The all year London Film Festival

[allyear-lff]

The all year London Film Festival

Although I am only about little more than half way my silly attempt to watch all the films shown in the 2021 London Film Festival I have learned some valuable lessons.

The first lesson is that planning is key, so I am starting to think about the 2022 London Film Festival and how to maximise the amount of films I will watch, hoping I get closer to the ideal that right now for 2021 seems utterly quixotic (I can't find information about some films at all for example, some others are highly unlikely to be released in the UK or -mad laughter- Spain anymore, although there are films still coming up to July 2022, a good 10 months after the festival, and occasionally one pops out of nowhere in streaming).

So I will redirect you from here to the page that tries to organise each festival and from there you should find my non professional spoilertastic reviews.

There are other challenges, but I will write about those as they become relevant, I may not even be in London during most of the 2022 festival, which would be really bad, but hey ho, I have an aim, where there is a will there is a silly man trying to find a way.

LFF2021.

LFF2022. LFF2023. I am changing platform for #LFF2024, I will be publishing in Substack, you can get there by following the link below:

LFF2024

reviews from previous years will continue to be here.

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More than ever

Summary: a woman confronts a very serious illness, most likely terminal, in ways that confuse and infuriate her partner, and those around her, she finds a kindred spirit in a Norwegian blogger that is experiencing similar problems.

Plot and musings with all the necessary spoilers: the indomitable Vicky Kreeps (who also plays the main character in the very engaging Corsage, also in show during the festival) plays Helene who has a pulmonary illness that in all likelihood will end her life, the only very limited hope is a lung transplant but she is never convinced by the idea, her partner, Mathieu, played by Gaspard Ulliel (who sadly died after the film, the credits dedicate the film to him) is confused by the whole situation, and although he clearly is trying to do his best he has started to lose patience with Helene who is zoning him and everybody else out of her life, it doesn’t help that nobody knows what to do, people around her try to cheer her up but there is nothing that can do so, her mother seems to need more help than Helene to cope.

Helene, uncertain about what to do with herself since she has given up her job, has been checking the internet for a while with searches like “what to do when you are dying”, she sleeps, she watches photographs on the internet and little else, at this point she is told she is in the lung transplant list, something that seems to cheer up Mathieu but she reacts with almost complete indifference, almost repulsed.

Helene continues her monotonous life when eventually finds the blog of a Norwegian man experiencing a similar situation, Helene feels affinity with what the blogger says and there is a picture of an attractive man in a revealing hospital gown in the blog, all this piques her curiosity and she starts to message the man until he replies and they start to talk about their shared experiences, at the same time Mathieu feels increasingly like she is no with him anymore, eventually they have a heated argument about the situation, she feels like she needs space alone to deal with the problem but Mathieu feels rejected,  he gets very angry and leaves her alone rushing to the disco to let steam off, Mathieu comes back home and they reconcile, smoke pot and make love, but Mathieu is not there, worried more than anything else, and they have to stop making love when Helene starts to cough uncontrollably.

The couple continues trying to make the best out of a bad situation, they go to a music gig, they seem to be having a good time, but we see them from the back initially, when the point of view shifts to their front we realise that Helene needs an oxygen tank in order to be there at all.

Helene finally decides to go to Norway alone to meet the blogger (she hasn’t mentioned him to Mathieu) with the excuse of a change of atmosphere,  Mathieu is angry, sad and confused but he can't do anything about it and relents.

Helene travels to Norway and witnesses the fantastic landscapes of the land, she reaches her destination to be greeted by and old man who is no other than the blogger, Bent .

She whines that he doesn’t look like the picture on his blog, but he assuredly and truthfully reminds her that he never claimed the man in the photo was him (in fact it was his hospital roommate), they drive to his place and he puts her up in very basic accommodation, clearly not what she had in mind.

Helene is struggling in this remote place, it is too quiet for her so curiously she can’t sleep, there is no phone signal so she can’t talk to Mathieu and initially Bent seems like an obnoxious old fart, which he is in a way, Helene is told where the place with phone signal is (funny because lots of people congregate there for this reason) but during one of these walks she runs out of breath and passes out, her situation is becoming ever more precarious, fortunately she manages to get back to safety.

Now she has established a routine and manages to find the blogger in Bent that seemed so attuned to her feelings, he used to work in oil platforms and has nightmares of his own on top of dealing with his health problems, he always seems to understand how Helene feels and is supportive in the way she needs to be supported.

Helene communicates to Mathieu that she has decided not to have a lung transplant, she doesn’t want to go through all the trouble and feels an innate aversion to the idea, Mathieu of course doesn’t understand any of this and decides to go to Norway to make her come to her senses, but when he arrives there he is faced with the surprise of Bent, who offers to host them both, this initially goes well, but Mathieu notices the familiarity between Bent and Helene (which was never of a romantic nature) and this makes him jealous, leading to punching the old man for whatever silly excuse.

Bent, judiciously, decides to leave them alone, but this just worsens things, the couple fights, Helene goes out in a frantic walk that causes a fit, Mathieu realises to his horror that Helene wasn’t carrying her oxygen, so he takes her back ome the best way he can.

This last experience brings out their worry for each other and they are shown making love, not like the first time, but like a couple with deep empathy for each other. It is after this that Helene tells him that she has decided to stay in Norway, Mathieu starts to talk about plans to do so together but Helene makes it clear she wants to do this alone.

I really liked this film, it presents us with a version of a terminally ill person that doesn’t conform to the stereotypes we are often shown: Helene is more angry than worried about her situation, her friends and loved ones irritate her, she is looking for a way forward and her way forward is taking the path that leads nowhere even if that hurts others, specially Mathieu. It is a different take on this kind of drama where the "battling" we have come to expect doesn't really happen, the situations are convincing and engaging.

Why Ms Kreeps wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for this or for Corsage is a mystery, she is consolidating as a major presence in European cinema and it will be very interesting to see what else comes in the future for her.

Rating: 4.5/5

81 of 168

Date: 24 January 2023

Venue: Curzon Victoria

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Enys men

Summary: a woman in mourning descends into a state of mental confusion while dealing with memories of the past.

Plot and musings with spoilers: Enys men (pronounced "mein", because apparently that is Cornish language pronunciation, all this told by the affable BFI chap that said a few words about the film) is a magical psychological study of a woman in mourning.

The woman in question, portrayed very credibly and intriguingly by Mary Woodwine, is in an isolated island, we first see her in a cliff by the sea absorbed in a bunch on little flowers, she looks at them, seems to take the soil temperature and walks back inland passing by a derelict building, there she picks up a stone and drops it in a well that seems to be quite deep, she continues her walk to a basically provisioned cabin and writes an entry on a diary about the flowers: no change, the same temperature, this simple routine is followed during the film no matter what but not all visits to the flowers will be the same.

The cabin where she lives, apparently alone, has few amenities, she needs to start up a generator in order to use them: an old radio and a radio communication set where she keeps in touch with a man at sea, all seems in the brink of collapsing and looks like she will need fuel for the generator very soon, all feels very precarious and lonely, beyond the front door in the distance there is a stone that resembles a Virgin Mary statue, this will be all present, like a silent menacing character throughout the film. 

We see the routine repeated a second time and it all seems to be descending into monotony when we a young girl appears briefly, she seems to be in the same house, which is immediately weird and spooky because the film is quite advanced by now and the woman has not acted in any way that would suggest she has any company.

The routine resumes, but now the woman hears noises in the ground below the cabin, she decides to go and investigate, finds an ancient rail track and at the end of a tunnel we are shown visions of men, miners of all ages working down there, at this point I assumed they were spirits of times gone by, I suppose these are the Enys Men of the title, the interesting thing is the they aren’t the only phantoms we have seen, at some point we saw women dressed on the use of hundreds of years ago appearing briefly behind the woman in the flowers’ cliff, we see a priest, also out of time, reading some religious stuff that was supposed to make sense at this point, and for a moment we see a bit of water flowing backwards, all this punctuated by sweeping views of the desolate landscape and other psychedelic images.

Given the  aesthetics of the film, grainy and off-washed colour it reminded me of several films from the 1970s  with similar psychological tones,

We do a couple of important jumps to the past, the woman at some point, while simply changing clothes, reveals a big scar on her abdomen, at that point it doesn’t make sense, but later on the young girl we saw early on in the film appears to the woman while standing in the roof of the cabin, the phantom girl will make another apparition again in a moment of confusion with women and girls all over the place (more spirits or something) and then the girl falls (jumps?) from the roof, we see her fall through a glass ceiling and once she lands in the floor we can see a fresh scar on her abdomen, now we know, the girl is the woman herself.

