BFI LFF 2018 previews (1)
★★★★☆
Previews from the London Film Festival 10-21 October – Wildlife and Crystal Swan.
Reviews
BFI LFF Review: Crystal Swan (2018)
★★★★☆
The female-centric team of director Darya Zhuk, co-screenwriter Helga Landauer and cinematographer Carolina Costa give Alina Nasibullina a Madonna-esque starring role in post-Soviet black comedy Crystal Swan (Khrustal).
Faces Places (Visages Villages) 2017
★★★★☆
Legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda teams up with photographer JR in a charming creative road trip around France that celebrates the extraordinariness of ordinary people and the power of the imagination.
Climax
★★★★☆
Gaspar Noé’s hallucinogenic Climax is as hard core as its bad trip.
Lucky (2017)
★★★★☆
John Carroll Lynch’s wonderful, poignant Lucky is a fitting career-end for brilliant actor Harry Dean Stanton.
Wajib (2017)
★★★★☆
Wajib translates as ‘duty’ and Annemarie Jacir’s film focuses on a beautifully observed father-son relationship as they take a road trip around Nazareth amid the confines of being an Arab in Israel.
The Guardians (2017)
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians Les Guardiennes is a beautiful period recreation of a time of change for women and society in rural France during the First World War.
The Heiresses/Las Herederas (2018)
★★★★☆
Economically crumbling Paraguay after many years of patriarchal dictatorship is the setting for a subtle story of female self-discovery in Marcelo Martinessi’s The Heiresses.
Racer and the Jailbird
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Racer and the Jailbird stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts in an intense, high-speed love affair.
First Reformed (2018)
★★★★☆
Paul Schrader’s gripping First Reformed links spiritual and physical torment to the environmental threat to the future of the earth.
The Endless (2017)
★★★☆☆
The Endless is Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s excellent sci-fi horror fantasy UFO death-cult adventure.
Sundance London ’18: Hereditary (2018)
★★★★☆
Hereditary is a sophisticated, updated horror movie by Ari Aster that showcases Toni Collette as her family falls apart.
L’Amant Double (2017)
★★★☆☆
François Ozon is on quirky erotic form in L’Amant Double, a mystery of psychoanalysis and seduction.
Ismael’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★☆☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic, interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.