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London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day five

25/9/2017

STRONGER

BOBBI JENE

STRONGER ★★½☆☆
D: David Gordon Green (Our Brand is Crisis, Manglehorn, Joe, Prince Avalanche, The Sitter, Your Highness, Pineapple Express, Snow Angels, Undertow, All the Real Girls, George Washington).
S: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson, Clancy Brown.

A melodramatic weepie. Annoying product placement. Grating put on Boston accents.

BOBBI JENE [documentary] ★★½☆☆
D: Elvira Lind.

Superficial contemporary dance documentary. A wasted opportunity to drill down into the art form.

KING OF PEKING ★★★☆☆
D: Sam Voutas.
S: Jun Zhao, Wang Naixun, Qing Han.

Incongruous, affectionate ode to cinema from perspective of father-son DVD pirates.

KING OF PEKING

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day four

22/9/2017

BRIGSBY BEAR

CARGO

BRIGSBY BEAR ★★★½☆
D: Dave McCary.
S: Kyle Mooney, Mark Hamill, Jane Adams, Greg Kinnear, Clare Danes, Kate Lyn Sheil, Andy Samberg.

The Lonely Island do ROOM and somehow avoid tastelessness. Sweet and funny.

CARGO ★★★½☆
D: Gilles Coulier.
S: Sam Louwyck, Sebastian Dewaele, Wim Willaert, Roda Fawaz.

Hemingway's 'To Have and Have Not' meets Hákonarson's RAMS. Abrupt ending, both works and doesn't.

Borg vs McEnroe

22/9/2017

BORG VS MCENROE ★★☆☆☆
D: Janus Metz (Armadillo).
S: Shia LaBeouf, Sverrir Gudnason, Tuva Novotny, David Bamber, Stellan Skarsgård.

Flat sports biopic. Blandly directed. Uninsightful. Interesting only because neither rival is likeable.

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day three

21/9/2017

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL

INGRID GOES WEST

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL
D: Takashi Miike (Yakuza Apocalypse, Over Your Dead Body, Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai, 13 Assassins, Yatterman; Big Bang Love, Juvenile A; The Happiness of the Katakuris, Ichi the Killer.)
S: Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Sôta Fukushi.

[embargoed]

INGRID GOES WEST ★★★½☆
D: Matt Spicer.
S: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff.

Amusingly awkward social commentary. Aubrey Plaza owns it. Not completely convinced by the ending.

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day two

20/9/2017

GEMINI

MUTAFUKAZ

GEMINI ★★★½☆
D: Aaron Katz (Cold Weather).
S: Lola Kirke, Zoë Kravitz, John Cho, Greta Lee, Michelle Forbes, Ricki Lake, James Ransome.

A nifty indie murder mystery. ENTOURAGE meets MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

MUTAFUKAZ ★★★½☆
Ds: Shoujirou Nishimi, Guillaume Renard.

An animated THEY LIVE. Action sequences are well staged and kinetic. Humour hilarious. Ending uneven.

LOVELESS (Nelyubov) ★★★★½
D: Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Elena, The Banishment, The Return).
S: Maryana Spivak, Yanina Hope, Aleksey Rozin, Daria Pisareva.

Atmospheric. Gripping. Charged. Deeply despondent. Five for five from Zvyagintsev.

LOVELESS

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

20/9/2017

KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE ★★☆☆☆
D: Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman: The Secret Service, X-Men: First Classs, Kick-Ass, Stardust, Layer Cake).
S: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Pedro Pascal, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges.

An unnecessary and uninspired sequel. A pale experience in comparison to the exhilarating original.

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day one

19/9/2017

LET THE CORPSES TAN (Laissez bronzer les cadavres) ★★★☆☆
Ds: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani (The Strange Colous of Your Body’s Tears, Amer).
S: Marc Barbé, Bernie Bonvoisin, Dorylia Calmel, Elina Löwensohn.

Exploitation and experimentation in a sometimes gratingly overly-stylised modern crime-Western.