The final bit of the puzzle is drawn when a man shows up in the cabin, he seems to just being bringing supplies but now the woman detaches herself from several scenes in which she and the man get intimate (dancing, having sex) but she is an outside observer looking at herself interacting with him, this comes to a dramatic conclusion when the woman rushes to the pier and can see the body of a man in the water, it is him, her man, being rescued, lifeless, but she can see herself in the rescue boat helping to get him on board.

Confused? I am pretty sure that was the intention of the director, to shift the ground all the time to keep us in our toes trying to figure out what is going on, to each one his own but I don’t particularly enjoy this kind of trippy films, I have to say that the presence of Ms Woodwine holds the film together, she looks like a woman that has lived who is at that point in life between the end of youth and the beginning of old age, not middle age as such, words fail me frankly, but a point in which she is at the peak of her womanhood, I just liked her lots, she plays her character with conviction and the film was tolerable only because her full commitment to the idea, as for the spirits of times gone by I don’t dig that spiritual, paranormal stuff.

Rating: 3.5/5

80 of 168

Date: 19 January 2023

Venue: BFI Southbank

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Roald Dahl’s Matilda Musical

Summary: Matilda is an unwanted vivacious, precocious, ferociously intelligent little girl, she's the owner of a skill she has yet to discover, being a nuisance to her parents she is sent to a nightmare school run with iron fist by a sadistic headmistress who becomes Matilda's nemesis, all this while everybody around is singing and dancing merrily.

Plot and musings with spoilers:

I don't like musicals, which is odd because I like opera, but in opera the bad acting and thin plot are compensated by the best existing voices, charismatic personalities and enduring music.

And musicals? They are the McDonalds alternative, and I say this as somebody that can enjoy a fast food burger and has several Michelin starred venues under his cap.

So musicals, I don't like them, but I don't like them particularly in film: "La La Land"? Haven't watched it, "Singing in the rain"? Watched it once, I found it between genial and cringeworthy. "The little Mermaid", mmmh, ok. Matilda? Argh.

So give me brownie points for sticking to my purpose, the film was in the festival then I imposed on myself to watch it, on my own, in the cinema, when I could have been watching Fulham vs Chelsea, this is one of the good things about this kind of challenge, one puts oneself out of one's comfort zone, which in this case was me in the front row of a cinema with a group of giggly young teenagers mercifully far away in the back row of the quite nice VUE screen (screen 2, cosy and very comfortable). Where were their parents? Goodness knows, but they were well behaved.

So the film, you have to give it to the actors, the adults know this is pure ham, specially Emma Thompson totally unrecognisable as the baddie, the headmistress Miss Trunchbull, and the children, lots of them, clearly were told to go over the top and they didn't disappoint, but the director was wise enough to stop the Matilda character doing that and she is the centre of calmness, which is no surprise since she says as much in one of the singing numbers.

The plot, yeah, Matilda is born to the great surprise and annoyance of her mother (that somehow didn't realise she was pregnant until the very last moment :-D) and her father, a well hidden Stephen Graham (fantastic in #LFF2021 's Boiling Point), who is disappointed she isn't a he, and continues to call her "boy" throughout the film, so when social services come knocking about Matilda's education (nonexistent) they are more than happy to get rid of her by sending her to school.

Matilda has been escaping his unloving life with a "history on her head" which she has been sharing with Mrs. Phelps, the woman that runs a mobile library where Matilda takes refuge amongst the books.

But the fact is she has to go to school now and realises the place is a horrible prison like authoritarian distopya run with iron fist by former hammer throwing champion, Miss Trunchbull, played with no stops and full pantomimic glee by an unrecognisable Emma Thompson.

Luckily for Matilda her teacher, Miss Honey (a convincing Lashana Lynch, in a completely different role from her action films or from the #LFF2021 's powerful film ear for eye ) is witness of her talents and starts to encourage her and help her, to the annoyance of Miss Trunchbull.

So the lines have been drawn and the rest of the film is a battle of wills between Matilda and her allies against Miss Trunchbull, half way through the film the battle gets totally skewed in favour of our little heroine because she actually has some very special talents against which no baddie could have succeeded, not even Marvel's Thanos (and I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that this is how the film ends: everybody lives happily ever after except Miss Trunchbull who gets her just deserts, Thanos: beware).

Oh, and there are lots of singing and dancing to be sure, and gross humour because apparently that pleases children.

There is an earlier Matilda film that I have not seen, a musical, a book. I think 2 hours of Matilda is more than enough if that is your thing or have children to entertain, so I hope this was the end of my Matilda odyssey.

Rating: 3.5/5

79 of 168

Date: 12 January 2023

Venue: VUE Leicester Square.

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Till

The writeup you see below was done in January 2023 shortly after I watched the film which left such an impression on me that I wanted to make sure I made justice to it within my limited means.

I truly believed that Ms Deadwyler was a certainty for an Oscar nod, how wrong I was.

Mark Kermode discussed this iniquity in his film review podcast with Simon Mayo, worth listening to them about this (their podcast can de downloaded from anywhere): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/danielle-deadwyler-women-talking-epic-tails-blue-jean/id1616559297?i=1000598917215

Before talking about the film absorb this bit of information, perhaps read it and then go for a coffee, a walk even, think about it and come back here if you wish: the Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching an US federal hate crime.[1], this law was enacted in .... 2022.

Summary: film based on real events, probably quite closely, commemorating the life and work of Mamie Till (later Till-Mobley) and the unspeakable tragedy that forced her into the limelight.

Plot with spoilers:

The film is about the enormity of a civilised country allowing the inhumanity we witness to happen, unashamed for the best part of the 20th century of human beings being violently murdered without any possibility of redress, a country and establishment entirely unconcerned of the murder of a young boy in the most savage manner as a payback for a bit of well intended silliness.

The film is the stuff of nightmares, I would have no hesitation to describe the first half of the film as part of the horror genre.

This is 1955 Chicago, Emmet, known as Bo, is a jovial happy African American boy who lives with her loving mother, Mamie, surrounded by loving relatives and friends, his dad died in the last months of WWII, a hero, his family comes from Mississippi and he goes visiting relatives there at the suggestion of his grandmother, played by none other than Whopi Goldberg.

Mamie has misgivings about the visit since Bo has grown in a more tolerant environment (the low level racism is still there mind you, there is a short scene to remind us of that), he doesn't know how to engage with people prepared to murder him at the drop of a hat (who could have?).

Bo goes away, once there he is prancing around with his cousins, they go to a grocery shop and what he intended as a compliment (he says to the shop attendant, a White woman, that she looks like a Hollywood star) is taken as an insult which is compounded by him whistling at the woman, when she reacts angrily the black youngsters disperse but offence has been taken, the boys keep things to themselves but little did they know that the family of the Woman would react with unimaginable rage.

A few days later, when Bo is getting ready to go back to Chicago, a group of men come to the home of his relatives and get him out of bed and into a truck, mercifully we aren't shown much of what happens to him but we are in no doubt about what is coming, in the meantime Mamie misses Bo terribly and wants him back, she is in this state of mind when news of Bo's disappearance reach her, she is desperate to rush to Mississippi but she is convinced to use the help of activists since this kind of kidnappings are very common and they know how to apply pressure to the system.

Mamie and the people helping are embroiled in all this when the news finally arrive that Bo's body has been found, the authorities in Mississippi want to bury Bo there, but Mamie is having none of it and by the simple strength of her moral position forces the activists to move all their influence to bring Bo back home, which they manage to do.

On arrival of the body to Chicago Marnie receives it in very moving scenes of unimaginable sorrow, later on Mamie is shown the body which is horribly disfigured, I thought this wouldn't be shown, but the camera moves deftly and all of the sudden we can see the left side of Bo's horribly disfigured remains, this by the way is not imagined, in real life Mamie asked a photographer to take pictures of her disfigured son and of her and her then boyfriend standing in front of the body, I don't understand why this picture isn't iconic, it has a visceral power similar to that of the Vietnamese girl escaping a Napalm bombardment.

From this point the film endeavours to document the transformation of Mamie from grieving mother into Civil Rights Activist, starting with attending as a witness the trial of the murderers of her son (they would later confirm the murder in a paid interview years later, protected by the inane US double jeopardy laws ). Predictably these subhumans walked free.

