London Film Festival 2012

This is an archived page.

Our essential guide to the UK's most important film festival

The Time Out film debate 2012

Are ticket prices too expensive? Who would you cast as Bond?

London Film Festival reviews

Our take on the good, the bad and the ugly at this year's festival

Tim Burton interview

The director talks about his new film, 'the ultimate memory piece'

Exceeding Great Expectations

We watch the curtain fall on the London Film Festival 2012

London Film Festival 2012

The London Film Festival is the capital’s flagship film extravaganza, the crown jewels in the movie calendar. The fifty-sixth BFI London Film Festival arrived in the city on October 10, bringing the most-talked about films from Summer’s big international film festivals – many of them months ahead of their release dates – and a generous handful of swanky gala premieres. There were also short films, experimental works, restored classics and plenty of talks, workshops and Q&As with filmmakers and actors.

London Film Festival reviews

Canned Dreams
Rating: 3/5
This is a rather dreamy, lyrical doc that doesn’t strike the campaigning, righteous note we’ve come to expect from films about mass-produced food.
Kinshasa Kids
Rating: 3/5
This is an eyes-wide-open portrait of one of the world’s most poor and dangerous cities. Daily life in Kinshasa is a battle and the street kids have it worst.
Seven Psychopaths
Rating: 4/5
McDonagh’s script is not as brain-achingly clever as, say, Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’. But it pokes a satisfyingly self-aware finger in the ribs of writers.
Kauwboy
Rating: 4/5
Seemingly a simple film, the power of ‘Kauwboy’ becomes suddenly clear when a perfect piece of dialogue injects events with breathtaking retrospective meaning.
3
Rating: 2/5
The anecdotal plot is too loose for its undemonstrative characters, while intrusive surges of melancholic indie folk make it all feel like an overlong music video.
Horses of God
Rating: 3/5
Though tragically plausible, the brothers’ transformation into ‘martyrs’ has an inevitability that robs it of tension. Yet the depictions of these characters’ bleak circumstances possess an authenticity that cannot be ignored.
Material
Rating: 3/5
Both the credible, dignified and often funny performance of real-life stand-up comedian Moosa and the film’s overall generous-heartedness and sense of self-belief see it through.