We Don't Need Two Metaphors

Spoiler Warning: Lots of spoilers ahead Knowing very little about a film before watching it opens up the possibility of giving over time to a film that thoroughly squanders it, but also the possibility of being swept up in a film with no expectations or suggestion of where it will take you. In the case of Vox Lux , knowing little more than the title and cast members led to being wholly unprepared for the film’s startling opening. That intense reaction is indicative of the entire experience crafted by writer and director Brady Corner. This is a film of extremes. Extreme pain and extreme joy; extreme highs and extreme lows. All presented to question and challenge the acceptable boundaries of 21st century celebrity culture. Vox Lux opens with a school shooting in 1999; Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) survives but with spinal injuries. After singing at a candlight vigil soon after, Celeste launches on a path to popstardom with her sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) and produced (Jude Law) in tow....

Now almost a decade into his feature filmmaking career, perennial London Film Festival favourite Ben Wheatley returns with Happy New Year, Colin Burstead : perhaps his warmest film to date and a perfect sweary antidote to the usual festive offerings. Colin Burstead (an excellent Neil Maskell) has hired a grand Dorset castle to bring his family together for a New Year's party. Like every family, they don't always get along but the Burstead are perhaps more resentful than most. So far so Agatha Christie but there's no chance of the butler being murdered here as the Burstead family are far too embittered to actually murder anyone; it’s as if their resentment for each other would only be exceeded by the resentment towards someone who no longer had to endure the curt and strained conversations.

A spiritualist, an artist and a geologist walk into a abandoned mining town. Even if you have heard of that joke before, you’ve probably never heard it told in quite the same manner as Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn tell it in their latest. Funded through Kickstarter, Two Plains & a Fancy is the first self-proclaimed ‘spa western’, which is an accurate description that doesn’t begin to hint at what is to come. It’s 1893 and the aforementioned trio (Marianna McClellan, Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch) have travelled to Colorado in search of the region's famous hot springs. What they don't know is that the price of silver has abruptly fallen the once thriving region is facing a severe downturn.

A father and his daughter Thelma walk across a frozen lake; she pauses momentarily to watch the silvery fish slinking through the icy water below. Later, a fawn crosses their path; the father raises his rifle to shoot, but turns it towards his daughter just ahead of him. He holds his aim but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It’s a brilliant opening – one of the year’s best – to Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s fourth film Thelma , his first foray into genre cinema. It’s unsettling and gives Trier a blank canvas on which to map out his chilling sci-fi drama; the unexpected should be expected at every turn.

A three and a quarter hour documentary about a library may not sound like the most enticing of prospects and yet, Frederick Wiseman’s glimpse into the comings, goings and inner workings of the New York Public Library is riveting and absolutely worth taking the time to savour. As libraries go, the New York Public Library with its 209 branches is a million miles away from the stuffy village sites that would spring to my mind. Wiseman takes his camera to many of the locations found on the streets, corners and in the suburbs of the continuously unfurling city. He’s there simply to observe how people use the facilities available to them and how the management work to continually provide their patrons with the means to live, learn and connect with the wider world.

Now here’s that rarest of things, a film you never knew you wanted: a high-school exam heist thriller. Whilst Hollywood faces continuous accusations of lacking ideas, Thailand has delivered Bad Genius: an inventive and thrilling caper that has already wowed audiences on home soil and across much of southeast Asia. Keen to settle in quickly at her new school, Lynn (newcomer Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) begins to tutor her new friend Grace (Eisaya Hosuwan). Tutoring quickly turns to cheating and as Grace’s grades improve, more of Lynn’s classmates want her to provide the answers to their exams, and they’re willing to pay good money for her help.

There’s a specific joy that comes from watching a film with no preconceptions and being completely won over by it and, in the modern era of lengthy marketing campaigns, it is becoming an occurrence to savour. The film on this occasion was Princess Cyd , from Chicago based writer and director Stephen Cone. Jessie Pinnick stars as teenager Cyd, who travels to Chicago to spend the summer with her aunt Miranda (Rebecca Spence), a famous novelist. Cyd and Miranda haven’t seen each other since the funeral of their mother/sister almost a decade ago.

A total of 242 feature films will screen at the 61st BFI London Film Festival in October; 242 films including 28 World premieres, 9 International premieres and 34 European premieres. The previously announced  Breathe  and  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  will bookend the festival and there are many treats in-store for the days in between.  In Part 1, I looked at the films from the main competitions and gala screenings. Outside of the competitions and galas, other films are placed in one of the following strands:     LOVE                   DEBATE                   LAUGH   DARE                    THRILL                     CULT JOURNEY               CREATE         ...