How somebody can manage to find the courage to lead and to become an icon after such sorrow and pain is impossible to fathom, I am shocked that good people, any people, had to endure this, and even more shocked about all the people that to this day haven't done something to redress this shameful balance.

This is a film whose relevance as a document, homage and reminder is far more important than the technical aspects of it, the film is impeccably ambiented in the 1950s, several photographs around the death of Bo have been recreated with great success in the film, the acting is fantastic, Mamie is played with great dignity and empathy by Danielle Deadwyler who is not a newcomer, but who should see her star raising after this great role. Oscar node perhaps? I hope people don't forget about her, she has been nominated for a BAFTA, and deservedly so, but given the vagaries of these things the film may not be eligible for the Oscars until 2024.

Rating: 4.5/5

78 of 168

Date: 11 January 2023

Venue: Barbican Cinemas

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Corsage

Summary: in an alternative version of reality the Empress Elisabeth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire faces a pivotal year in her life, her love hate relationship with Emperor Franz Joseph framing all her tribulations and her desire to be her own person underlying her endeavours.

Plot with plenty of spoilers:

Vicky Kreeps has created the role of a lifetime (she is executive producer of the film) by becoming Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the Empress is a witty, resourceful, sporty (she fences, she swims, she rides a horse, she loves fresh air) and dare I say beautiful (the Empress wants validation about her beauty at some point, that's how much she is cancelled by the people around her) woman, she leads an oppressive existence in which she is expected to bear children, to keep a very lite figure (by means of strict diets, daily weighing and the wearing of a very tight corset at which the name of the film hints) and in general to be the pretty face of the Empire.

The Empress has two children that she loves to bits: Valerie, a young girl being indoctrinated in the ways of the court and Rudolf, the crown prince, which is portrayed by an actor way too old to be her son, in real life the actor playing him, Aaron Friesz, is just 4 years her junior, but this being a fantasy actually works quite well, Rudolf is presented as some kind of man child which looks always shorter than her but acts with an implied unearned authority about what she does. Given that Elisabeth is turning 40 the film hints that the decision to stop bearing children is hers but this perhaps is also a flourish, in any case that part of her life that has provided an important purpose is now over.

The year is 1878, the Emperor Franz Joseph is embattled by a conflict in the Balkans and Elizabeth is having an identity crisis, she avoids long boring ceremonies by all means possible, often to spend time smoking and joking with his libertine cousin King Ludwig of Bavaria, sharing life with her 3 dames of honour and female servants, of which often she can't remember their names, and caring for people in mental and military hospitals, paying special attention to women practically incarcerated in them.

So during this year she travels around Europe to Northamptonshire of all places, where she has a quasi affair, presented in quite an explicit manner, with her riding teacher, a visit marred by the shame of her children about her and cut short by an accident, then on return to Vienna she seduces Franz Joseph just to humiliate him before his lat moment of joy, later on she sees him with a young woman that she presumes is his mistress.

The Prince leaves for Prague for military education, Franz Joseph wants Valerie to stay in Vienna while Elisabeth is sent elsewhere, this enrages Elisabeth who injures herself in a hint of things to come.

She now leaves for Bavaria to visit Ludwig, as much as she tries to entangle her cousin it transpires that he's gay so there is no hope for her with him.

In returning to Vienna, feeling emotionally drained, her doctor recommends this miracle drug that will ease her pain and have a calming effect: heroin.

From then on she grows increasingly free but also unpredictable: she cuts her long her with her own hands, she makes love to Franz Joseph forgetting about earlier concerns to get pregnant and ditches all attempts to keep her weight under control by forcing one of her dames of honour to lose weight and wear a face cover so she can stand up for her in public while she lives on sweets and cakes, she also instructs the young woman she has seen with Franz Joseph about how to be a good mistress without a hint of resentment.

This is Empress Sissi, most people know what happened to her at the end of her life, let's say the outcome is no different from real life but in this film she's the one choosing the when and how.

Vicky Kreeps has created a fictional character that perhaps is like her, or at least like the version of Elisabeth she would have liked her to be, we go through the silliness of some of the moments of the film and we just go along because this Elisabeth is fun to be around with, even when unceremoniously and fed up by it all, she chooses to show us the fuck you finger with understandable indignation at her situation.

Rating: 4/5

77 of 168

Date: 5 January 2023

Venue: BFI Southbank

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Horseplay (Los Agitadores)

Yeah. I watched this more than one year ago.

I have been taking notes, sometimes literally in pieces of paper put together, you can glimpse at how I took notes for this film:

Not pretty, and I don't want to look into other people's reviews or do the lazy thing and check IMDB or similar services.

Doing this fills me with curiosity and envy of people that do this professionally: how do they do it? I imagine that like myself they find their own way and there may be as many methods to write down summaries as people trying to do so.

Anyway, I have been getting better and hopefully a bit more profesional about it, but this is what I was doing in March 2023, I'll share more of that journey as I progress.

So how do I go from that mess to what I write below? First I scanned pictures of this paper to convert it into text using an app (Pen to Print), then I organised that text with Notepad Free in my phone.

And then I decided to use AI to clarify my ideas. The summary is all mine, written back in March 2023, what follows after that is me and Google's Gemini sprucing up my work, me refining what I want to say, Gemini picking it up and give it form and so on.

We live in strange times.

Summary: a group of "kidults" spend the southern hemisphere's summer celebrating Christmas and New Year but a secret lurks behind the debauchery, the pranks and the obsession about sex.

Musings without spoilers: A summer party for a group of rugby players turns dark as pranks escalate and tensions rise. The carefree atmosphere clashes with hidden desires and societal expectations around masculinity, leading to violent outbursts that expose the ugly side of group mentality and the struggles faced by those who don't fit the mold.

Musings with spoilers: The film starts in Arturo's home with a carefree summer party (Christmas season in Argentina, where the films takes place) full of young, attractive, fit rugby players.

The initial lightheartedness takes a turn as homoerotic tension builds and pranks become increasingly explicit, one of the young men, Poli, feels increasingly alienated from the group, the reason will become clearer only much later, but he is the butt of all jokes.

Social media fuels the drama when a prank picture goes viral, causing serious trouble for the lad pranked due to the conservative nature of the environment in which these lads live.

The arrival of Arturo's sister and her boyfriend adds a layer of normalcy, but the mood sours quickly, some girls are invited to the party and some of the lads make a move and tie up with the girls, Gordo, who attracts Poli early on in the film, abuses one of the girls which leave the gathering shaken by the experience but nothing indicates they take the matter further.

The party takes a darker turn as Poli finds a connection with a bisexual teammate. This connection is violently interrupted by Nico, who discovers them together and beats the bisexual guy with a cricket bat out of jealousy leaving him for dead.

Although the film was interesting and approached the homoeroticism with a sense of genuine curiosity eventually the environment gets repetitive, I imagined that an adult would feel fed up if left in charge of a group of immature lads like this and that was becoming my feeling while watching the film.

Although the sequences in which the most hidden motivations of some of the characters are revealed are well made, at the end there are too many characters and it becomes increasingly difficult to follow what is going on. The film is worth watching but it may be a bit tedious for some audiences.

Rating: 3/5

76 of 168

Date: 17 of March 2023

Venue: BFI as part of #BFIFlare

The list of films in the LFF 2022.

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Glass onion

I should have posted this ages ago. I had an outline in place since 2022, but all 2023 was a blur that ended with a very busy December watching #LFF's films in planes and at 6am during December before helping with a relative's care the rest of the day.

Never mind, I give you my very delayed take, after this I will post reviews as I see new films while trying to catch up with all the rest.

Summary: a bunch of quite distasteful characters are invited to a party with an unusual twist, Benoit Blanc, from Knives Out fame, joins the party to untangle a network of lies and deception, but there are far more sinister things at play involving greed, backstabbing and possibly worse.

Musings without spoilers: after the success of the first film introducing the Benoit Blanc character a second film was all but a given, the killer mix of James Bond's looks with Hercule Poirot's sleuthing skills was too much to resist for the enterprising people in Netflix.

The plot meanders like a lazy snake and then delivers its bite, the preparation of the triumph of Benoit Blanc will catch no one by surprise in spite of the intricate entertaining plot, salted with enough eye candy to satisfy both male and female (I imagine) movie goers and with cameos of the likes of Angela Lansbury, Yo Yo Ma (really) and some others I really didn't catch.

