Category: LFF 2024
Reviews from this year’s BFI London Film Festival (LFF).
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NIGHTBITCH Review- Amy Adams is Having Oodles of Fun in a Canine Satire on the Metamorphosis of Motherhood Sorely Lacking in Bite.
Marielle Heller’s early directorial career has certainly been eclectic. She debuted with the biting dark comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me? and followed things up with a big warm hug of a film in A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood. Now, with the fabulously titled Nightbitch, she makes another left turn with a magical realist satire examining the metamorphosis… Read more
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Conclave Review- Dan Brown’s Got Nothing on These Scheming Pontiffs.
One could be forgiven for thinking the election of a new Pope wouldn’t make for the most interesting film. After all, the last time it happened over a decade ago the world was subjected to unrelenting footage of one God-forsaken chimney. Even on the inside, a bunch of largely old, largely white men furtively writing… Read more
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The Women Seeking Mavis Beacon- How a Documentary Rediscovering the Touch Typing Icon Journeyed into Doxxing and Digital Trauma in the Modern World.
My chat with the team of the new documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon at the London Film Festival 2024. Today, touch typing is considered as natural as breathing, a skill which is practically innate in us thanks to the myriad of screens and QWERTY keyboards we rely upon to interact with the world. However, from the… Read more
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Dahomey Review- Debate on looted colonial artefacts brought to life in lyrical new documentary.
Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale, is an experimental new documentary that follows the return of colonial artefacts taken from the former Kingdom of Dahomey to Paris back to their home in modern-day Benin. In total 26 artefacts were returned in 2021, but director Mati Diop focuses on three statues of… Read more
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Memoir of a Snail Review- A Beautifully Twisted Journey through the Doldrums of Human Despair and Out the Other Side.
Memoir of a Snail, the winner of the official competition at this year’s London Film Festival, is a stop-motion animation set in its writer-director Adam Elliot’s native Australia. However, this is not the Australia of sun-dappled coastlines and beach-ready bodies, as Elliot blends Aardman-style animation with a Burtonesque aesthetic in a tale of tragedy, comedy… Read more
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Blitz Review- Steve McQueen’s new WWII drama makes for truly epic British filmmaking.
Blitz, Steve McQueen’s latest directorial venture set during the height of German bombing raids over London, is a visceral and never-shattering cinematic experience. The film perfectly blends McQueen’s early career as a visual artist- who has created commissioned works on the Iraq War– into the popular framework of a mainstream movie. It opens with searing… Read more