Tagged london film festival 2015

Artful, drily witty and a tiny bit mad, Lucifer packs some stunning imagery and big ideas into its self-imposed restrictive frame. Filmed in "Tondoscope", Lucifer's striking circular frame plays host to...

A strong premise and some stunning locations make for some intriguing moments but ultimately don't add up to much in Don't Grow Up. With its stock characters and an abundance of awkward dialogue,...

Featuring a stoic central performance from Eshetu, Red Leaves is an effective if slightly slow-moving examination of a patriarchy in decline. Eshetu (as the elderly Meseganio) absolutely nails his...

Lost in Munich starts odd – a French parrot offends Czechs on the anniversary of the historical 1938 Munich agreement by repeating the insults of the French PM Edouard Daladier – and only gets...

Imagine if one man were responsible for the success of the entire rock ‘n’ roll scene in the ‘60s. Danny Says doesn’t go quite that far, but it does depict Danny Fields, publicist, manager and...

Director Walter Salles plunges straight in from frame one with his subject in Jia Zhangke, A Guy From Fenyang, a very personal study of Sixth Generation Chinese director and writer Zhangke. The...

Blood of My Blood tries to link too many genres, styles and time periods, without much of a story to hold them together. The script may be poor, but Bellocchio keeps your attention with teasing direction,...

Despite a light, almost joyful opening, Beasts of No Nation is, unsurprisingly, no easy watch. It charts a descent into further – and constant – brutality. Once bright but traumatised youngster Agu (a...

Jia Zhangke continues to chronicle contemporary Chinese society, but this time he looks to the future in a story stretching from 1999 to 2025. Zhangke offers wry humour and class pressures in the...

It would be difficult to flub a documentary about so inspirational a subject, but He Named Me Malala exceeds expectations and delivers its important message with grace and power. The documentary is...

Violently dull, and then just violent, Madame Courage is a film with nothing new to say. Its mood of stasis interrupted by extreme violence is reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn, but without the style....

It’s a testament to Kári’s direction and Jónsson’s performance that Virgin Mountain remains engrossing despite being relentlessly downbeat. Jónsson doesn’t soften his performance by suggesting...

Friendships are tested in this mellow hybrid between a documentary and a drama. Cronies' style references sitcoms like The Office and Parks & Rec with its breaking the fourth wall, but struggles to say...