Recommendations and roundups
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Preview: the 2016 BFI London Film Festival
With a focus on black talent and an S&S Gala presenting the film of 2016, this autumn’s festival is set to be one of the most exciting in years, says Nick James.
Friday 2 September 2016 -
London Film Festival 2016: my five picks (and five hopes) – Isabel Stevens
What to watch at this year’s LFF? In the first of our editor’s personal selections, Isabel Stevens tips her hat to four hits from Cannes, and anticipates new movies from Kelly Reichardt and Matías Piñeiro alongside the revival of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.
Friday 30 September 2016 -
London Film Festival 2016: my five picks (and five hopes) – Nick James
What to watch at this year’s LFF? Nick James commends Jim Jarmusch’s most soulful yet, a serious shocker from Paul Verhoeven and Amat Escalante’s blindsiding The Untamed.
Tuesday 4 October 2016 -
London Film Festival 2016: my five picks (and five hopes) – Kieron Corless
What to watch at this year’s LFF? Kieron Corless salutes Eugène Green’s modern Nativity with a monstrous Mathieu Amalric, and four triumphantly imaginative explorations of history from Chile, Austria, Thailand and the US.
Thursday 6 October 2016 -
London Film Festival 2016 Cult round-up: woods, morgues and madness
Anton Bitel picks five of the best – and freakiest – in this year’s LFF Cult strand.
Friday 7 October 2016 -
New narratives: Spanish stories at London Film Festival 2016
Five surprising films by Spanish and Latin American directors at this year’s LFF explored the consolations and tricks offered by storytelling.
Saturday 22 October 2016 -
Experimenta 2016: Explosions at the end of the line
From Bill Morrison’s history dig in the Yukon to Fiona Tan’s decolonial meditation on Mount Fuji, much of this year’s LFF Experimenta delved back into cinema’s past to forge funky and unfamiliar visions of the medium’s future, writes Sophie Mayer.
Wednesday 2 November 2016 -
Podcast: Certain Women, Elle, Moonlight and Nocturama – four 2016 highlights, debated
Kieron Corless hosts Erika Balsom, Henry K. Miller and Catherine Wheatley for a half-hour debate about four outstanding movies from this autumn’s London Film Festival.
Thursday 1 December 2016
News and interviews
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“Please stop this talent drain”: David Oyelowo’s plea for British film diversity
The now-expat star of Selma and A United Kingdom demanded changes at the top to redress the systemic whitewashing of British histories on screen in a heartfelt keynote speech at the London Film Festival’s Black Star symposium. Simran Hans reports.
Tuesday 18 October 2016 -
The Illinois Parables: Deborah Stratman on her histories of the land
The artist and filmmaker talks the politics of place, allegories of exile and questions of film form with Erika Balsom.
Wednesday 5 October 2016
Reviews
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Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith review – nature up close and sticky
A new cut-up of pioneering movie naturalist F. Percy Smith’s Secrets of Nature series, directed by the Tindersticks’ Stuart Staples and scored by the band, is a richly steamy experience, says Pamela Hutchinson.
Tuesday 18 October 2016 -
Simran Hans on Amma Asante’s retelling of the post-war, inter-continental love story between Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, a refresh of the woman’s picture that again confronts skeletons of Britain’s colonial past.
Monday 12 September 2016 -
Simran Hans on Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise counterpoint, a late 70s, warehouse-confined Boston-Irish crime caper steeped in blood and banter.
Sunday 11 September 2016 -
Nocturnal Animals review: Tom Ford gets his junk on
The fashion designer’s follow-up to A Single Man, in which Amy Adams’ gallerist projects herself into her ex-husband’s latest potboiler, conjures a very good sense of reading a not very good book, says Simran Hans.
Monday 26 September 2016 -
The latest from South Korea’s sensual stylist Park Chan-Wook is an overworked but stirring period fetish romp, says Catherine Bray.
Sunday 15 May 2016 -
German talent Maren Ade’s highly anticipated third film is a semi-comic portrait of grownup father-daughter awkwardness that also takes a chisel to the corporate bubble-world – and is likely to be one of the very best at this year’s Cannes, says Jonathan Romney.
Sunday 15 May 2016 -
La La Land – first-look review
Once more with zing: Chazelle, Hurwitz, Gosling and Stone bring the musical back to Hollywood, says Tom Charity.
Thursday 15 September 2016 -
Jim Jarmusch’s latest steers poems of place and people through Adam Driver’s city bus driver. Nick James hops on board.
Wednesday 18 May 2016 -
Andrea Arnold hits the road with Shia LaBeouf, the scintillating discovery Sasha Lane and a slice of subcultural Americana, writes Alissa Simon.
