Afternoon:
12°c
An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
Hot tickets: The London Film Festival
By Nick Roddick 17.09.09
Poet’s corner: Abbie Cornish as Fanny in Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about John Keats
Caravan caper: Thomas Turgoose and Steven Mackintosh in The Scouting Book for Boys
The first wave of the BFI's ever-complicated booking system opens today for next month's London Film Festival, which has one of its best-ever line-ups. Members get priority on tickets for now but everyone else would be advised to be ready with their choices from next week. The big films tend to sell out fast so it's time to study the programme. Here are our recommendations:
Fantastic Mr Fox
Roald Dahl's take on the British countryside as filtered through the febrile cinematic brain of Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited) should please the Animal Liberation Front as much as the Berkeley Hunt. Voices include George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
A useful corrective to all those earnest Hollywood films about Eye-rak, with Clooney (again) playing a “psychic warrior” who messes with the minds of assorted evil-doers. Based on the book by Jon Ronson, with Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey also having a lot of fun.
The Road
Aussie John Hillcoat and London playwright Joe Penhall bring Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic novel to the screen. Hollywood tried to sanitise it but McCarthy backed them all the way. Viggo Mortensen stars.
Precious
Indie hit from Sundance about an obese American teen who is pregnant for the second time at 16 after being raped by her mother's boyfriend. Director Lee Daniels doesn't flinch but he knows he's making a movie, not a case study. The performances are knockout — even Mariah Carey's.
Nowhere Boy
Sam Taylor-Wood makes her feature debut with this life of Lennon: the early years. Very early, since it's mostly about John, his auntie Mimi and his mum. Our hero also meets Macca and discovers rock'n'roll.
Bright Star
Jane Campion's lavish but curiously unengaging film about the relationship between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne was a hit in Cannes and features stand-out performances by Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny.
The Scouting Book for Boys
Thomas Turgoose, the boy from This Is England who is now 18, stars in this coming-of-age story set in a caravan park on the Norfolk coast. With a script by Jack Thorne (Skins), this has all the makings of a classic.
The White Ribbon
Michael Haneke's chilly new film looks like his masterpiece: a portrait of a small German village on the eve of the First World War with all the breeding conditions for National Socialism present in its Petri dish. Mesmerising and sober, and all the better for doing no more than hint at what is to come.
The Father of My Children
Inspired by the suicide of leading French producer Humbert Balsan in 2005, Mia Hansen-Love's film is about a père de famille whose life proves what we all know: an obsessive love of cinema can wreak havoc in real life.
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
Veteran American documentarian Fred Wiseman, 79, has got his approach down pat by now. No haranguing the camera, just a meticulous observation of the sheer beauty of dance — not to mention the hard work behind it.
Nymph
One for the brave: Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaurang's “unusual love story about a man, a woman and a tree” proves to be a hypnotic series of strange goings-on in a forest.
Underground
A rare chance to see Anthony Asquith's silent 1928 British film — a tale of love and treachery set on the Northern line — with live music by the Prima Vista Social Club in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
The London Film Festival runs from 14-29 October. Info: 020 7928 3232, www.bfi.org.uk/lff.
