In Contention

Tag: London Film Festival

  • REVIEW: “The Class” (***1/2)

    Sony Pictures Classics\' The ClassLondon Film Festival

    “We could have ended up making a leftwing ‘Dead Poets Society,’” states star and co-writer François Bégaudeau in the press notes for “The Class,” Laurent Cantet’s exhilarating Palme d’Or winner ( and a surefire frontrunner for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar). “That didn’t seem amusing to us at all.”

    Too right. Few settings are as simultaneously overworked and under-thought in cinema than the psychological (and occasionally physical) battleground of the high school classroom. From “The Blackboard Jungle” and “To Sir, With Love,” through to “Dangerous Minds” and that aforementioned Peter Weir schmaltzathon, the ‘inspirational teacher’ movie has become a sub-genre in itself, generally characterized by diagrammatic characterization and comfortable liberal homilies.

    Two years ago, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Half Nelson,” about a dedicated history teacher who just happened to be a crack addict, introduced some darker notes to the formula, which has now been completely reconfigured by “The Class,” an astonishing, one-of-a-kind work that is effectively the last word in the classroom genre.

    Seamlessly meshing documentary-style observation with a loose fictional script from the Mike Leigh school of work-shopping, Cantet’s richly layered film is a return to the masterful form of “Human Resources” after the curious misstep that was “Heading South.” With an organic, unhurried sense of scene construction and a keen eye for behavioral detail, “The Class” emerges not only as a highly entertaining piece of one-off storytelling, but as an urgent (yet unforced) microcosm of the sociopolitical tensions running through modern-day France.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Holding back

    Meryl Streep in SoubtEvery Oscar season is about managing expectations. Studios, of course, want to keep the murmurs to a minimum whether they have the goods or not because the peril of peaking too early is just as bad as the sting of negative word-of-mouth. Similarly, being “the one to beat” sets a film up to rise to an unfair occasion rather than coming to the table fresh.

    Holding back is a tradition and is even one of two philosophies on the awards season sell. There are those who’ll tell you that, if you have a great movie, you should show it and show it proudly. The other side of the equation believes in the manipulation of when and where opinion will trickle out. It seems every year a train wreck of sorts occurs, and this year, that train wreck was obviously “Frost/Nixon.”

    After landing in London to some mediocre reviews (no one at this site, by the way, ever said the film was bombing with critics across the board), should Universal Pictures have been particularly surprised? Ron Howard, America’s white-bread filmmaking standard exhibiting to the chilly British disposition? It wasn’t going to be a rapturous reception, and with the film having been completed for months on end, holding back until the London festival to give anyone a sanctioned peek raised eyebrows long ago.

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  • LONDON: ‘Tulpan,’ ‘La Belle Personne,’ ‘A Simple Heart’

    Continuing the discussion of yesterday’s London Film Festival offerings:

    Spearheaded by such titles as “The Class” and “Gomorrah,” the big story of world cinema this year appears to be the fusion of a documentary aesthetic with fictional storytelling, in many cases employing semi-improvised scripts and non-professional actors to create the spontaneous, slightly unnerving feel of watching life being lived. The latest in this cinematic line is “Tulpan” (***), a spare, sure-footed and thoroughly winning first foray into fiction film from documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoy.

    Since picking up the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, the film has built up healthy buzz on the festival circuit, and was recently named Kazakhstan’s entry in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race. (Kazakhstan, incidentally, is seeking their second consecutive nomination in the category after the surprise success of 2007’s “Mongol” — for all the “Borat” associations, this country is no joke.)

    Part folk tale, part National Geographic-style environmental study, the film unfolds on the barren, windswept steppes of south Kazakhstan, a milieu familiar from 2003’s documentary “The Story of the Weeping Camel.” “Tulpan” actually resembles that film in more ways than one, employing a similarly  leisurely, observational shooting style with a keen eye for domestic ritual.

