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LFF 2017: Thelma / Downsizing / You Were Never Really Here

The 2017 London Film Festival may have finished two days ago, but the film-reviewing fun never stops here at The Incredible Suit! Oh god please make it stop Thelma dir. Joachim Trier, Norway / France / Denmark / Sweden, 2017 Essentially an arthouse Carrie, Joachim Trier's Thelma is a story of one girl's sexual awakening and the inconvenient psychokinetic side effects it has on her,

LFF 2017: 78/52

dir. Alexandre O Philippe, USA, 2017 I strongly suspect that I may have seen more Alfred Hitchcock documentaries and featurettes than actual Alfred Hitchcock films, and I say that as someone who's seen every Alfred Hitchcock film (did I mention that I watched every Alfred Hitchcock film? Oh sorry, how tedious of me, LOOK AT THIS). Laurent Bouzereau's DVD extras are the gold standard for

LFF 2017: The Killing Of A Sacred Deer

dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, UK / Ireland, 2017 Like Stanley Kubrick with a better sense of humour, Yorgos Lanthimos has sliced another clinically staged, deeply macabre piece of own-brand quirkery and served it up with a dollop of the blackest comedy you're likely to find this side of Michael Haneke. If you're not chuckling at a late scene in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer that portrays the kind of

LFF 2017: Journeyman

dir. Paddy Considine, UK, 2017 Hopes were high for Paddy Considine's long-awaited follow-up to his devastating directorial debut Tyrannosaur, from which I still haven't quite recovered six years on. The story of a boxing champion floored by a brain injury has lesser hacks than I furiously clicking open their folder of Sports Movie Pullquotes, but it pains me to say that Journeyman does not

LFF 2017: Brawl In Cell Block 99

dir. S Craig Zahler, USA, 2017 Those of us who have felt increasingly let down by Vince Vaughn over the years have great cause to rejoice with the advent of Bone Tomahawk brutalist S Craig Zahler’s Brawl In Cell Block 99. Channelling a ‘90s Bruce Willis in a role that even that celebrated “Hollywood hard man” might have found a smidge too murdery, Vaughn helps to shape Brawl into a slab of

LFF 2017: The Shape Of Water

dir. Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2017 For some reason I wandered into Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water thinking it was a fairy tale film for kids – a supposition borne out by the dreamy, opening shots of an underwater fantasy and Alexandre Desplat’s tinkly score. But then the first scene showed me much more of Sally Hawkins than I’d expected to see, and when she started furiously

LFF 2017: Happy End / Call Me By Your Name

Here's an LFF 2017 Euro-friendly special, featuring contributions from Austrian and Italian directors. Make the most of it because once we leave the EU, Michael Haneke films will be banned and we'll have to smuggle them in up our arseholes. Happy End dir. Michael Haneke, France / Austria / Germany, 2017 I don't know about you, but I like my Haneke to be like a trip to the dentist:

LFF 2017: Last Flag Flying

dir. Richard Linklater, USA, 2017 Richard Linklater hasn't finished musing on the male bonding process just yet guys, so if the cripplingly macho / faintly homoerotic undertones of Dazed And Confused and Everybody Wants Some!! left you cold then maybe give Last Flag Flying a wide berth. That would be a shame though, because there's much more going on here than just three quinquagenarian males

LFF 2017: Filmworker

dir. Tony Zierra, USA, 2017 While starring as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Leon Vitali became so smitten with the filmmaking process that he gave up acting to become The Kube's assistant and dogsbody for the rest of the director's life and beyond, and his fascinating story is clumsily told in this maddeningly haphazard documentary. Visible in all those behind the

LFF 2017:9 Fingers / Good Manners / 1%

Like some kind of annual festival of film based in London, the London Film Festival is once again upon us, promising another selection box of cinematic treats of vastly disparate quality. But given this bewildering choice, how do you know which film is the delicious pink-wrapped fudge and which is the satanically evil coffee cream? Well, don't ask me, I'm the last person you should rely on.