The boisterous disorganised silly resolution, full of unnecessary bells and whistles, makes the whole thing preposterous, but everybody on screen seems to be having a good time so why shouldn't we?

Good undemanding fun with all the actors playing their roles just in the right side of over the top.

Musings full of spoilers:

The film opens with mystery boxes containing a puzzle sent during the height of the pandemic by Miles Bron, a Muskesque techbro, to a disparate group of friends (Lionel's a scientist dealing with what seems one of Miles' bad ideas, Claire's a state Governor running for reelection, Birdie Jay's a party crazy fashion insider, Duke's a larger than life over tattooed man whom by his own surprise became an early influencer, Whiskey's Duke's sexy girlfriend and Peg who is Birdie's suffering assistant), the friends coordinate to solve the puzzle which once solved contains an invitation to meet Miles in his private island, but this is no idle invitation since he is requesting they solve his own murder.

We also see an attractive woman hacking one of these boxes to pieces to get her invitation and finally we see Benoit Blanc, our true detective, who is desperate to get a case (we are in lockdown after all), being told there's a box for him while he is in the bath (we don't see his box just yet).

Something that transpires early as the characters meet to take a boat to Miles'private island is that Andi, the woman that hacked her box, is not really part of the gang and they are all puzzled to see her there, Benoit is unknown to everybody else and watch from the sidelines..

On arrival Miles introduces them to the Glass Onion, his house on the island, he becomes pensive when he greets Andi but is truly puzzled by Benoit's presence, he takes Benoit aside to clarify why he's there since he didn't invite him, Benoit insists that he got a box and they concur that probably one of the guests reassembled his box and send it to Benoit, with this rather unconvincing explanation Benoit is invited to stay.

As the gathering progresses we learn more about the characters while they enjoy themselves: Andi was stabbed in the back by the whole group during a court case, little by little it transpires how all characters depend on Mlles to progress their careers.

Miles explains their roles as disruptors to the annoyance of Andi and then uncovers bot the Monalisa, loaned from the Louvre for the weekend, an Klear, a new miracle fuel powering the island which Lionel considers too dangerous and unstable.

The Miles murder game starts and finishes pretty fast spoiled by Benoit who is taken aside by an angry Miles, but Benoit is concerned somebody could actually want to kill Miles taking the game as cover.

Back in the party Andi demands the truth of what happened to her during that trial (which has not been disclosed exactly so far), Duke, after all the others show their annoyance with her, just states that she's a loser, Andi angrily leaves the room.

Miles comes back and tries to inject soul to the party, he proposes a toast to their "disruptor" prowess but shortly after Duke drops dead, apparently after drinking something intended for Miles .

Benoit asks for the police and doctors to be called but they can't make it due to weather conditions and a Banksy work of art that would be destroyed, it transpires Duke's hand gun, always at hand, has disappeared.

On Miles discovering he may have been the target of a possible poisoning attempt (Duke drank from Miles glass) he gets hysterical until he remembers the lights are due to go off as part of his murder game and then they do.

Whiskey rushes back claiming Andi searched their room and blames Andi for Duke's death. All is confusion and everybody runs away in the dark back to a place of safety (or so it seems).

Benoit goes as well and clashes with Andi, he is telling her how certain he's of things just as we see a gun pointed towards them until the trigger is pulled, the bullet hits Andi which now appears to be dead, everybody congregates outside and watches Andi"s body in disbelief.

Now comes the interesting part, a massive flash back to the beginning of the film, we see how a woman called Helen, identical to Andi but with different accent and a much humbler presence, brings the destroyed box to Benoit and explains the situation: she is Andi's sister (real name Cassandra Brand), Andi was part of the disruptors gang, Helen received the box intended for her sister by mistake a couple of days after Andi's apparent suicide, she also found evidence that Andi could prove she was the brains behind Miles' company which automatically would show all her further friends perjured themselves during the trial to assert control of the firm.

Benoit and Helen make a plan to get themselves in the island with her supplanting Andi.

Andi goes snooping around, her whereabouts during the previous part of the film are shown, she has a knack for uncovering information by being at the right place at the right time and by taking calculated risks, with the information they gather together Helen and Benoit begin to build a picture of what may have happened to Andi, they realise everybody has a motive to protect Miles and an opportunity to have killed Andi, proof of all this is the napkin with the idea to create Alpha which Andi had threatened to use against her former friends, Benoit believes it is in the island and asks Andi to create a fight she loses during dinner so she can go and find the envelope in one of the rooms of the guests.

Back to the present, while Helen is looking for the envelope with the napkin, Duke dies, the news about Andi's death are now spreading like wildfire in the media so Helen's cover has been blown, she's in the middle of all this when Whiskey shows up in shock into her just freshly searched room, Helen commits the mistake of saying Duke deserved what he got without knowing that Whiskey is talking about his dead by suspected poisoning, in hearing Helen she turns very angry and is intent in killing her with a fishing harpoon just moment the lights go off (due to Miles' now almost forgotten game) this allows Helen to escape the danger.

Helen finds Benoit still empty handed, they are planning to check Miles' room when she is hit by a bullet, she's saved providentially by Andi's diary blocking it, Benoit sees a chance to give her a few more minutes to search for the napkin after playing dead while he gathers people in the party room to unravel the machinations of his now certain suspect.

While Benoit deconstructs all what happened leading to Andi's murder Helen finds the envelop with the napkin, at this point all blame is duly assigned, but there are a couple of twists until the person responsible for Andi's murder is humiliated to the fullest possible extent.

Wow. That's quite a lot of explanation for a film that probably won't make it into the realms of history, but I think I owed to do this properly after such a long time of not reviewing a film.

Rating: 3.5/5

75 of 168

Date: 25 December 2022 & 5 March 2024

Venue: Amazon Prime Video España & Netflix.

The list of films in the LFF 2022

[allyear-lff]

Let's continue.

So I attended #LFF2023 , the most films I have ever watched during the festival, but I haven't posted at all I think since then.

Considering I have continued watching films from the last festival and from #LFF2022 and even #LFF2021 I think I have to put a comment out there before restarting my musings (if anything to put a marker in this silly attempt of mine).

First of all I resigned from my job prior to the film festival, I reckoned that would give me time to write my summaries, but I was also moving home.... to a new country.

Now in hindsight it was silly to think I would have any time left to write, but hey, live and learn, most days I made it home after having watched films for 10-12 hours solid while in the morning I was aceing it on Ebay selling my stuff (from UK cables to an electronic piano), the most puzzling sale was a toaster that can prepare a full English breakfast that went up in price as if it was an antique (maybe it was? I feel old).

I have watched probably 40-50 films since #LFF2023 ended, most in London that were shown in one of the 3 festivals I am pursuing but also others that couldn't be overlooked (Barbie, Oppenheimer, "Godzilla minus one" of those I remember now) plus the odd mediocrity of a film on Mexican TV (more below) or intercontinental flights' cabin entertainment.

So by December with the move out of the way, happily relocated to my new home, thinking I was roaring to go, I got a call (in Whatsapp as it happens nowadays for urgent matters) about my mum's health, 3 days later I was back home across the Atlantic (during the flight dI watched 3 #LFF2021 films that I found in Google TV) and from then on I was providing care 24x7 while a permanent solution was found, not easy during the holiday season. I am happy to report I watched 3 more #LFF films during a few idle moments as well as a few my mum caught while channel surfing (some Mexican films I didn't even know that existed, plus some old time classics), but that was about it, caring for an elderly adult is a back breaking task but I was privileged to be able to help my mum at a time of great need, although distress was always just around the corner.

Now that we have organised the care needed by my mum and safely back home (and having watched around 6 #LFF2023's films on cinemas since my return) I want to continue this effort of mine.

One of the films I watched during this hiatus, #LFF2021's "Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest" shows a bunch of misfits committing fully to achieve a landmark that makes little sense to those outside their immediate group of friends, acquaintances and fellow obsessives, I saw myself reflected on the hero, Cannon Arm, quietly determined against all the odds even if the achievement makes sense only to him, watch the film, it is great.

[allyear-lff]

LFF2023: The list of films

I should have started from the beginning, so to understand this blog read my mission statement back in 2021 when I thought this was a great idea :-D and then feel free to peruse my reviews of the films, all listed below, and from the previous 2 years as well.

I will link to my musings about each film from here as I progress and I hope to refine them as I revisit them in the future, apologies about the silly mistakes, I am writing of the cuff mostly on my free time, away from my job that has nothing to do with film.