    The story, such as it is, concerns a socially awkward young man, Asa, who returns from naval service to settle on the deserted steppe with his sister and her sheep-herder husband. Determined to find a wife, he sets his sights on marrying Tulpan, the daughter of neighbouring herders, who remains an unseen presence in the film. However, as he fails to win her over, while his herding abilities prove inadequate, he comes to re-evaluate his goals.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Road,’ ‘Soloist’ out, ‘Frost’ stumbles, Ledger buzz

    Busy week, this. Here is how it went down:

    • In the biggest story of the week, the pool of contenders narrowed as “The Road” got bumped to 2009…

    • … followed, in quick succession, by “The Soloist.”

    • The London Film Festival kicked off with “Frost/Nixon,” which got off to a middling critical start. We were underwhelmed.

    • More London coverage here, here and here.

    • As Tech Support ran down the Visual Effects contenders, we got an angle on the tantalising FX for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

    • Heath Ledger’s buzz remains as solid as ever — word went round that a lead campaign was in the works, but they’re staying put in supporting. Good move.

    • More (and still more) foreign film contenders bring the field to a record tally of 67.

    • We responded to the bad “Changeling” buzz with a kinder view, but like everyone else, are looking ahead to “Gran Torino.”

    • And finally, we solve your sartorial dilemmas in time for Halloween.

  • LONDON: ‘Dean Spanley,’ ‘1234,’ ‘Goodbye Solo’

    Long day today, with some complicated scheduling: after a press screening of Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration” turned out to be full, I was presented with the choice of catching up with either “Miracle at St. Anna” or Kazakhstani Oscar submission “Tulpan.” I opted for the latter — well, it’s got more of a chance of getting an Oscar nomination than Spike Lee’s film, right?

    Anyway, as I have six films to discuss from today, for the sake of economy (and my own sleep requirements) I’ll look at three of them now, and deal with the rest early tomorrow. We’ll start with the English-language contingent.

    I missed tonight’s main attraction, Richard Eyre’s tepidly received “The Other Man.” However, Eyre’s film was preceded by another UK-set Toronto title, “Dean Spanley” (**), a sophomore effort from Kiwi helmer Toa Fraser, whose debut “No. 2” was, oddly, rather more ambitious than this amiable but over-extended skit.

    The ornate animated credit sequence and jaunty score announce upfront that the film demands high whimsy-tolerance levels from the audience. In the interest of full disclosure, mine are pretty low. Still, that doesn’t distract from the fact that the narrative is barely feature-film material. Set in London at the turn of the 20th century, the film focuses on the brittle relationship between mild-mannered gentleman Fisk (Jeremy Northam) and his batty, emotionally distant father (Peter O’Toole). Idly attending a lecture on reincarnation one afternoon, they encounter the enigmatic Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), whose own account of his imagined past life as a dog strikes an unexpected emotional chord with both father and son.

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  • LONDON: ‘Three Blind Mice,’ ‘Nights and Weekends,’ ‘Lazy Days,’ ‘Kala’

    So today was the first full day of London Film Festival action, after last night’s premiere of “Frost/Nixon” kicked off proceedings. With a raft of fair-to-respectable reviews (as you know, I was firmly in the “meh” camp), Howard’s film didn’t land with quite the bang I’m sure the festival organisers were hoping for, but it was still a notable coup — and they have the comfort of more tried-and-tested titles to come.

    Today’s fare was more low-profile, with the biggest event being the UK premiere of Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” which arrives at the festival as damaged goods. Perhaps tellingly, it wasn’t screened for the festival press, and after a long day of film-watching, I couldn’t muster up the energy for tonight’s screening. I’m not particularly bothered — I’ll catch it one of these days. (Here’s Kris’ withering review, to jog your memory.)

    As I’m restricted by time (not to mention a hellish head cold), I can’t offer full reviews on everything, but what follows are my impressions of four titles that screened earlier today.

