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Posts from the ‘LFF2011’ Category

Oct 31

Anonymous (2011)

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

3 stars

In a New York theatre, trench-coated Derek Jacobi soliloquises about the greatness of Shakespeare’s works, and then tantalises his audience with the suggestion – no, assertion – that Will was not in fact the author. The scene shifts to early 17th century London where playwright Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto), clutching a pile of papers, is chased through the streets of London by soldiers who eventually manage to burn him out of the Globe Theatre and arrest him, sans folio. Read more

Oct 23

Wild Bill (2011)

Directed by: Dexter Fletcher

4 stars

Bill, released after an eight-year stretch in prison, returns to his council flat in the east-end council estate where he finds two sons, fifteen year-old Dean, and eleven-year old Jimmy, fending for themselves, their mother having left some months before. Read more

Oct 23

The Sleeping Voice (2011)
La voz dormida

Directed by: Benito Zambrano

4 stars

1940, Madrid.  In an overcrowded wing in a women’s prison, a nun flanked by prison warders calls out the names of several women who, with varying degrees of terror, gather their belongings and follow the nun to waiting trucks, and then on to the firing squad. Read more

Oct 20

Nobody Else But You (2011) 
Poupoupidou 

Directed by: Gérald Hustache-Mathieu

4 stars

Blocked crime novelist David Rousseau (Jean-Paul Rouve) finds himself in the small town of Mouthe on the French-Swiss border, where the body of local celebrity weather presenter (and face of Belle de Jura cheese), Candice Lecoeur (Sophie Quinton) has just been found in a snow-covered field in no-man’s land. Read more

Oct 17

Dark Horse (2011)

Directed by: Todd Solondz

3 stars

Overweight thirty-something Abe (Jordan Gelber) lives at home with mom (Mia Farrow) and dad (Christopher Walken), in whose property development business he also works.  At home he is a semi-reclusive collector of action figures, and at work an incompetent time-waster (only rescued from exposure by adoring older colleague Marie, played by Donna Murphy) while in both locations he is an overgrown teenager on a permanently short fuse, resenting everyone else’s success, snapping at every suggestion and externalising every shortcoming. Read more

Oct 17

50/50 (2011)

Directed by: Jonathan Levine

4 stars

My whiskers start twitching when I hear a movie is “inspired by a true story” since it so often means a moralising slice of selective observations about idealised people.  Thus it was a surprise to find that 50/50, based loosely on the experiences of writer Will Reiser and his real-life friend Seth Rogen (who co-stars), is an almost unalloyed pleasure. Read more