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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The 61st BFI London Film Festival came to an end on Sunday 15th October with the gala screening of Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The festival brought some of the world’s biggest stars to the UK’s capital city for another busy 12-day period, which was jam-packed with over 240 feature programmes and over 120 short films, with 67 countries represented across both short film and features.
Featuring some of the most exciting film content we have to look forward to in the cinema in the coming months, several DCMers were lucky enough to attend a range of screenings across the festival. Some of their highlights and reviews of the films they saw are featured below.
Battle of the Sexes, Tom Linay, Head of Film, DCM
Hugely likeable performances from Emma Stone and Steve Carell carry this story of the 1973 tennis match between then best player in women’s tennis, Billie Jean King, and former men’s tennis world number one, Bobby Riggs, dubbed ‘The Battle of the Sexes’. Little Miss Sunshine directors, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton keep things light and breezy and its commentary on women’s pay compared to men’s is still painfully relevant. Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman and Bill Pullman all deliver strong supporting work and if you don’t know the outcome of the match, it will add an extra layer of excitement.
Battle of the Sexes is in cinemas on 24 November.
The Shape of Water, Tom Linay, Head of Film, DCM
Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak) creates another beautiful, soulful, horrifying magic-realist fantasy and makes it look effortless. Sally Hawkins is wonderful as the mute woman who falls in love with an amphibious creature at the Government facility she cleans for a living. If that sounds off, Del Toro gets the tone just right in a film that balances romance with humour and moments of stark violence in a way that only Del Toro can. The supporting cast is so good, including Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer and Michael Shannon, that you can’t imagine it being cast any better.
The Shape of Water is in cinemas on Valentine’s day 2018.
Good Time, Tom Linay, Head of Film, DCM
Since Twilight, Robert Pattinson has continually chosen interesting directors to work for and his latest, a thriller in which he teams up with New York’s the Safdie brothers, pays off big time. Pattinson plays petty criminal, Connie, who along with his mentally disabled brother, Nick, robs a bank but, as is so often the case, events go awry. When Nick is arrested, Connie has to find the bail money before his brother runs into further trouble in custody. Pattinson gives the best performance I’ve seen from him, completely selling the manic desperation of his character. The Safdie’s bathe the film a scuzzy neon look that fits perfectly and just when you think you know where it’s going it takes a different turn.
Good Time is in cinemas on 17 November.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Adam Reynolds, Partnerships Manager, DCM
Colin Farrell, who delivered an exceptional performance in The Lobster, leads Lanthimos’ cast once more, this time playing a cardiology surgeon, who seems to lack a heart himself. Out of the operating room, Farrell’s dialogue is formulaic and delivered without empathy, going through the motions of humanity without truly feeling. This extends to awkward family conversations around the dinner table with his wife [Nicole Kidman] and two children, played by excellent newcomers Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic.
The film, as with Greek theatre, is delivered in two acts, the first exploring Farrell’s souring friendship with a deceased patient’s teenage son, played to menacing perfection by Dunkirk star Barry Keoghan. The second culminates in a sequence that is a darkly comic homage to Haneke’s Funny Games. To go into any detail on the plot would be sacrilegious; Lanthimos’ idiosyncratic works are best enjoyed as an abstract thrill ride.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is released by Curzon Artificial Eye on Friday 3 November
Read the full review here.
Blade Of The Immortal, Antonio Garcia, Client Director, DCM
Takashi Miike has hit his 100th film with Blade Of The Immortal. For those unaware of the most productive director in cinema, his broad and varied career as a genre-bending filmmaker has spanned everything from comedy, horror, zombie movies, fantasy, samurai films, crime thrillers, kids films, to even finding time in between to work in TV and theatre.
As you'd expect with Miike the story is as bonkers as the action, as a world weary samurai Manji is offered a chance of redemption, being hired as a bodyguard to a young orphaned girl, Rin, seeking revenge against a powerful clan who killed her parents - to makes things more interesting our antihero Manji has been cursed (or blessed depending on your point of view) with the black magic of some immoral bloodworms (yes, worms!) capable of healing wounds and rejoining severed body parts! Pretty useful in the mayhem of shogun-era Japan. The production and fight scenes are as good as anything Hollywood has to offer, the story races along from one bloody battle to the next with some surprising moments of comedy and tenderness between the two protagonists.
Read the full review here.
Foxtrot, Natasha Hall, Agency Manager, DCM
Expanding from the claustrophobic confines of his award-winning film Lebanon, Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz presents a provocative portrait of the mind-set of generations subject to Israeli military conscription, in which a grieving father experiences the absurd circumstances around death of his son. The director Samuel Maoz and lead actor from the film Lior Ashkenazi were both there for a Q&A following the film, which the director claims will be his last. Rather than writing it based on his own political beliefs around the military in his home country of Israel, it’s written based on ‘trying to deal with the gap between the things in and out of our control’. Split into three parts, the film was powerful and moving.
Call Me By Your Name, Natasha Hall, Agency Manager, DCM
This has to be my favourite film of the London Film Festival. Director Luca Guadagnino, who is known for films like A Bigger Splash and I Am Love, introduced the film along with the cast on stage. When asked why he chose to make it in his home country of Italy he commented “to make a movie is such a bore. At least this way I got to visit my Dad!” Absolutely stunning film! It’s released in cinemas on 27 October.
The Meyerowitz Stories, Craig Macfarlane, Innovations Manager, DCM
Noah Baumbach channelled Woody Allen with the comedy set around a dysfunctional Jewish New York family. Incredible writing, with great dialogue delivered by an incredible cast – Emma Thompson stole it for me. It’s available on Netflix in couple of weeks – really recommend watching it.
Last Flag Flying, Nick Price, Agency Executive, DCM
For the Headline Gala of the BFI London Film Festival, we were treated to the premiere of drama/comedy, Last Flag Flying. Held at Odeon Leicester Square, there was also a Q&A with the writer and director, Richard Linklater (Boyhood, School of Rock) and Academy Award Nominee Bryan Cranston (Trumbo, Breaking Bad), who without a doubt steals the film.
This road trip movie brings the death of a young soldier in hostile territory to life in the most comforting of ways. Although the plot of this film may not sound like the happiest of weekend or mid-week watches, the script which these world-class actors were given freedom to improvise with makes it a hilarious, yet heart-warming easy watch.
Read the full review here.
The Florida Project, Adam Reynolds, Partnerships Manager, DCM
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project explores the dark underbelly of broken America, following the residents of a run- down, lilac motel called The Magic Kingdom in a run-down part of Orlando, Florida.
Our protagonists, Halley [Bria Vinaite] and her young daughter Moonee [Brooklynn Prince], live day to day in the motel, Halley turning tricks and hawking cheap perfume to pay her $30 nightly fee to the long- suffering motel manager Bobby [Willem Dafoe]. We see the world through the naïve eyes of young Moonee, who sees the barren landscape as her playground, causing mischief as she recruits new kids to her precocious posse.
Read the full review here.