BFI London Film Festival 2014: Booking and Programme Highlights
The Culture Whisper team select the best of this year's BFI London Film Festival programme.
For those who haven’t attended before, the BFI festival encompasses 248 feature length films and 148 short films screened across a variety of venues, as well as events including ‘Secret films’, Screen Talks and Masterclasses. In the British film world it is the most important event of the year, and its Gala nights often predict future award show success for both international and nationally produced films.
The Imitation Game: Benedict Cumberbatch
Gala presentations are what normally captures press attention, and this year is no different, with The Imitation Game taking the prestigious spot at the opening of the festival. This film, a sure Oscar hit, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the exceptional British mathematician, as he tries to break the German ‘Enigma’ coding machine. Keira Knightley plays his one time fiancée Joan Clark.
Adieu au Langage: Godard
We can’t wait for Goodbye to Language – an 3D experimental cine-collage from legendary New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. Adieu au Langage is the 39th feature film from cinema’s first enfant terrible. As the years advance, Godard loses none of his playfulness, nor his experimental proclivities. (Roughly) telling the tale of “a married woman and a single man” the film uses multiple video formats, animation, snatches of literature, 3D, collaged film-fragments and is presented, mostly, through the eyes of a dog, Roxy. Chaotic and satisfyingly baffling, only Godard could have made this singular film.
Foxcatcher: Bennett Miller
Foxcatcher is a bruising true-crime drama from Bennett Miller, director of Moneyball and Capote. The film is a critique of zealous American patriotism, taking as its subject the murder of wrestler Dave Schulz. Steve Carell, the gross-out funnyman of Anchorman and 40 Year Old Virgin fame, has astounded critics with his role as Du Pont, the psychopathic plutocrat who forges a relationship with the vulnerable athlete. Carell has proved that he really can act, as well as entertain: a genius piece of casting, as when Miller cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote.
Leviathan: Zvyagintsev
On no account miss Leviathan from Russian arthouse director Andrey Zvyagintsev which should have been a Palme D’Or winner at Cannes this year. In Leviathan, Zvyagintsev reshapes the book of Job, replacing faith with the Russian State, as the beast to be wrestled with. In a small fishing community in Russia’s northwest, the struggles of one impoverished household against a rotten government are played out in desolate, wide-screen panorama. This grand, meaty film is bleak, but full of humour and the ghost of Dostoyevsky is detected in the film’s weightiness and opacity.
Mr Turner: Timothy Spall and Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh OBE, master auteur and proponent of warts and all naturalism, has done it again with his tender, Timothy Spall-led biopic of Britain’s most treasured artist, J. M. W. Turner. The fullness of character and richness of verisimilitude that Leigh achieves in Mr Turner is down to his well-tested method: he embarks upon his project scriptless; preferring to research meticulously and then develop a character through improvisation with his actors. The resulting films are fully realised and, here, with Spall in the part he was born to play: faultless. Watch the trailer here.
Other Highlights of the London Film Festival
Other Gala screenings include the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Whiplash, starring JK Simmons as a despotic drum teacher, eager to take full control of those under his tutelage. This second feature from young director Damien Chazelle is masterful, screaming for Oscar nods.
Reese Witherspoon will look to reclaim Oscar stardom again as the lead in Wild, also a Gala showing. Based on a memoir by Cheryl Strayed, adapted to a screenplay by Nick Hornby, this heartbreaking tale of self destruction and self discovery is sure to capture hearts and minds at this year’s festival.
Other highlights include Juno director Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children, a black comedy starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner, which is much better than it sounds.
How to view...
Gala showings will of course be accompanied by a red carpet promenade, but for those who are not members of the Hollywood set or lucky enough to secure a ticket in the members ballot, the nights will also be screened in cinemas across London, and the UK, with red carpet footage followed by the film itself.
How to book...
Booking opens for members of the BFI on 11 September, and for the public on 18 September, and you can book by telephone, online, in person (at BFI Southbank) or by post. More tickets will be released from Thursday 2nd of October, so if you miss out, it is worth checking the website again. Alternatively you can try your luck in the returns queue 30 minutes before each screening at the Box Office at each venue.
Full details of what's on can be found here.
