Tagged LFF 2017

It seems that in horror or particularly dark dramas surrounding teenage girls, the visual metaphor of hunting (normally, with one’s father) is a particularly popular trope. Just look at Stoker and Split,...

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Lynne Ramsay’s long-awaited thriller You Were Never Really Here is just how full of surprises it is. The film begins in rather dark circumstances, as Joaquin...

Navigating the "Dare" strand of the London Film Festival can bring the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Often there is absolutely no way of telling what lies ahead; it is as thrilling as it is...

This review contains spoilers, if you don’t what to know what happens look away now! That said, if a film’s success rests on it’s one big reveal, can it be truly good? We’re not too sure. Included...

Nominated as Italy’s Oscar contender, Jonas Carpignano’s Scorsese-backed follow-up to his acclaimed Mediterrenea is a must-see. Set in the Calabrian coastal town of Gioia Tauro, A Ciambra turns its...

Faces Places is a documentary made by Agnès Varda and JR to accompany their large scale ‘Inside Out’ photography project. Their big names certainly risk stealing the limelight, but their reverence for the...

Fittingly for a film about changing partners, The Lovers is an intriguing and eclectic mix of old and new. With its simple direction and old-fashioned score, it’s rather reminiscent of classical romances...

If The Squid and the Whale and The Royal Tenenbaums had a baby, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) would be it. The ultimate dysfunctional family with a wily and irrepressible patriarch at the helm may...

The third feature by filmmaking partners Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead blends Lovecraftian horror and intrigue with off-kilter comedic beats, and really, only the latter ever works. Starting out with...

“Who is the worst liar?” asks the judge in charge of deciding whether a father will be allowed to have custody of his son, in French director Xavier Legrand’s tense family thriller. Custody begins with a...

In the first seconds of Warwick Thornton’s outback Western Sweet Country a screaming brawl happens off screen, the camera lingering on a pot about to boil over. It’s a plain statement of intent from a film...

Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying is full to the brim with clichés. Three Vietnam veterans are suddenly reunited having parted ways after the war. One is an alcoholic, while another is a recovering...

As an insight into 18th-century medical practices, Mademoiselle Paradis is an intriguing and informative history lesson. As a film, however, it’s less of a success, veering between tepid and manic. Based on...

The Drummer and the Keeper kicks off with the striking image of a completely bare-arsed man dragging a sofa into the middle of a beach before lighting it on fire. This is Gabriel (Dermot Murphy), a talented...

A gently amusing road movie with a warm worldview, decent sense of silliness, and lack of any challenges to its audience, Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s Going West is one of those European films that feels...