A total of 242 feature films will screen at the 61st BFI London Film Festival in October; 242 films including 28 World premieres, 9 International premieres and 34 European premieres. The previously announced Breathe  and  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  will bookend the festival and there are many treats in-store for the days in between. Here are some picks from my first perusal at the full line-up; click on the title of each film to go to the BFI festival page for the film.

A synopsis can sometimes do a film no favours and describing the story in Katell Quillévéré’s third feature would bring to mind any number of hospital dramas. The key to the film’s power lies in the Quillévéré’s execution: finding the small moments of humanity amongst the enormity of the situation the characters face. It’s life and death, but not as the movies know it. Adapted from an acclaimed novel by Maylis de Kerangal, Heal The Living introduces Simon (Gabin Verdet) climbing out of his girlfriend’s bedroom window to catch the early morning tide with two surfing friends. In strictest terms, he’s travelling through the night to stand in the sea on a slab of polyurethane, but it’s his passion for the surf that Quillévéré captures (through some quite breath-taking underwater and in water photography). Just hours later, Simon is declared brain dead after a severe car crash and his parents Marianne and Vincent (Emanuelle Seigner and Kool Shen) must decide whether to donate their so...

The only thing I knew about Una beyond its main cast (the always interesting Rooney Mara and Ben Mendlsohn) was its origins as a play (Blackbird by David Harrower). Sadly, despite the best efforts of all involved, this story of sexual abuse can’t escape those origins to arrive on screen as a fully-fledged film.

With a rarely seen perspective on the murder mystery genre, Wang Yichun’s debut film feels disjointed at first but gradually breaks free of expected genre trappings to deliver an unsettling look at an insidious and repressed modern China. As a small rural town becomes engrossed by a spate of sexually motivated murders, teenage girl Jing (Su Xiaotong) begins to break free of her stilted family life and explore the wider world, stumbling across much that she isn’t ready for.

This late addition to the BFI London Film Festival line-up captures life on tour with London band Wolf Alice. Amongst the regular crew, Michael Winterbottom places a handful of actors to guide the audience along on the journey. The innovative approach breathes some fresh life into the rock tour doc but it ultimately paralyses the film from ever truly fulfilling its early promise. There’s a good reason that the film is called On The Road and not Wolf Alice or the name of one of their songs; Winterbottom’s aim here is to capture the life of a touring crew, charging up and down the motorways from one venue to the next. In that regard, this film is a success. Having worked (for a time) a somewhat similar life in television production, the convergence of work life and personal life was immediately recognisable.

When the last guest at his house party dies in mysterious circumstances, Karsten (Sebastian Hülk) faces scrutiny from his friends, family and the police. More questions are raised when he learns that no one at the party knew who the woman was or why she was there. This premise could be the beginnings of a murder mystery but this finely crafted drama from writer/director Azli Özge examines the fallout from this one event and its widespread repercussions for those directly and indirectly involved.

In the opening of Damien Chazelle’s modern musical, the camera pans back along a traffic jam. A variety of modern notes and beats emerge from open car windows; travelling back through the years until the camera stops on the first soloist and kicks the film into life. It’s an opening that perfectly captures the film’s affection for the past but also acknowledging the passing of time since then. In the traffic jam are Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone); the former scanning his tape player for the right song, the latter practising lines for her latest audition. Their paths are destined to cross, though perhaps not as smoothly as they could. Since its Venice premiere, La La Land has been positioned as a firm Oscar favourite and it’s easy to see why. This is a top-tapping, finger clicking musical that was once the staple of Hollywood studios but is now normally reserved for the theatre. It gently mocks modern Hollywood whilst also showing a great reverence for it too. Y...

Furthering the return to prominence of the “folk-horror”, most notably with Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Robert Eggers The VVitch , is the atmospheric The Noonday Witch . First time feature director Jiri Sádek delivers a captivating, if not entirely satisfying, blend of the supernatural and psychological to a story of a mother’s relationship with her daughter. Eliska (Anna Geislerová) has left the hustle and bustle of the big city for the rural Czech village where her husband grew up, hoping for a fresh start with her daughter Anetka (Karolína Lipowská). With the sun bearing down on the parched land, the weight of a secret takes its toll on their relationship and the threat of the Noonday Witch looms ever larger.

You can be forgiven for not being able to recall the last Saudi Arabian film you watched, such is mere handful of films that have been made there (Hafiaa al-Mansour’s Wadjda is a recent example). Set about changing that is Mahmoud Sabbagh with his debut film Barakah Meets Barakah .