Any comments and suggestions can be done to my twitter X BlueSky account @allyear-lff.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/allyear-lff.bsky.social) and I believe comments are open here in Tumblr.

I am highlighting the films that I have watched but that I have not commented.

20,000 Species of Bees

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

All of Us Strangers

ALLENSWORTH

Àma Gloria

Animal Kingdom, The

Animalia

Anselm

Apolonia, Apolonia (HBO Max Spain)

Asog

Baltimore

Banel & Adama (BFI Player)

Beast, The

Behind the Mountains

Bikeriders, The

Birth/Rebirth

Black Dog

Black Pirate, The

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry

Bonus Track

Book of Clarence, The

Book of Solutions, The

Boy and the Heron, The (late addition)

Bride, The

Buckingham Murders, The

Bye Bye Tiberias

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (billed as Anita in brochure)

Celluloid Underground

Chasing Chasing Amy

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Close Your Eyes

Cobweb

Common Sequence, A

Copa 71 (available as "Copa 71, the lost Lionesses" in BBC iPlayer from June 2024).

Croma Kid

Daaaaaali!

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

Dancing Queen

Dear Jassi

Deep Sea (3D)

Delinquents, The

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Dupes, The

Earth Mama

Echo, The

Eileen

End We Start From, The (Curzon Home from March 2024, BFI Player)

Eternal Memory, The (BBC iPlayer, available at least until Feb 2025)

Europa

Everything Worthwhile Is Done with Other People

Evil Does Not Exist

Fallen Leaves

Fancy Dance

Fingernails

Fire Through Dry Grass

Foe

Foremost by Night

Four Daughters

Gasoline Rainbow

Gassed Up

Girl (BFI Player)

Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

Goldman Case, The

Goodbye Julia

Gush

Haar

High & Low - John Galliano

Hit Man

Hoard

Holdovers, The

Housekeeping for Beginners

How to Have Sex (Curzon Home)

Hypnosis, The

I am Sirat

If Only I Could Hibernate

Indésirables, Les

Inshallah a Boy

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

In Camera (Mubi UK?)

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon

It can’t be that nothing that can be returned

Kensuke’s Kingdom (BFI Player)

Kidnapped (UK: Curzon Home Cinema)

Killer, The

Killers of the Flower Moon

Kitchen, The

Klezmer Project, The

Last Summer

Late Night With the Devil

Little Girl Blue

Lost Boys, The (Curzon Home, BFI Player)

Lost in the Night

Lubo

Macario

Maestro

Mambar Pierrette

Mangosteen

May December

Memory

Menu-Plaisirs Les Troisgros

Mission, The

Molli and Max in the Future

Monster

Music

Nature of Love, The (BFI Player)

New Boy, The

Nightwatch – Demons Are Forever

NYAD (Netflix)

Occupied City

Omen

On the Adamant

One Life

Only the River Flows (BFI player as of Dec 2024)

Our Body

Paradise Is Burning

Peasants, The

Peeping Tom

Penal Cordillera

Perfect Days (late addition)

Pigeon Tunnel, The

Poolman

Poor Things

Pot au Feu, The

Power Alley (BFI Player)

Practice, The

Pressure

Prince, A

Priscilla

Queen of My Dreams, The

Queendom

Ramona

Red Island (Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player)

Red Rooms

Robot Dreams

Room in a Crowd

Royal Hotel, The

Rye Horn, The

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Sacred Cave, The

Saltburn

Samsara (Curzon Home)

SCALA!!! (BFI Player)

Self-Portrait: 47 KM 2020

Settlers, The (MUBI)

Shame On Dry Land

Shayda

Shortcomings

Shoshana

Silver Haze (BFI Player)

Sky Peals (BFI Player)

Slow

Spectre of Boko Haram, The (TrueStory)

Starve Acre (BFI Player)

Stolen

Stopmotion

Stranger and the Fog, The

Surprise film: Ferrari

Swan Song

Sweet East, The

Taste of Mango, The (BFI Player)

Terrestrial Verses

That They May Face the Rising Sun

They Shot the Piano Player

This Is Going to Be Big

Tiger Stripes

Together 99

Tótem (Curzon Home from January 2024)

Tuesday

Unicorns (Director:Sally El Hosaini, late addition, Rakuten UK from August 2024, BFI Player, Netflix )

Unmoored

Vincent Must Die

Wilding

You Can Call me Bill

Youth (Spring)

Zone of Interest, The

[allyear-lff]

Alcarràs

Summary: a Catalonian farming family is caught between the rock of the strict legality mattering more than the traditional value of one's own word and the hard place of economic realities propelled by the climate emergency.

Musings without spoilers: a 3 generations family faces a perfect storm of upheaval when the life they have been enjoying comes under threat, first by old legal contracts acquiring a life of their own, second by the need to introduce solar energy in the region and last, but not least, by the uneasy relationship between the family members when they all feel under pressure.

Spoilertastic musings: clearly there is something going on in the Spanish countryside, this film and "The beasts", both excellent, deal roughly with similar themes: what happens when traditional life is confronted with the relentless, and probably necessary, deployment of green energy projects (wind, solar, it doesn't matter) in the countryside.

The children of the family are the first ones to face the consequences of the legal shenanigans and the advance of the green agenda, they are playing in an abandoned car when their game is interrupted by a crane, they leave the car which is picked up from the spot where it has been abandoned for a long while.

After a lot of arguments amongst the family it transpires that the land they thought was their own actually isn't, Punyol the son of a man whose life was saved during the Civil War by the old patriarch of the affected family, found out that he is the outright owner of the land because his dad repaid the favour with the land, but transferred it only verbally, so there is no record of him having transferred the property legally (something the patriarch of the family thought was unnecessary because it used to be that one's word was all what was needed).

But Punyol just wants to make some money, and in the countryside who doesn't, so he suggests that they could keep the land if they allow solar panels to replace their beloved peach trees from which they make a living and both could benefit of the proceedings (they are neighbours, and perhaps friends after all).

Quimet, the man of the house, refuses outright, and instead starts a frantic attempt to pick his peaches to take them to market in a bid to have enough money (for what? I don't remember this, probably to try to buy the land, I would need to re-watch the film), here we see how the family farm works, African labourers (perhaps illegal immigrants) do most of the work, but in this crisis even the family's children volunteer their efforts.

But the family is divided about what to do, Quimet's brother and his wife, whose family no longer lives in the farm, are in favour of facilitating the introduction of the solar panels and get involved with Punyol, who can offer a job to work with the energy firm deploying the panels, Iris, Quimet's younger daughter, is incensed that she can't play with her beloved cousins because Quimet has asked his brother's family to stay away from the farm, Roger, the family's oldest son, is frustrated with being a teenager, his future prospects in the farm and decides to start a small patch of cannabis hidden within the farm for his own consumption but perhaps more, Quimet eventually finds the patch and destroys it, which makes Roger furios to the point that he neglects his duty to deal with the water distribution leading to flooding of one of the fields, Iris fights with Roger due to the increasing tension, the patriarch starts to act erratically , guilt ridden by not having secured the deeds to the property in accordance to the law, amongst all this commotion Roger decides to spend the night away from home, he's brought back in a bit of a state.

Dolors, the mother of the family and the person holding all this mess together, finally explodes and slaps both Roger and Quimet out of rage and frustration.

Quimet, that so far has shown only his macho side, finally breaks down in front of Roger who realises how much it all means to Quimet, they find a common purpose in joining other farmers in demonstrations demanding a fair price for their produce, Roger finally has a sense of purpose and becomes fully committed to whatever the future may bring.

The end of the film is a bit abrupt, we see all the family happily together having a meal like if nothing has happened, but all of the sudden we hear some noises, they all walk to the edge of the peach fields just to see the first trees being uprooted, heavy machinery is preparing the fields for the deployment of the solar panels.

There are several interesting points about the film, first of all it is spoken mostly in Catalonian but it is a very specific dialect particular to the region where the film happens, the actors are all non professional, there is an anecdote in the Spanish press about how it took one month for the man playing Quimet to produce any tears for one of the scenes, this film won the Golden Bear, the first film in Catalonian to have done so, the film was selected to represent Spain for the Oscar to the best international film, beating "The beasts", a film as good as this one with similar traits: also about the conflict between the demands of Net Zero against the needs of poor communities, also spoken in a regional language, and also with non professional actors (mostly, not all of them). We will see these conflicts replicated many times, these films are delving insightfully in the conflicts that will arise unavoidably.

