THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL launches tonight, with Never Let Me Go starring Keira Knightley leading the way for the event’s traditional gala opening at the Odeon Leicester Square.
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Knightley and co-star Carey Mulligan will be on the square’s red carpet this evening.
Based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie involves flashbacks to odd goings-on in a not-quite-what-it-seems English boarding school.
Flashback is also the story-telling technique used by Danny Boyle in his film 127 Hours, the festival’s closing night Gala screening, but instead of otherworldliness, we get the all-too-real story of mountain climber Aron Ralston, who had to cut off his own arm in order to escape a long, slow death.
Both those films are fully booked, but the LFF has nearly two hundred other new features to choose from, as well as 112 shorts and 15 films from the archive vaults.
One of those is the extraordinary 1929 silent classic, Man with a Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov. It is doubtful any film at the festival is anywhere near as good as this and there are still tickets left for its screening on Saturday, 23 October.
Another strong candidate for attention from the archives section is the less celebrated Wild River (Monday, 25; Thursday, 28 October), featuring incredibly sensitive performances from Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick, whose love story faces the unusual obstacles of a huge dam, a mad old woman and the vestiges of slavery.
Other highlights include Mike Leigh’s latest, Another Year; Will Ferrell as an alcoholic in Everything Must Go; Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple in The Kids Are All Right and George Clooney as an assassin in The American.
The 54th London Film Festival runs from today, 13 October until 28 October.
Info on all the films mentioned above, including timings and venues at the official festival site.