Monday 16 May 2016 -
A typically inimitable Isabelle Huppert takes no prisoners in Paul Verhoeven’s typically black-comic provocation, a rape-reaction art melodrama that’s his first film in ten years, writes Geoff Andrew.
Sunday 22 May 2016 -
Moonlight first-look review: masculinity, differently
Barry Jenkins’ deft, affecting drama shades three steps of growth and connection in a quiet Miami boy’s journey to manhood, says Simran Hans.
Tuesday 13 September 2016 -
The latest from Chile’s beady-eyed Pablo Larraín is a ludic thriller about exiled poet and enemy of the junta Pablo Neruda that plays cat and mouse games with fact and fiction, says Wendy Ide.
Sunday 15 May 2016 -
This poised and painterly rendition of the poet Emily Dickinson in youth and later age finds Terence Davies back on masterly form, says Geoff Andrew.
Monday 15 February 2016 -
Divines review: an exuberant young female buddy thriller
This go-its-own-way banlieu barnstormer from the self-taught Houda Benyamina was officially the best debut feature at Cannes 2016, says Isabel Stevens.
Sunday 22 May 2016 -
My Life as a Courgette – first look
A big film in a small package: Claude Barras’s children’s animation, written by Girlhood’s Céline Sciamma, broaches downbeat themes with charm, heart and smarts, says Wendy Ide.
Friday 20 May 2016 -
Chloe Roddick hails a fresh feminine (and sororal) horror from French first feature director Julia Ducournau, set in the blank spaces of a veterinary college.
Saturday 21 May 2016 -
David Lynch: The Art Life – first look
Art is where Lynch’s heart is in this open-handed portrait of the filmmaker in his element, says Nick James.
Wednesday 7 September 2016 -
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography review – Errol Morris’s homage to Polaroids
Ben Nicholson on Errol Morris’s genial inquiry into photographic memory by way of a tribute to a photographer and friend.
Friday 23 September 2016 -
Neighbouring Sounds’ Kleber Mendonça Filho switches from Recife’s gated highrises to its smalltime beachfront with this eloquent saga of Sonia Braga’s proudly autonomous, economically besieged widower, writes Jordan Cronk.
Friday 20 May 2016 -
Hermia & Helena review: Matías Piñeiro’s midsummer Manhattan dream
Tom Charity on Argentine writer-director Matías Piñeiro’s first English-language film, a New York transposition of his Rohmeresque riffs on Shakespeare’s romcoms.
Friday 23 September 2016 -
Hissein Habré, a Chadian Tragedy – first look
Chadian director Mahamet-Saleh Haroun was one of many exiles from the country’s brutal 1980s dictatorship. Now he honours the regime’s victims and documents a quarter-century campaign for justice, writes Geoff Andrew.
Friday 20 May 2016 -
Nick James on a winning web of everyday Romanian secrets and compromises from the Palme d’Or-winning director of Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days.
Friday 20 May 2016 -
Kate Plays Christine – first look
Nonfiction-cinema champion Robert Greene peels the documentary onion in this redolent portrait of a portrait of Christine Chubbuck and her 1974 television suicide, says Jordan Cronk.
Friday 11 March 2016 -
Cristi Puiu hones the art of Romanian realism with a deadpan family-wake drama that’s his most approachable film since The Death of Mr Lazarescu.
Thursday 12 May 2016 -
Adèle Haenel keeps it simple and open as a medic turned gumshoe in the Dardenne brothers’ latest investigation of social ties and moral binds, says Jonathan Romney.
Wednesday 18 May 2016 -
Prevenge review: Alice Lowe’s broody slasher satire
Look who’s stalking: director-star Alice Lowe lets it all hang out as a psycho mum-to-be in this wicked send-up of pregnancy mores, says Michael Leader.
Friday 23 September 2016 -
The Death of Louis XIV – first look
Six decades after The 400 Blows, Jean-Pierre Léaud plays the dying Sun King in a stately, majestic study of flesh and emblems from Albert Serra – surely the most beautiful film at Cannes 2016.
Sunday 22 May 2016 -
A medium-cool Kristen Stewart shops and drops in with the dead in Olivier Assayas’s modern mystical Paris, says Nick James.
Wednesday 18 May 2016 -
Stranger by the Lake writer-director Alain Guiraudie returns to the pansexual playground of his early features with a shape-shifting fantasia of young parenthood and emotional paralysis, writes Jordan Cronk.
Sunday 15 May 2016 -
Studio Ghibli’s first international coproduction is a ravishing castaway fable by animator Michael Dudok de Wit that combines beauty, mystery, drama and heartbreak – with not a word spoken, says Isabel Stevens.
Friday 20 May 2016 -
Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey – first look
Drifting clouds: Terrence Malick at his most vaporous considers creation in this proto-National Geographic documentary. Nick James reviews.
Friday 9 September 2016
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