Rating: 4.5/5

74 of 168

Date: 8 December 2022

Venue: ICA

The list of films in the LFF 2022

[allyear-lff]

Bardo, false chronicle of a handful of truths

Summary: Mexican Oscar winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu makes a self referential film full of magical realism, absurdity, political barbs, humour and satire, it gets lost on its own cleverness but has enough memorable scenes to make it enjoyable.

Musings without spoilers: González Iñárritu is a master of the multilayered, complicated film and he really doesn't disappoint, at the beginning we have no idea where he is going, he takes all kinds of detours, some more justified than others, to make a big all encompassing canvas that works as the background of a character like him, a troubled successful filmmaker with a privileged background but not for that isolated from suffering and fear.

Plot and musings with spoilers: the film starts with a surreal scene in which we see the shadow of a man in the middle of the desert that is trying to fly, it is beautiful but incongruous and we have no idea why we are here, the mastery of González Iñárritu is that he will tie all the loose ends he lies down during the film and we eventually come back to the beginning and realise the meaning of what we were seeing, but at this point we are clueless about what is going on, Iñárritu has lots of experience dealing with multilayered plots and it shows, although in this occasion the self indulgence is palpable, there are scenes that make no sense, but they are all entertaining and some really daring.

The next scene is of an "anti birth" in which we witness a baby called Mateo refusing to be born, it is comical and unsettling, Mateo will reappear as a central figure in the life of Iñárritu alter ego, the documentary maker Silverio Gama.

The next set piece happens in a train carriage, it shows a man with a plastic bag full of water with axolotls (a kind of Mexican amphibian), he fall sleeps, the bag falls and the carriage is flooded, the axolotls swim happily there. Even this is self referential and actually based on real events, the film will pick up this later and believe me, it will make sense.

The next set piece is a crazy dreamy (nightmarish?) reenactment of the Chapultepec Castle battle during the US invasion of the country, during the fighting political truths of the right of the political spectrum are unceremoniously presented but they may make sense to a Mexican audience only but they won't resonate with other audiences, we watch this without fully understanding what is going on but later on we realise that it is part of a film made by Iñarritu's on screen alter ego but that is not clear at this point.

Silverio later attends an interview during a chaotic visit to a program conducted by Luis, a former friend, the interview seems to start but he freezes, it feels all unreal, then returns home where he hears Lucia who sounds distant (an imaginary voice?), eventually she shows up claiming he actually missed the interview, they act like if they can communicate telepathically.

Later on there are more complicated scenes involving Silverio's family that may be imaginary or not, some it is clear they are, but some others it is uncertain.

We put our feet in what appears to be firm ground when Silverio meets Luis in the party to honour Silverio as the prodigal son of Mexican journalism (he lives in the US), they have a long discussion about the different careers paths they followed Luis becoming a popular celebrity and Silverio a serious documentary maker, but things take a strange turn when Luis starts to refer to prior scenes but also to things we have not seen in the film with derision and accusing Silverio of hubris and self indulgence (an accusation that González Iñárritu obviously knew would be heading his way in appreciation for this film), one will hardly find a more self referential scene in any other films.

The strangeness continues, Silverio hides in the bathroom to escape all the commotion of speeches, party and adulation just to find himself, or to be more precise a childlike version of himself, talking to his dead dad in a strangely moving but certainly comical scene, this switches now to another telepathic conversation with his mother, both encounters full of regret and nostalgia.

The film switches to unsubtle social commentary now, about violence, colonisation and death, it is a quite impressive nightmare to which Luis referred earlier in the past tense, time and space being deformed and adapted to the needs of the script, then filming stops when the scene was progressing to a very tense point , there are bodies littering the Zocalo square at the heart of Mexico City but they are all actors, waking up zombie like from their slumber, the Mexican flag is raised, the actors repeat a rebellious anti government joke that even young Mexicans would find impossible to decipher but that will make perfect sense to Mexicans at least a few years old in the 70s, "sube Pelayo sube!" (literally "climb Pelayo, climb!") made me smile.

Then we switch focus again, to what is a more intimate family portrait and where we come to understand the nature of all the crazy adventures and happenings we have witnessed, for example the boy that didn't want to be born, Marco, is now identified as Silverio's unborn child and the family wants to let his memory go, having all being affected by this death, thy go to the sea to scatter his ashes in the false hope they will be able to move on, the family also talks about where they want to stay, if Mexico or the US (this happens in a very luxurious environment, the film making it clear that this family is very well off even though the house where they are staying isn't theirs), in the middle of these discussions all of the sudden the family is in a plane bound for LA, once there Silverio is in a pet shop, he buys some axolotls in a plastic bag and takes the metro (a scene we have seen before) but this is the crucial point of the whole drama, Silverio drops the poor amphibians, they crawl in the floor in a puddle of water, the train reaches downtown LA, Silverio is the last person in the train, a cleaner girl working in the station notices the situation and starts to pick up the animals but then notices that Silverio is in a bad state, he has had a stroke.

Silverio is in a comma, he may be hearing what is happening around him, in the background we hear the news of the man (Silverio himself) with the axolotls in the metro (news we heard before when he was preparing for the failed interview, yet another time loop resolved), there is a speech by Camilla, his daughter, and later on he's moved in this state to Mexico.

Once in Mexico the loose ends are tied up, he is lying in bed in coma, but all of the sudden he enters the room as well, at this point it I realise why the dreamy nature of the whole film, we have been witnessing Silverio's dreams while in coma.

Silverio's ambulatory version opens a door and we can see a desert landscape, we are back to the landscape at the beginning of the film, he sees his parents, but also his living family, they want to leave the room, the world, with him, but he rejects the idea telling them that he will be back anyway.

Go back to the beginning of this review and you will know how the film ended.

The film is clever, long, self referential, yes self indulgent, but in spite of its lack of rigour and the many ideas and themes portrayed it is a real tour de force, this mess could have been messier but González Iñárritu just about manages to reign in all the ideas he was trying to present.

Perhaps he did far more than he should, there are 2 or 3 different films hidden within this one and perhaps it would have been better to untangle them and make them separately, but that is not what Gonzålez Iñárritu is all about, so I am more than happy to endores this folly.

Rating: 4/5

73 of 168

Date: 8 December 2022

Venue: Curzon Soho

The list of films in the LFF 2022

[allyear-lff]

Empire of light

Summary: back in the 80s we see the trials and tribulations of the employees of a film theatre, but especially those of a couple of marginalised people, as a mirror of wider societal issues. Nicely done but some things feel implausible.

Musings without plot spoilers:

The film takes us to a coastal resort at a time when going to the cinema mattered, the characters are all misfits or marginalised for a variety of reasons and even within that small group there is one character even more marginalised and even abused.

The topics are far ranging: mental illness, racism and xenophobia, parent-children relationships, sexual abuse and some others only glimpsed. The cast, lead by Olivia Colman, Toby Jones and Colin Firth is a who is who of British acting and they deliver their characters with the credibility and professionalism we have got used to expect, this is complemented by the powerful dignified presence of Micheal (no mistake, it is Micheal) Ward who is somebody to watch in the future, hopefully this well delivered role will open new doors for him.

Colman plays a troubled woman doing all kind of odd jobs in the theatre, her character suffers of mental illness and this colours her interactions with everybody else and makes her own life very challenging, Firth plays her boss, trying to make ends meet in the business, who strikes luck when the premiere of "Chariots of Fire" is scheduled on his theater, he plays an anodyne man who has very shameful skeletons on his closet which will eventually lead to trouble, Toby Jones plays the projectionist of the theatre, a lonely man that loves film but has regrets of his own and Ward plays a handsome young man of Black descent who is stuck working in the cinema while hoping to enter university.

All these characters are well developed and their relationships feel meaningful (not necessarily positive) but the relationship at the core of the film seems contrived and highly implausible, and the more implausible thing is that nobody notices that it is going on, although the characters know of other things intended to remain hidden but, shamefully, don't talk about it.

The film is dripping with nostalgia about the 80s: old fashioned grand cinemas, film attendance as a special occasion and a lazy relaxed atmosphere that hides social issues boiling under the pleasant sun.

Spoilerstatisc plot:

The film starts on Christmas Eve, we see an old fashioned cinema where Hilary (Colman) is busy doing a bit bit of everything while it snows outside, the cinema closes, colleagues leave.

