert Wilson’s Christian a hero admirable for his unspoken courage and selflessness, though it’s Michael Lonsdale’s soft-spoken and gently humourous doctor Luc who steals the film. As Christian says when reassuring one of his doubting flock: “Our mission is to be brother to everyone.” Wherever those monks are now: mission succeeded.” 8.50
Young Girls In Black Review – “From the perspective of someone who adores the romantic poets, I find it tragic that their passionate and enriching philosophies have been mangled up into this mélange of self-pity and meaningless proselytising. Even the late appearances of a gaudy-tie-wearing, all-singing grandpa and Robinson DelaCroix’s earth-shatteringly awful haircut, the spawn of an ungodly union between a mohawk and a mullet, isn’t entertaining enough to redeem a film whose main achievement is reminding the audience of how terminally unendurable even ninety minutes can be, let alone a lifetime. If I had to live in Civeyrac’s script, that balcony might seem rather appealing after all.” 4.30
The Pipe Review/Q&A – “At its heart, the story of The Pipe is a profound and disturbing failure of democracy. Despite the distressing nature of the film’s subject matter, it’s the locals who keep the tone hopeful and uplifting.As long as there are good people willing to stand up to the higher powers that try to bully them (Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern outright condemns the townspeople for standing up for themselves in a clip near the beginning of the film), their voices will be eventually heard. Whether or not those voices can make an impact will surely be the ultimate judgment on whether we in the Western world can still call ourselves free, or even if we deserve to.” 8.45
Catfish Review/Q&A – “The film is let down by the fact that it never springs any true surprises: its authenticity, shot almost entirely with a handheld camera, is what keeps it going, but since this is a true story it unfolds more or less as you would expect without the kind of reversals that scripted dramas use to upturn audience expectations. What it does offer is a perfect encapsulation of modern technology’s dehumanising of relationships. While people may not be such perfect fits for our fantasies as their online profiles, it’s in the intimate details and depths of those real lives, where technology can only leave gaps, that the strongest connections are made and new facets of our own lives are revealed.” 7.65
Thirteen Assassins Review – “The first half of the film comprises of character work and scene setting. Both are passably diverting, but nothing outside what fans of the genre will have seen many times before. After plodding through the film’s opening hour, perhaps even [Miike] ruefully acknowledges that it took the heat of battle to rediscover his voice.” 6.85
Submarine Review – “Apart from a few such misjudgments (the occasional deployment of meta humour feels out-of-place too), Ayoade displays a promising grasp of the cinematic language in his first feature. The humour is restrained and dry, the characters well observed and inhabited effortlessly by the young leads, and the cinematography finds often gorgeous perspectives on unassuming environments. Better yet, it marks the the first director to emerge from these shores since Edgar Wright who understands his craft and can capture a flavour of the country without resorting to the clichés so popular abroad. Submarine may travel under the radar, but you’d be a fool to miss it when it surfaces.” 7.50
Sleeping Beauty Review – “There are obvious allegories to sexual awakening and crossover between fantasy and reality, but the script reduces much to this to interminable dialogue scenes that dally around themes without evolving or taking them in any interesting directions. Having the teenage Anastasia only allow her beau to undo a few buttons on her corset each night and his subsequent frustration forms a witty allegory contrasting classical standards of wooing to the modern expectation of instant gratification, but ditches the idea after a handful of scenes. Even at under ninety minutes, Breillat’s film feels both underdeveloped and overlong at the same time.” 4.70
Route Irish Review/Q&A – “A late question from an audience member pointed out the similarity between Route Irish and The Pipe, a documentary screened earlier in the Festival which also raised questions about the failures of modern democracies to care for the needs and consider the long-term consequences of its decisions on its people. Loach’s film is sometimes too angry for its own good, forcing scenes into the story for the purposes of making a point and resulting in a sometimes choppy narrative, but that passion also makes for an engrossing and powerful thriller that has a chance of finding the wider audience it is looking for. By Loach’s standards this is a lesser work, with unusually sketchy character writing and performances, but is an engaging and challenging polemic in its own right.” 7.25
Cold Fish Review – “As much fun as it is, this is far from a stupid film: the insanity that takes over from about the halfway mark works so well because the time is taken beforehand to establish clear identities for the off-kilter world in which the story will unfold and its characters, played with magnificent zeal by the entire cast, especially Denden and Akusa Kurosawa who revel in their roles as a mentally seismic serial killer couple. The best way of experiencing the film is simply to throw yourself into its current and be swept away and tossed around at its whim. You’ll emerge exhausted but exhilarated and never look at fish swimming peacefully around a canal in quite the same way again.” 8.50
Biutiful Review – “For a film desperate to be considered alongside the likes of Ikiru in the pantheon of great human dramas but utterly lacking that film’s insight and sincerity, confusing misery for meaning and an extensive running time for depth, Bardem is picking from the faintest scraps of meaning but sells them with such conviction that at times it almost seems there might be a decent film lurking somewhere amidst the drudgery. Unfortunately, Iñárritu’s ongoing addiction to hollow melancholy makes Biutiful‘s writing no more credible than its spelling.” 4.90
Black Swan Review – “The giallo experience should combine the beautiful with the corrupt, as intoxicating and fetishistically thrilling as sucking dry a bleeding wound. Whether intentionally or not, Aronofsky captures this atmosphere better than any director since the genre’s Seventies heyday. Supercharged by the performance of any actor’s lifetime from Portman, Black Swan crackles with the lurid intensity of the greatest exploitation experiences.” 9.00
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…And now you know why I said exhausting! Many thanks to everyone who followed our coverage of the London Film Festival and hopefully, see you next year!