    In my view, the best film of the day (and likely to remain one of the best of the festival) was, easily, writer-director-actor Matthew Newton’s “Three Blind Mice” (***1/2), a baldly funny, ultimately devastating study of male insecurity from Down Under that I already highlighted in my festival preview.

    The film follows three naval officers as they embark on a boozy, debauched night of shore leave before shipping out to Iraq the next morning. Randy alpha male Harry (Newton) is the leader of the night’s entertainment, ordering prostitutes and drinks with equal abandon; more reluctant are strait-laced Dean (Toby Schmitz), seeking time alone with his fiancee, and emotionally frail Sam (Ewen Leslie), whose secret escape plans are sparked by an encounter with free-spirited waitress Emma (Gracie Otto).

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  • REVIEW: “Frost/Nixon” (**)

    Universal Pictures\' Frost/NixonLondon Film Festival

    For director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan, “Frost/Nixon” was always going to be a tricky beast to handle. A film adaptation of Morgan’s own stage play that was itself very much about the powers of television, the relationship between text, medium and audience has shifted in ways I’m not sure the film’s makers have fully accounted for.

    It is one thing to portray a momentous televisual event on the stage, where the intimacy and crackle of live human interaction allows for a very different, and rather more immediate, experience of the proceedings. It is quite another to recreate said event for  television’s closer cousin — with the legendary interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon that form the spine of the narrative widely available, the film has to recreate the spontaneous feel of history in progress, and in doing so, reveal something in a 30-year-old document that we haven’t already seen.

    It’s a tall order, and with Morgan’s script hewing closely to its source, Howard responds to it in the manner he knows best: with the most prosaic of visual aesthetics to hand, a doggedly linear approach to storytelling and the spotlight thrust squarely on a reliable pair of actors. The approach only gets him so far.  Howard’s hands-off direction makes for an oddly bloodless viewing experience, with a lot of talk standing in for any fresh perspective (or frankly, much of a perspective at all) on the events.

    To be honest, we could have seen this coming. It’s difficult to think of a director less-suited to take on the intricate, minutiae-obsessed writing of Peter Morgan than Howard — a director who, even in his finest films, has always been interested in the big picture first, with characters serving history rather than the other way round.

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  • London Film Festival: six to watch

    So the 52nd annual London Film Festival begins tomorrow, bringing with it a feast of cinema cherry-picked from the rest of the fests, with a couple of new titles thrown into the mix too.

    As promised, I will be keeping you updated with proceedings, starting with tomorrow’s world premiere of “Frost/Nixon.” I’m seeing the film bright and early in the morning, and will have a review for you before the day is out.

    As I’ve said before, this year’s London lineup is a little more low-key than usual, but that’s the kind of year it’s been for movies. All the major festivals have struggled a bit this year, but London at least has the advantage of filtering their best bits, meaning plenty of hot films will appear, from “Slumdog Millionaire” to “Che.”

    But those tickets are hard to come by, and when one moves beyond the big, sexy drawcards, the waters get a bit murkier. With almost 200 films (not counting shorts) screening from every corner of the globe, there’s a lot to explore. I’ve been immersed in festival press screenings for the last fortnight, and have still seen only a fraction of what the festival has to offer.

    In the interest of providing alternatives then, let me offer up a handful of lesser-hyped titles that are really worth catching. More detailed reviews will be provided as the festival progresses, but for now:

    1234 (dir. Giles Borg)

    Lots of buzz circling around this under-the-radar crowdpleaser. A sweet-natured character comedy (with an ace soundtrack) about a lovelorn geek struggling to start up an indie band in boho East London, “1234” had the most packed press screening of the festival so far, and is bound to be a Brit hit. Ditch “Nick and Norah,” and catch this instead.

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  • ‘Miracle at St. Anna’ added to London fest lineup

    Just, you know, FYI. Curiously, the addition of Spike Lee’s film means they’re bumping “Rachel Getting Married” into a slightly less high-profile slot. Weird, since we all know which film has more heat in the wake of the festivals.