Next day Hilary wakes up alone, has breakfast with wine on the side, she seems lonely, later on she gets a doctor visit about matters that will become later in the film and later on we see her dancing alone in a quite sorry lonely fashion.

It seems that work at the cinema is a better place for her to be until this perception is put into question when her boss, Ellis, calls a meeting, they stay alone and she starts to masturbate him, but this isn't a torrid romance, later on during a chance encounter at a restaurant we see Ellis with his wife and HIlary evading them like the plague and going back home in a deep state of depression.

Later on back at the cinema Hilary shows the ropes to a newcomer, Stephen, he is a young black man taking the job while he waits if he is accepted in university, Hilary shows him parts of the cinema that are dilapidated and Stephen shows his caren human side by nursing some pigeon chicks which he hands to Hilary, a gestures that starts their friendship.

There are several incidents that show the difficulties of the crew dealing with clients but how they soldier on regardless and how they bond as a team, specially HIlary, Stephen and Jeannine, a goth girl slaos a bit of an outsider.

Their luck seems to change when it is announced that they will premiere Chariots of FIre and Ellis is hoping such event may help turn the decline of the cinema.

Hilary and Stephen receive the new year in the roof of the cinema amongst optimism and fireworks and she kisses him and runs away, after that and some talking, they start to go out together a but this is abruptly punctuated by a nasty racist attack suffered by Stephen witnessed by Hilary in the distance.

Back in the cinema Ellis asks Hilary on his office but she refuses, everybody knows what is going on and are silently on her side (the situation is worse than the abuse of power as such, this is fully brought to light later).

Stephen notices she is down and suggests to go up to the derelict part of the cinema to free the pigeon they have been nurturing, once there now he kisses her and they make love (I found this part little credible given the age difference and how this contradicts the caring nature of Stephen that surely would have notice that not everything was fine with Hilary).

There are several developments that make their lives a misery, first of all is the premier of Chariots of Fire, it goes according to plan but somehow Hilary ends having to give a speech where she exposes Ennis for his exploitative behaviour, made all the worse because Hillary was placed in the cinema after recovering from severe mental illness, also a mob of skinheads in a motorbike cavalcade notices Stephen inside the cinema and give him a beating that sends him to hospital, while there Hilary visits without knowing that the nurse caring for Stephen is his own mother, who is puzzled by Hilary's visit, also Stephen reconnects with a girlfriend and start to go out together,

After Hilary's speech she stops going to the cinema, Stephen goes looking for her and after much begging he is left out in the flat just to be interrupted by a police backed social services ride since Hilary has relapsed and is forced to go into mental health care, Stephen sees all this while hiding in the flat unable to do anything and unwilling (fearful?) to intervene.

The film jumps to the summer and in a beautiful day Stephen and Hilary meet by chance in the park, he has been accepted in university and is getting ready to leave the area, she is better and back to the cinema (Ellis now gone, transferred somewhere else) and she can work again.

I found the film very interesting but the central relationship is contrived, this somehow distracts from everything else, I found implausible that a woman so severely mentally ill and a black man in such a racist environment would hook up together with the connivance of their colleagues, I don't know how this could have been improved, at the end perhaps there was too much material to go through but the relationship that supports the whole film fails to convince.

Rating: 3.5/5

72 of 168

Date: 7 December 2022

Venue: Battersea Powerhouse CInema

The list of films in the LFF 2022

[allyear-lff]

Lady Chatterley's lover

Summary: the marriage between a man of aristocratic background and a free thinking woman from London collapses when he returns from the war disabled by his injuries, the woman takes solace in a relationship with a servant, also a war veteran, which leads to scandal and to all the lives involved changed forever.

Plot and musings: so most people know about the book and its travails not to be banned, I read it a long time ago and don't remember all the sordid details that so enraged (and continue to enrage) polite society and obtuse obscenity authorities in many places, the problem for a film retelling this tale (because goodness know how many adaptations there have been) is that it has to find a new take in the story, or it has to give us a different one, which in a way defeats the purpose of doing an adaptation, but anyway, people will try and this is one of such attempts.

The plot isn't very complicated, Clifford Chatterley is a young man from an aristocratic family, he is getting married to Connie (Constance) that throughout the film is presented as an independent free thinking woman more in tune with 20th century attitudes than with the 19th or even 18th century preoccupations of her handsome new husband, unfortunately for them they are getting married in times of war and Clifford departs to the war front only to return disabled by the horrific injuries he has suffered and wheel chair bound for life.

At this point they (he really) decide to move to a Chatterley family home where Clifford tries to start to run the affairs of the family as it would be expected of him, he manages to do so with the help of Connie but she is getting bored, a situation not helped by the refusal of Clifford to let her go to London where all her social and cultural life used to be. This tense situation is further worsened by Clifford's character hardening as a consequence of dealing with his disability and by the admission that they can't have heirs, Clifford suggests that Connie could conceive a heir with somebody else and nobody should know he wasn't the father.

This conversation and the longing of Connie for an intimate relationship she can't have with Clifford makes her fertile ground to become adventurous and by chance she gets friendly with the gamekeeper, Mellors, who is a good looking Scottish fellow, a handsome educated war veteran to whom Connie opens herself unreservedly, this all could have ended there, or could have continued as a secret affair, but they realise that they need each other more than they would have expected, so they get careless until they can't hide the affair at which point he is fired and she is ostracised, but Connie can't have any of this and just leaves Chatterley's home (with the help of her formidable proto feminist sister), she had endeared herself with the servants in the house and they manage to find where Mellors lives, Connie hurries there to find him in a farm in the Scottish countryside where they reunite to live their lives in dignified poverty.

Yeah, right.

So the positives of this unlikely scenario are the locations, all invariably period drama beautiful, the acting that one can't really fault, the characters which are constructed well enough.

So what is missing? Sex. Plain and simple. And foul language and all the things that made the book scandalous to some. To me it felt like an attempt to sanitise the story and to give it a middle class happy ending cottoned in all kind of justifications about why Connie would have a passionate affair with somebody so much below her social class. The poignancy of the book is its daring, this film feels like a declawed tiger, perfectly enjoyable but lacking in punch, Connie going after Mellors just because she can is missing here, she doesn't do it because she is a liberal goodie, she does it because she can plain and simple, and that disparity of power is never really felt, this couple is formed by equals in a world in which such a thing didn't really exist.

Rating: 3.5/5

71 of 168

Date: 6 December 2022

Venue: Curzon Camden

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Summary: a carpenter facing a great tragedy is given a gift by a kind spirit using the result of a drunken creation, this leads to great adventures that will test the carpenter and his creation's beliefs and appreciation of each other.

Plot: I hope you like my summary because I found it really hard to summarise the film that I saw, which by now, Oscar earned, is a modern classic and follows very closely a Disney's classic known and loved the world over.

To say that Guillermo del Toro took a monumental challenge is an understatement, the film will have to face comparisons against Disney's original forever, this after having created a piece of work by perhaps the most arduous animation process in the filmic art (the film was done entirely using stop motion animation), del Toro also insisted that Mexican teams were heavily involved in the animation and the script places the action in fascist Italy thus making it also a partly political piece.

So what could have possibly gone wrong? Everything, the film could have been an unmitigated disaster of the scale of the now infamous film about Don Quixote that Monty Python's Terry Gilliam had to abandon once due to all kind of difficulties, but it wasn't, in fact it is one of the greatest films of the year, it should have been nominated for the Academy's best film prize, but perhaps the Academy, judiciously, wanted to ensure that del Toro wold walk with the statuette by nominating it for best animation, which it deservedly won since no other animation could possibly come close.

The plot loosely follows the same ideas of the original Disney film: there is Geppetto, but he is a carpenter, not a puppet maker, this gives the plot a chance to explore different relationships of the character with the world at war, there is Sebastian J. Cricket which, you guessed it, fulfills a similar role as Pinocchio's moral guide as its counterpart in Disney's film, there is the whale, and there is a devilish monkey that offers an unexpectedly well developed character which becomes perhaps Pinocchio's biggest nemesis in the film.

But this is a completely different style to tell the tale and the setting is more charged, Geppetto endures a tragedy as a consequence of bombing during Mussolini's rule, his creation of Pinocchio is no nostalgic longing but a demented drunken attempt at dealing with grief, the far from perfect creature infused with life by a spirit that takes pity of Geppetto is not a cosy puppet in human form, it reminded me more of a Frankenstein small monster without the nasty existential self destructive edge. The animation is a thing of wonder, it is hard to believe that the characters move with such elegance and that they inhabit a world in which attention to detail is inescapable and pleasing.

