I’ve been swamped with screenings at the London Film Festival, so between watching the films, maintaining some semblance of a day job and occasionally remembering to sleep and eat, my review updates have got a bit behind track.
Hopefully, I can make up some of the distance tomorrow, when I have a lighter screening schedule, so expect a compilation of capsule reviews shortly, as well as some more in-depth evaluations of titles like Steve McQueen’s fascinating “Hunger.” In the meantime, here are some thoughts on three notable (if not necessarily successful) titles that made their London bow on the weekend:
INCENDIARY (**)
Steadily, and with very little fuss, Michelle Williams is growing into a remarkable young actress, as this, the first of three films she has in the festival, makes clear. It’s one thing to shine in a film as immaculately crafted as “Brokeback Mountain,” but it’s quite another to shoulder a project as problematic as Sharon Maguire’s “Incendiary.”
A wildly confused, schizophrenic film based on a controversial novel, it stars Williams as a working-class London mother whose life is thrown into turmoil when her husband (a bomb disposal officer) and young son are killed in a (fictitious) terrorist attack on Arsenal football stadium. A low-key study of grieving ramps up into convoluted thriller territory when a journalist (Ewan McGregor), with whom the woman is having an affair, senses a cover-up and brings her into the investigation.