    Though I’m not very excited about “Miracle,” any expansion of the programme is encouraging to see. Now if they could just wrangle “The Wrestler,” I’d be most grateful.

    Check out further programme modifications here.

  • ‘Che,’ ‘W.’ among films announced to play London fest

    Looking down the list of titles in the newly-revealed lineup for next month’s London Film Festival lineup, my initial reaction was one of mild disappointment. Plenty of exciting titles, for sure, but it doesn’t quite match last year’s feast that included everything from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to “The Assassination of Jesse James” to “Juno” to “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”

    My second thought, however, was that the lineup reflects more on what a tepid year for film 2008 is shaping up to be, rather than any lack of effort on festival director Sandra Hebron’s part. Tellingly, this morning Hebron herself cited critical opinion that, in the wake of a roundly derided Venice festival, “it wasn’t a vintage year for cinema.”

    But enough of the hand-wringing. There’s still much to get excited about, including “Che,” the two parts of which, interestingly, will be screened both together and apart; Oliver Stone’s potentially polarising “W”; “Hunger,” featuring a potential dark horse for Best Actor; “Religulous”; “Rachel Getting Married,” “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and, to my immense delight, “Synecdoche, New York.”

    Not to mention that, as previously announced, the festival will be bookended by the world premiere of “Frost/Nixon” and Danny Boyle’s red-hot Toronto hit “Slumdog Millionaire.”

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  • More LFF titles revealed

    The full lineup for next month’s London Film Festival is to be revealed tomorrow — but in the meantime, the latest issue of Sight and Sound reveals a couple more exciting inclusions.

    In addition to the already-announced opening and closing films (“Frost/Nixon” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” respectively), S&S confirms that the French Palme d’Or winner “The Class” will appear, with director Laurent Cantet in attendance.

    The magazine also reveals that there will be twelve international premieres at the festival, including “Sugar,” the baseball-oriented film from “Half Nelson” creators Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, which bowed to warm reviews at Sundance in January. (By “international,” they mean outside the US, obviously.)

    More signs of a great festival to come. I await tomorrow’s announcement like a kid on Christmas Eve.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Indies on the march

    (from left) Evan Rachel Wood and Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerMaybe mid-way through the Toronto Film Festival, two things are strikingly clear: Darren Aronofsky has the goods with “The Wrestler” and Danny Boyle’s streak of successful versatility at the helm continues with “Slumdog Millionaire.”

    Both films, which enjoy pre-Toronto success at Venice and Telluride respectfully, are also evidence that surprises will happen this time of year.  And with an uncharacteriztically level playing field in Toronto this year, we should be thankful they are getting a fair shake.

    One of them is set for distribution, however, while the other is waiting out a buyer.  But will “The Wrestler” find a home and see a release in 2008 or will an awards-heavy distributor pick it up and save it for a rainy day in 2009’s awards season?

    Both options are on the table, it’s just a matter of who bites first, and what they bring to the table.

    On the horizon, everyone is awaiting their post-Toronto peeks at films like “Australia,” “Revolutionary Road,” “Milk” (landing a trailer this week) and “The Soloist.”  David Fincher’s 20 minutes of footage from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” may have been caught off guard by over-zealous bloggers in Telluride, but the damage may not have been as considerable as some may have thought.

    Speaking of “The Soloist,” chatter is making its way out of the Paramount camp that Robert Downey Jr. is outstanding as LA Times columnist Steve Lopez and hopes are high for a Best Actor nomination.  And as far as “Milk” is concerned, prognosticators may have the wrong idea going in as to which supporting performance has the awards-worthy chops.  More on that at a later date.

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  • ‘Slumdog’ to close London fest

    The full lineup for October’s London Film Festival will be revealed in a week’s time, but we do now know what its bookends will be.

    “Frost/Nixon” was confirmed months ago as the festival opener. Now comes the announcement that Danny Boyle’s surprise package “Slumdog Millionaire,” coming off sensational buzz at Telluride, will have its European premiere as the closing film of the festival. Guess which one I’m more excited about.

