Earlier this month was the 57th London Film Festival. Last year I managed to see about 12 films across 7 different days, with 2 random empty days in the beginning and 3 gigs and a meeting with my university tutor in the middle. I also had a tax rebate to spend on all of that. This year… no tax rebate. So only 8 films and no gigs. I did manage to meet up with a few friends though, which was cool.
The Films:
- Jodorowsky’s Dune
This one was deliiiiightful. Apart from the bit where Jodorowsky says something along the lines of “I was raping Dune. With love.” The rest though, yeah, delightful. I had no idea that the team behind Alien kind of all met each other due to this and that was pretty cool. Also the circumstances under which Jodorowsky gathered together all the people he was going to work with was entirely amazing. - Under the Skin
This was kind of weird. Entirely enjoyable, but weird. Also, I couldn’t quite believe that so many men would just get into a strange woman’s van…but then I guess, I always come at that scenario with the genders reversed and I would never get into a strange man’s van. I don’t think many women would. - Pioneer
I really know nothing about the whole drilling for oil in the North Sea thing or how that came about orrrr any of that. I didn’t really need to though. This was really exciting. The underwater scenes were awesome and the conspiracy thing remained interesting throughout. - Trap Street
I think that maybe this film could have been more exciting or gone in a slightly more sci-fi dystopic direction, but that would have meant that it wouldn’t have really kept the sort of mundane realism that goes with it talking about a real world phenomenon. - Love Will Conquer All
This was a short film selection, where all the films had the theme of love in some way.</p>- Orbit Ever After – Set in space. I did start wondering about how the rest of society operated in this universe.
- Full Time – This was pretty sad.
- The Phone Call – I think this was pretty much the best of all the shorts.
- Kick-Heart – Interesting, but probably the one I least enjoyed.
- Pieces – You can kind of figure out what went on to the characters pretty early on, but that doesn’t make it less watchable.
- Auschwitz on My Mind – Actually, this was the one I least enjoyed. I just…didn’t care what the kids did.
- Out of Darkness – I really liked this. Seeing/hearing the same words but from different viewpoints really made me think.
- Night of the Foxes – Spent most of this waiting for a tragic turn that didn’t happen.
- The Zero Theorem
This was really good although it ended kind of abruptly – or at least, it felt that it did for me and there wasn’t really a conclusion. Maybe that was the point though. - Locke
I will admit to watching this entirely because I am a fan of Tom Hardy’s work and figured that even though this is a film where there’s just the one guy in a car for the entire film, it was worth a look. Or at least, it’d be something to try at least once. Locke turned out to be really good and while Hardy’s performance is excellent, I think that the co-stars (who we never see and only hear) really made the film compelling. - Only Lovers Left Alive
I…really had no idea what this film was about other than Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston being vampires. It was really funny! Like. REALLY FUNNY. Which I had no idea that it would be because I was pretty much sold on “vampires” (although that really let me down on last years Kiss of the Damned). I liked that this film took the approach of considering that vampires can essentially be immortal and how the lack of time constraints can affect relationships and how that might play out. We sort of come in to seeing Swinton and Hiddleston’s characters as in a long-established relationship – and there’s none of the beginning of relationship or end of relationship drama that many films that address love and relationships might go for, which was refreshing.
Mirrored from half girl, half robot.