London Film Festival 2018

As in previous years, we made a modest selection from the many films being shown, each year
bringing more than before.
Our first selection on Friday 12 October was 'They'll Love Me When I'm Dead', a documentary
about Orson Welles' attempts to finance and make 'The Other Side of the World' which remained
unfinished at his death though there is now a final cut being shown.   An interesting though somewhat
disjointed depiction of his efforts to raise funds to complete the film which starred John Huston as
the director whose last day on earth was the subject matter of the film.   Susan Strasberg plays an
acerbic critic (possibly modelled on Pauline Kael, with cameos from numerous  directors and a larger
role for Peter Bogdanovich.   Welles' then current companion, Oja Kodar, is also prominent.   With
its reliance on footage shot at the time, there is not quite the coherence expected in documentaries
but what is there tells the story effectively and leave one wondering whether the film, if finished by
Welles himself, would have lived up to his earlier masterpieces.
The following day we saw the latest Coen Brothers film, 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs', an episodic
film in six parts, the underlying theme being death.   The framing is the use of the eponymous book
of tales whose pages intersperse the sections.   The first and title tale has Tim Brook Nelson as a
famed gunslinging singer who gets his come-uppance after some lively and humorous moments.
'Near Algodones' has James Franco trying to rob and bank and paying the penalty, again humorously
done.  'Meal Ticket' has Liam Neeson as a travelling showman with a legless and armless reciter of
Shakespeare and other works which went on too long and was singularly unfunny.   "' All Gold Canyon' tells of a prospector who finds gold, is attacked but kills his attacker.   Zoe Kazan in 'The
Girl who Got Rattled' is travelling on a wagon train with her brother who is killed by Red Indians;
she stays with the wagon train and accepts a proposal of marriage from one of the wagon masters
only for her to meet the same fate as her brother.   The final episode, ' The Mortal Remains' has
a varied set of passengers in a stagecoach which is obviously bound for Purgatory or worse.   As
with most such films, the episodes are of varying quality, length and content with the first being
definitely the most amusing and the Liam Neeson segment the most tedious.
Our next visit took us back to the South Bank to see 'Lights of Old Broadway', a charming silent
film from 1925.   Marion Davis plays twins separated at birth, one raised by a wealthy family, the
other in an Irish shanty area of New York.   The latter has most of the screen time and Davis again
shows how good she was at both comedy and drama.   The climax of the film is a colour sequence
showing the inauguration of electric lighting with Davis helping to save the day when the lights
fail to work.
Then a long day with two films of which the first was the remake of 'Suspiria'.   Very long and very
glossily produced, this was a great disappointment.   Chloe Grace Moretz in a brief opening sequence
was probably the best thing in it, Tilda Swinton's triple parts being something of a gimmick.   The film's location has been moved to 1970s Berlin which makes one wonder why a cutting edge dance
academy would appear in skimpy costumes spoilt by the granny pants noticeably on show.   A
sequence with a dancer being contorted and broken by unseen forces in time with the music from the
practice dance next door is effective but, this apart, there was no tension nor any thrills.   The later
film was 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote', the one Terry Gilliam had tried to make for decades
losing Jean Rochefort and John Hurt along the way.   Adam Driver is a director making a film of
Don Quixote following up an earlier short black and white version set in the same location.   Quixote
is played by Jonathan Pryce and, as one would expect, he is the best thing in what is something of a
mess of a film.   Further viewing may change my mind about it and I can see it becoming a cult
favourite.
'The Favourite' is a well-acted potential box-office hit about the lesbian activities of Queen Anne,
played by Olivia Coleman with Rachel Weisz playing Sarah Churchill whose favours lose out to
thos of her conniving cousin, Emma Stone.   This is an enjoyable film which could be looked on as
an historical rom-com with a difference.    The male roles provide excellent support but the joy of
the film is a quick interchanges between the three leading ladies.
Our final visit took us to see 'Shadow', a Chinese martial arts film in which Zhang Yimou again shows his cinematic mastery.   The story of adjoining kingdoms, Pei and Jing, in an uneasy peace broken by the Pei Great Commander who objects to his nation's subservience to Jing, turns on the
fact that he is actually a shadow of the real leader, a role often held in ancient China to avert the
assassination of the true ruler.   In some ways this is irrelevant as the delights of the film are the
gloriously filmed scenery and the brilliantly filmed fighting.   Wth the latter, the highlight is possibly
the use of umbrella-like weapons with the spokes opening out as deadly swords while, in one sequence they are used like mobile one person tanks careering down a muddy street with the soldier
sitting on the inside having little control over where he is going.   I think this was the film of the
Festival for me.