London East Asia Film Festival: Before We Vanish (2017)
★★★★☆
Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a genre-bending Japanese bodysnatchers movie that provokes an alien apocalypse on Earth.
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Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
★★★☆☆
Brawl in Cell Block 99 is S. Craig Zahler’s grindhousefest and a new departure for Vince Vaughn.
BFI LFF: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
★★★★☆
You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay’s latest film is a dark, disturbing odyssey into the mind of a brutal yet tender hitman.
BFI LFF: Downsizing (2017)
★★★☆☆
Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is a fantasy satire in microcosm on life, the universe and everything.
BFI LFF: 24 Frames (2017)
★★★★☆
Abbas Kiarostami’s experimental, posthumous 24 Frames is a meditative insight into a great filmmaker’s creative process.
BFI LFF: Journey’s End (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Journey’s End, director Sam Dibbs’ adaptation of R.C.Sherriff’s stage play, struggles to entrench itself in WWI.
BFI LFF: GEMINI (2017)
★★★☆☆
Gemini is Aaron Katz’s pacy nouveau noir murder mystery set in the filmmaking community around Los Angeles.
BFI LFF: My Generation (2017)
Michael Caine cruises serenely through a presenting stint for My Generation, a stylish Rolls-Royce of documentaries, with his personal insider’s take on London in…
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BFI LFF: Battle of the Sexes (2017)
★★★★☆
Serving well-rounded feminist statements while expertly juggling three intertwining stories, Battle of the Sexes is an outwardly reaching argument encapsulated in a tennis match.
BFI LFF: A Fantastic Woman (2017)
★★★☆☆
Facing the humiliation of social exclusion after losing a loved one, Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman is a heartbreaking portrait of loneliness.
BFI LFF: Spoor (2017)
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
BFI LFF: Stronger (2017)
★★★★☆
Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green, stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a gruelling but inspirational portrait of a man rebuilding his life after the Boston Marathon bombing.
BFI LFF: Breathe (2017)
★★★☆☆
Opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis’s debut as a director is the inspiring drama Breathe, a very moving true story.
BFI LFF: Filmworker (2017)
★★★★☆
Tony Zierra’s Filmworker approaches Stanley Kubrick from the perspective of his assistant and close friend, Leon Vitali, in a well-informed and satisfyingly impartial talking-heads doc.