    Festival director Sandra Hebron faces a tough task trying to top last year’s amazing slate, which included “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “No Country for Old Men,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “I’m Not There,”  “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and “The Savages,” to name but a few of the highlights.

    But this bodes very well indeed … and it’s a nice touch to round out this very British festival with a hot film from a homegrown talent. I can’t wait.

  • A note on IC’s festival season coverage

    We’re in the midst of the Telluride and Venice film festivals at the moment, and though we don’t have correspondents on the ground, we’ll be bringing you updates as we can suss them out.  But a quick reminder of what we will be offering over the next couple of months.

    John will start his Toronto coverage on Thursday.  He’ll be updating daily with quick thoughts on the goings on.  I’ve been catching some Toronto films here in L.A. so I’ll be reviewing in tandem.

    Guy Lodge, meanwhile, will be covering the London Film Festival for us, which begins October 15.  The full schedule for the fest hasn’t been revealed yet (coming on September 10), but we do know that Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” will have its world debut there.

    Finally, I’ll be overing the AFI Fest here in Los Angeles.  The festivities begin on October 30 and will take us into November.  Again, no schedule yet, though I do know one major Oscar contender expected to bow at the fest…stay tuned.

  • “A duel between two powerful lone wolves”

    Yeah, Opie actually called it that.  A bit much, but anyway…

    Guy already passed along the news this morning that Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” will open the 52nd annual London Film Festival on October 15.  But I also stumbled onto this preview/interview with Howard at The Times of London that offers a little more insight than the Screen International story.

    Here’s more from the director:

    Peter Morgan calls it a thinking person’s Rocky and I agree with him…I loved the audacity of the story, this famous British guy being turned down by the US networks and then cobbling together his own network to clobber the Americans with their own stick. It’s just this tremendous act of entrepreneurial courage.

    And some key lines from Ben Hoyle’s copy:

    The stage play of Frost/Nixon opened at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London, in August 2006 before transferring to the West End and later Broadway. Howard said that he read the script early on in the initial run. When he discovered that a frantic bidding war for the film rights was already under way, “I jumped on a plane to London with my wife and went to see it.” What he found was “one of the best theatre experiences of my life”…

    Critics adored the performances but some complained that Morgan had oversimplified the story, playing fast and loose with the interview transcripts and suggesting that the interviews sealed Nixon’s ignominy in the minds of the American people…Both Morgan and Howard empha-sise that Frost/Nixon is an impression of what happened in and around the interviews, not a docudrama.

    Check out the rest here.

  • ‘Frost/Nixon’ to bow at London fest

    Good news for me and my fellow Brits: for once, we’re going to get something first. Although Ron Howard’s baity “Frost/Nixon” hasn’t been kept that tightly under wraps, confirmation has arrived that the film will have its world premiere at the 52nd London Film Festival, where it will open proceedings on October 15.

    It’s an auspicious slot, as LFF artistic director Sandra Hebron has a habit of picking successful films to kick off the fest. Previous openers include “Almost Famous,” “Gosford Park,” “Vera Drake,” “The Constant Gardener,” “The Last King of Scotland” and last year’s very London-centric “Eastern Promises.”

    As you can see, prestige films with a UK element are favoured, so the selection of Howard’s film, an adaptation of a very British stage hit, comes as no surprise. There have been a couple of misfires in the opening slot over the years (Ang Lee’s strangely forgotten “Ride With the Devil,” Jane Campion’s underrated “In the Cut”), but for now, the odds are against “Frost/Nixon” going the same way.

    Either way, it’s a nice feather in the cap for a lovely, very public-friendly festival that gets stronger with each year: last year’s dynamite lineup included “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Lust, Caution,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and, in the surprise-screening slot that I was lucky enough to attend, “No Country for Old Men.” Hebron has done a brilliant job thus far; I expect her streak to continue in 2008.