Perhaps the plot gets lost a bit here and there, taking too long to develop some themes and arriving too quickly to the conclusion of others, but overall the film moves nicely and will entertain its adult audience since it is adults for whom the film is intended, this is no cosy film with an unearned happy ending, it is a harrowing film in which the happy ending is earned with pain, tears and fear, Pan's Labyrinth eats the puppet and it is the better for it.

Rating: 4.5/5

70 of 168

Date: 5 December 2022

Venue: Curzon Bloomsbury

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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White noise

Summary: a family faces a series of crisis related to an all encompassing accident and to an all encompassing drug. And goodness knows what else. And everybody dances in a supermarket at the end.

Plot and musings: I am still scratching my head about this film, it is a weird mixture between comedy, family drama, science fiction, a bit of road movie in the most absurdist tradition, a bit of monster movie with a further seasoning of War of the Worlds reminiscences. This clearly is an ambitious film but it is like trying to tame 3 wild horses at the same time: very spectacular, highly amusing but probably confusing to the uninitiated an ultimately bound to end in a big mess.

The film is divided in several parts, the first one "Waves and radiation", introduces us to all the main characters, In my notes I have a comment that says "in defense of the car crash in US cinema", I had forgotten what this was al about, but my memory was jogged by the note, now I remember that it was a ludicrous lecture about above said topic by one colleague of Adam Driver's character, Jack, he is a Nazi studies teacher that doesn't speak German (ha,ha,ha), husband, father of 4, leading a gently chaotic family life, all seems to be fine with them except that the older daughter says that her mum has been forgetting things.

The second is titled "The airborne Toxic Event" and it is what it says in the tin, this really made my head on, so there is an accident in which apparently some toxic material is released, but we really never know exactly what the problem is, nevertheless we see the evacuation, traffic jam, chaos, the full War of The Worlds enchilada, as it would be expected the toxic cloud becomes more menacing (which I think we don't see, but don't quote me) and we get even more derivative with everybody running in panic a la Independence Day.

Then things get weirder, Jack has been having nightmares earlier in the film, and then one man that has been on them show up while they are taking refuge in a camp and hands him a bunny. (?!)

Jack drags the family behind the man but they get trapped in a river, his oldest son saves the day but they get trapped in a building. Misinformation, rumours, disinformation there. Man goes crazy. Me too,

Part 3 is called "Daylarama" , this doesn't make much sense at first although Dylar I think was mentioned in passing earlier, but now it gets centre stage.

The family is back home (was the 2nd part of the film a dream?) but life is now horribly depressive, although things seems to be "back to normal", a big difference is that Jack's wife, Sarah, is really acting strange as the older daughter, Denise, mentioned earlier.

Denise has not remained idle, she found Dylar hidden in the house, she asked the pharmacist about it but he has never heard of it, Jack gets involved and calls their doctor but he doesn't know about it, then Jack decides to confront Sarah and she comes clean, she has been participating in a research program about the drug and the drug is so good that she has been doing what was necessary to get the pills, her ailment is not an unusual one, fear of death, what is unusual is how effective the pill seems to be.

At this point there is a scene in which Jack is dying. No wait, he's dreaming, a nightmare, he isn't dying but now he fears death, he wants the medicine, he begins to check in the house but Denise was so worried about Sarah that decided to get rid of it, but on the insistence of Jack she tries to recover it without success.

Somehow Jack finds an add about curing the fear of death, he figures out this is the man that has been taking advantage of Sarah to give her the drug, he makes an appointment with him, but only after giving a conference in German (is he dreaming again?).

Jack goes to the motel where the man is staying, he has a gun with him, this is the final showdown.

Then after the situation resolves itself we have the most bizarre credits I have seen for a while, it is a full musical with people dancing joyously in a supermarket. Funny. And confusing.

This a completely bonkers film, I have no doubts I got several things wrong, I may even rewatch it. Enjoy if you do.

Rating: 3.5/5

69 of 168

Date: 3 December 2022

Venue: Cine Lumiere

The list of films in the LFF 2022

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The swimmers.

Summary: Damascus 2011, a couple of well off middle class girls, trained as competitive swimmers, are forced to flee their country becoming asylum seekers, nevertheless they continue to pursue their dreams.

Plot and musings: the film is an odd piece of work perhaps because the main characters don't fit our ideas of how Syrians in general, but Syrian women in particular, are in real life.

The teenage girls at the centre of the plot, Yusra and Sarah, have fun parties in a swimming pool like if they were in California, they are modern, westernised and speak English with their friends, during the birthday of Yusra the Syrian Civil War gets started, they don't know it but their lives are going to change forever from this day on.

The film moves to 2015, the girls are in another party, older but not necessarily much wiser, they dance and have fun ignoring the bombing that feels perilously close, all this naiveté starts to crash down when later on they get news that on friend of theirs has died bombed, after that we see the girls attending a swimming competition and the swimming pool is bombed and they barely escape unhurt, at some other point marauding soldiers are shown getting bolder in the harassment of the girls as we witness a very tense scene in which a bomb comes as a welcome saviour when one soldier seemed ready to pounce on his prey, at which point one knows they are in an untenable situation.

After much arguing amongst the family it is decided that the girls will leave with a male cousin for Istanbul with the express idea not to cross by sea to Europe since everybody knows how dangerous it is, but once in the road moving as an asylum seeker takes a life of its own, so the only and early opportunities to cross to Europe are only by sea, the cousin arranges matters with a smuggler and this way they start the perilous journey to Europe.

The most tense moments of the film are during this sea crossing, initially it seems like if they have been conned and seem to be abandoned in the coast, while there they make some acquaintances and realise that their fellow travellers come from the world over, finally the smugglers arrive with a dinghy that has seen better times and which clearly shouldn't be used anymore, but the asylum seekers are in no position to chose and are crammed into the dinghy and pushed to the sea to meet their fate, needless to say the journey is very dangerous, at some point the girls take matters in their own hands and save the day thanks to their athletic training.

But making it to Europe is only the first part of their journey, they face hostility even though they have money to pay for things, but since they are used to be privileged they realise that showing confidence is all what it takes for people to treat them not as asylum seekers but as privileged people again, they make use of this for a few days but eventually have to move on since they intend to claim asylum elsewhere.

During their trip they face all kinds of peril, from being rammed into a lorry having to wear oxygen masks to breathe, being separated, more hostility and Yusra was almost raped, being saved only by a smuggler wanting his reputation as an smuggler intact.

When the situation is getting desperate and they are running out of money Germany announces they will be taken most of the refugees in Europe and they finally make it there where they feel safe, but this starts a long winded, obtrusive and blunt bureaucracy which by taking too long deprives the from the right to bring their parents under a family reunification visa.

Yusra hasn't abandoned her idea to swim competitively, her dream, trashed by the war, was to compete in the Olympics, she decides to stay in form by doing whatever exercise she can in the refugee camp, but that isn't enough, Sarah has the idea to join a local swimming club, so they attend one in the area where they are held and meet Sven, a swimming coach, he doesn't want to get involved with the girls, but after he sees that they can actually swim properly, specially Yusra, he has a change of heart and starts to coach them, he realises Yusra is an above average swimmer so he suggests she may fulfil her dream if she tries to join the Refugees' Olympic team.

Yusra is reluctant at first, she always wanted to Swim for her country, but realising this may be her only chance of Olympic glory she applies to join the team and is accepted, so she goes to the Rio Olympic Games, once there she faces the rejection of other athletes that think refugees don't deserve to be there, but Yusra competes and wins her heat (a weak one to be fair).

The closing titles, as often films based on real people do, bring us up to date with the life of the real people in which the film is inspired, Sarah became a pro refugee activist and the Greek authorities, shamefully according to Human RIghts organisations familiar with the case, accused her of hideous crimes that would carry a long jail sentence, fortunately to this day she remains free and her case seems to be tilting on her favour.

This is an enlightening film which highlights the plights of refugees at a time in which many politicians play to be though with this group of people which has few means to defend themselves from the barrage of allegations hyped against them, I don't expect it will change the minds of people that don't want refugees in their own countries but it should give material of discussion to those more humanely minded.

Rating: 4/5

68 of 168

Date: 2 December 2022

Venue: Curzon Victoria

The list of films in the LFF 2022