London Film Festival
London Film Festival 2025 - from paranoia in Brazil and Iran, to light relief in New York and TuscanyWednesday, 15 October 2025
Film festivals are a bran tub: what you find in them may be unexpected, and not always in a good way. Here are six I pulled out in my first week (minus one of my favourites, The Mastermind, which I will review when it goes on general release next... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2025 - a Korean masterclass in black comedy and a Camus classic effectively realisedSaturday, 18 October 2025
No Other ChoicePark Chan-wook’s outstanding black comedy is a rare treat, biting social satire delivered with immaculate slapstick touches. His everyman hero is Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a jittery but deliriously happy man with a beautiful wife (... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2025 - Bradley Cooper channels John Bishop, the Boss goes to Nebraska, and a French pandemicFriday, 17 October 2025
Is This Thing On? Bradley Cooper has previously directed A Star Is Born and Maestro, but they weren’t nearly as much fun as this. It’s a story of New Yorkers in the throes of mid-life crises, as Alex Novak (Will Arnett) separates from his wife... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild GodTuesday, 31 December 2024
Young eldritch junkie Nick Cave would have struggled to predict his maturity as a font of wry and sacred wisdom, or the fathomless loss he reckoned with en route.Wild God followed the harrowed Skeleton Tree and grief-illumined Ghosteen, necessary... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson on 'Rumours'Saturday, 07 December 2024
Somewhere in Germany, G7 conference leaders including German Chancellor Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and US President Wolcott (Charles Dance) repair to a gazebo to collaborate on a “clear, but not so clear” communique addressing an unnamed, possibly... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - Nickel Boys, crime and punishment and UkraineSaturday, 26 October 2024
RaMell Ross’s feature debut follows his poetic documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) in again observing black Southern teenage boys, this time in Sixties juvenile prison the Nickel Academy, where beatings and unmarked graves... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - a shaman and shamSaturday, 26 October 2024
Justin Kurzel’s Australian film subjects are out on the malign edge, from Snowtown’s suburban serial killer and Nitram’s mass shooter to Ned Kelly. His debut documentary’s protagonist Warren Ellis is a contrastingly loving renegade, an escapee from... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - Angelina Jolie does Maria CallasThursday, 24 October 2024
MariaHow do you solve a problem like Maria? Pablo Larrain’s film picks up the daunting challenge of evoking the life but above all the myth of La Callas, one of a handful of opera legends who have broken the highbrow barrier to become truly... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - Daniel Craig, Amy Adams, Twiggy, Christopher Reeve and some snailsFriday, 18 October 2024
QueerWilliam Burroughs’ eponymous novel was nearly filmed by Steve Buscemi in 2011, but it has finally reached the screen under the helmsmanship of Luca Guadagnino. It bombards the viewer from a variety of angles and leaves plenty of treacherous... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024
ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2023 - mixed fortunes for film mastersThursday, 19 October 2023
The LFF's Best Film Award winner, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car follow-up Evil Does Not Exist, is a characteristic mix of extended takes and conversations, limpid beauty and dizzyingly intense dramatic incident, and just one of the festival's... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2023 - monsters, ghosts and diabolical peopleMonday, 16 October 2023
Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow-up to The Favourite, is an intoxicating achievement, a ravishing, twisted, very funny and even radical fable that must be a major contender in the awards season that gets into gear as the London Film... Read more... |
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