LFF - Time Out's favourite films of the festival

The film team pick their favourites from this year's programme.

Nov  4 2005

Geoff Andrew – 'Bubble'

It's actually impossible, of course, to select one favourite movie from a festival which included gems as diverse as 'Hidden', 'Factotum', 'Gisela', 'Keane', 'Three Times' and 'The Death of Mr Lazarescu' – not to mention the Dardenne Brothers' 'L'Enfant', which we chose for the Time Out Critics' Choice gala screening – but let's pretend: certainly, Steven Soderbergh's 'Bubble' blew me away, and struck me as the finest American film I've seen so far this year. It's hard to say why it feels like nothing else around; after all, other movies make great use of non-professional actors, and it's not as if the linear story – about a West Virginia woman whose somewhat humdrum life looking after her elderly father and working in a doll factory is upset when an attractive new employee catches the attention of the colleague she's always hung out with – is particularly unusual or complex. Maybe it's the unsentimental but deeply compassionate tone of Soderbergh's observation of working-class small-town life; maybe it's his superb Scope digital camerawork. Whatever, the film feels remarkably true, which is so rare these days in the American cinema. A blast of bracing fresh air.

Dave Calhoun – 'Hidden'

The second weekend of the festival delivered an excellent triple-whammy and, for me, produced three highlights of the festival: Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film 'The Passenger' on Saturday afternoon, Austrian director Michael Haneke's Paris-set, Cannes prize-winner 'Hidden' at the French Gala on Saturday night, and American filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan's 'Keane' late on Sunday evening. It's been about twenty years since 'The Passenger' screened in London as legal issues have kept the film off our screens. The film's now been bought by Sony Pictures Classics, and, unlike Antonioni's 'Blow-Up' and, to a lesser extent, 'Zabriskie Point', it's hardly dated at all. In it, Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider embark on a road trip through Spain after Nicholson, playing a journalist, fakes his own death in North Africa and assumes a new identity. 'Keane' stars Damian Lewis as William Keane, a man in his early 30s who exists in New York on the edge of poverty and madness following the kidnap of his daughter several months earlier. Kerrigan offers a claustrophobic portrait of near-madness, while Lewis gives a terrific performance in the title role. But the absolute highlight of the festival for me was 'Hidden'. At once a tense thriller and a thesis brimming with ideas about identity, history, racism, responsibility and much else besides, 'Hidden' has Daniel Auteuil as Georges, a television intellectual of the Melvyn Bragg sort, and Juliette Binoche as his wife, Anne. Taped recordings of Georges and Anne's home start to arrive in the post and trigger a terrifying disruption in their lives. A film that smartly and (in the best sense of the word) manipulatively demands literal and impossible interpretations, 'Hidden' is a masterpiece of filmmaking and debate.

Wally Hammond – 'Linda Linda Linda'

My festival favourite is this delightful deadpan comedy, a film that may hopefully bring attention to the superb cinema of Nobuhiro Yamashita ('No One's Ark', 'Ramblers'), a leader of a group of young filmmakers from Osaka just making a name for themselves on the world stage. While Yamashita's previous films have thrown an askance, observant and drole eye on restless young males, his 'Rock School'-style drama 'Linda Linda Linda' shows he can be every bit as acute and amusing in his observation of the world, and makes Yamashita one of the most interesting modern directors to watch out for.

Chris Tilly – 'Good Night, and Good Luck'

While opening night film 'The Constant Gardener' ran a close second in this journalist's affections, 'Good Night, and Good Luck' was my pick of the festival. George Clooney's gripping account of Joe McCarthy’s communist witch-hunts of the 1950s is an intelligent, understated gem that features a marvelously subtle and nuanced performance from David Strathairn as crusading journalist Edward R Murrow. The film's beautifully crafted script confronts the fear and paranoia of the era head-on as Murrow's news team take on the might of the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy himself. Filmed in crisp black and white and featuring a marvelously smoky jazz score, 'Good Night, and Good Luck' is serious filmmaking of the highest order, confirming Clooney's talents as a director and tackling issues that are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.

Ben Walters – 'Kekexili: Mountain Patrol'

An unusually sober action film set in the wilderness of the Tibetan plateau, 'Kekexili: Mountain Patrol' stood out as a rare picture in which every act of violence – from the wiles of the poachers decimating the region's endangered antelope population to the tactics of the self-appointed rangers tracking them down – was fraught with ethical tension. Gripping without a hint of emotional exploitation, it also showcased the beauty and peril of a stunning, rarely-seen landscape.

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