London Film Festival 2018

This year, I was able to spend more time than previously at London Film Festival, and my thoughts on the films I saw can be read over at The Movie Isle. You can also see my ranked list of the films at Letterboxd - I managed 17, and if I lived in London I would …

The White Girl (2017)

I had a meeting at relatively short notice in London last week and, knowing it would mean an overnight stay, headed straight to the London Film Festival website to see what options were still available for the evening in question. Well, The White Girl had me at Christopher Doyle. The master of cinematography has co-directed …

Columbus (2017)

I was wondering how to start writing about this film, so I turned to the IMDb blurb for inspiration. It says: A Korean-born man finds himself stuck in Columbus, Indiana, where his architect father is in a coma. The man meets a young woman who wants to stay in Columbus with her mother, a recovering …

Le Fidèle – Racer and the Jailbird (2017)

This is a strange one. I thought it had finished twice before it finally got there and found it a little all over the place in clarifying which strand of the narrative was important for plot and which was supposed to be exposition. And yet it was still very enjoyable. I could hear some perplexed …

Stronger (2017)

Cards on the table - I was anticipating this was going to be a 'trauma victim overcomes the odds to become a hero' story, and the only reason I chose to see it was because Jake Gyllenhaal, whose films I don't avoid. The fact that this is a very different survivor story is not only …

Mudbound (2017)

Absolutely no denying that this film, once it reached its climax, was emotional, brutal, devastating. It did take a while to get there though. So many strands, lots of characters, all introduced to us at the very start, so that it felt like it took a long while to get going. I'm not the biggest …

Juste la fin du monde – It’s Only the End of the World

This was the film I had built my entire (if short) London Film Festival experience around. As soon as I knew I was going to be in town on the evening of the UK premiere, I booked my ticket. Director Xavier Dolan is currently one of my favourite directors. His films aren't always easy to …

London Film Festival – First Visit!

Occasionally I find myself in London for work, and I was quite excited to realise that one of these visits for the first time coincides with the London Film Festival. So I've been able to squeeze enough time to see a tiny handful of films - I'd love to see more, but adding in accommodation costs …