Out to own today: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

18/9/2017

Out to own today:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

“I saw something last night I can’t explain,” Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss)

Forty years on, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (a.k.a. CE3K) still astounds. Computer generated imagery dates so quickly. Weirdly, techniques of a bygone era, optical effects, when done with this level of ingenuity do not appear to. Bravo to special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull. His work on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BLADE RUNNER share a similar timelessness. Is it any coincidence that all three films continually compete for the title of greatest sci-fi? Of course, it is not just landmark tech on display making CE3K so beloved.
[To read more, click here.]

Toronto Film Festival 2017 - Top Five

18/9/2017

I’m back in London from the Toronto Film Festival 2017. I saw 36 films. My top 5 favourites:

DISOBEDIENCE ★★★★½
D: Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman, Gloria).
S: Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Alessandro Nivola.

More emotionally satisfying and complex than CAROL. Bravo to director Lelio's second quality project of 2017.

I, TONYA ★★★★½
D: Craig Gillespie (The Finest Hours, Million Dollar Arm, Fright Night, Lars and the Real Girl).
S: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Mckenna Grace, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale.

Funny and tragic. Fourth wall breaking and energetic. Margot Robbie and Allison Janney are on fire.

THE CAPTAIN (Der Hauptmann) ★★★★★
D: Robert Schwentke (Insurgent, R.I.P.D., Red, The Time Traveller’s Wife, Flightplan).
S: Max Hubacher, Milan Peschel, Frederick Lau.

A Nazi deserter kills dozens of other Nazis to survive. Visceral, brutal, allegorical. Expertly crafted.

THE CURRENT WAR ★★★★★
D: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Town That Dreaded Sundown).
S: Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, Katherine Waterston, Nicholas Hoult, Tuppence Middleton, Matthew Macfadyen.

My favourite film of 2017 so far. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY meets THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Dynamic presentation of genius.

THE MOTIVE (El Autor) ★★★★½
D: Manuel Martín Cuenca.
S: Javier Gutiérrez, María León, Adelfa Calvo, Adriana Paz, Tenoch Huerta, Rafael Tellez, Antonio de la Torre.

Segues seamlessly from comedy to dark drama to comedy. A blocked writer causes havoc searching for his story.

Toronto Film Festival 2017 - Day Ten

16/9/2017

OUTSIDE IN

DARKEST HOUR

OUTSIDE IN ★★★½☆
D: Lynn Shelton (Laggies, Touchy Feely, Your Sister’s Sister, Humpday).
S: Jay Duplass, Edie Falco, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben Schwartz.

Lynn Shelton upped her comedy game with LAGGIES, and now ups her drama game here.

DARKEST HOUR ★★★☆☆
D: Joe Wright (Pan, Anna Karenina, Hanna, The Soloist, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice).
S: Gary Oldman, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Kristin Scott Thomas.

Overblown. Some annoying cliché narrative choices. A shame, as so much of the film has compelling politicking.

I KILL GIANTS ★★★☆☆
D: Anders Walter.
S: Zoe Saldana, Madison Wolfe, Noel Clarke, Imogen Poots.

Closer to BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA than A MONSTER CALLS. More family films should have such a bolshy lead.

I, TONYA ★★★★☆
D: Craig Gillespie (The Finest Hours, Million Dollar Arm, Fright Night, Lars and the Real Girl).
S: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Mckenna Grace, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale.

Funny and tragic. Fourth wall breaking and energetic. Margot Robbie and Allison Janney are on fire.

I KILL GIANTS

I, TONYA

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Filmaluation is an online magazine dedicated to arts culture, with a particular focus on film.

I care about intelligence, quality and entertainment.

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The vital ambitions of art and entertainment:
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- Illumination
- The unexpected
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Brains and soul are key; but adrenaline junkies do not fret, there is also much love for an experience that delivers a sucker-punch to the guts via stunningly delivered thrills.

Noun, “filmaluation”:
The evaluation of a film
Verb, "to filmaluate”:
To evaluate a film

I am well aware how difficult it is to make a film, put on a stage play, create a television show, write a novel, let alone make something of note. (That appreciation doesn’t stop me from having high standards though.)

The site is edited and written by Hemanth Kissoon.

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London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day five

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day four

Borg vs McEnroe

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day three

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day two

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

London Film Festival 2017 - press screenings - day one

Out to own today: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Toronto Film Festival 2017 - Top Five

Toronto Film Festival 2017 - Day Ten

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