Excellent film festival in London this year. It was my first one after all these years living here. I was spoiled when I lived in Toronto and went to TIFF every year. It was so accessible with so many tickets available at reasonable prices and I used to just rock up to the gala openings across the street from my apartment building and see pretty much every Hollywood A-lister.
The London Film Festival seemed to me a lot less promoted; at least I rarely saw any advertising or announcements or news on the telly until after the events occurred and celebs went home from the red carpet. Of course there's so much going on in this town at the same time...
Anyway, this year I received a big BFI brochure in the post on the day before tickets were available to priority members. So I went online and became a member of the British Film Institute and the next morning, I was able to get access and buy tickets to the screenings! I scoured the brochure the night before and knew which films to go after...too bad the Closing Gala, Great Expectations and a small film, Seven Psychopaths by the same guy who did In Bruges were already sold out! In less than half an hour! I chose a few films primarily because they looked the most interesting or they had good directors or they had good actors who may be showing up for the screening...and I was able to get tickets to some brilliant films and see some iconic individuals.
Here's a rundown:
Beasts of the Southern Wild is the first feature by American director Benh Zeitlin. It's a film with a bunch of non-actors that had received raves at both Sundance and Cannes. Well, the hype was right...in my opinion, it was brilliant! Beautifully shot, the superb, natural acting and the story narrated by the young girl kept me interested and made me care about the characters. Extremely engaging, gritty, very real, I loved all of the close ups of the crawfish, the pigs, the melting glaciers and especially the little girl. She's the most brilliant of all!
Next up was a new British feature called Broken with another unknown young actress. This film was also good and relentless with its 'in your face' dysfunctional and tragic families. The young female lead was extremely good and had some touching moments with her young beau as well as her father played by Tim Roth. He and Cillian Murphy, two of my favourite actors were excellent. It was a shame that they weren't at the screening.
The first tickets I was able to get were for Hyde Park on Hudson. I thought how fun it would be to see Bill Murray show up at the premiere and he did! And he was hilarious! The film was good too and I'm glad I saw it as it's a film that I wouldn't typically see in the cinema. Bill was great as FDR and Laura Linney was excellent as his distant cousin/lover....she's always good though and always chooses the most interesting roles. Samuel West was great as the young King George. I laughed out loud in certain areas; the script was quite funny.
And finally, the ultimate climax of the Festival for me was the premiere of Crossfire Hurricane, the new documentary of the Rolling Stones to celebrate their 50th anniversary. That's right, 50 years of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll! And they live to tell about it. The film is very honest and open and hilarious in many parts and so much fun to see. But the best part was seeing and almost touching Mick, Keith, Charlie, Ronnie and Bill as they walked by me along the aisle to get to the stage and introduce their film. It was fantastic and an absolutely unforgettable experience!
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