Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend some press screenings for the London Film Festival. Although I was only allowed access to one day, the films I did get to see were fantastic.
The entire festival, which began on the 15th of October, will end with the Awards Ceremony and closing gala on Sunday 21st. Festival films, regardless of location of the festival, are always made to such a high calibre and this was no different. ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’ and ‘Wasteland’ showed a high degree of acting and film creation that that has been lost on the Hollywood machine.
‘Hyde Park on Hudson’, the story of American President Roosevelt meeting and young and naive King George VI, mixed American history with British style so effortlessly. The biographical piece, which centres around the first monarch to visit the US, does not have much of a story to tell, regardless of what could have been an intriguing sub-plot, which focused on FDR’s affairs. The lack of plot did not take away from the impeccable acting. I had to remind myself that it was in fact Bill Murray playing the ailing President, and Olivia Coleman as Queen Consort Elizabeth could give Helena Bonham Carter a run for her money.
The next film, ‘Wasteland’, sells itself as the typical gritty British heist film; however the amount of heart outweighs the usual tendencies of gritty filmmaking. The first film for director Rowan Athale shows four friends try to take on a drug lord by robbing his headquarters. Sounds like a stretch in Yorkshire, however the films’ many plot twists create a fantastic plot, blemished only by the lack of sympathy that the audience could feel, with the criminal element overshadowing the desire to beat the bad guy. Thankfully, the film rejects the regional stereotypes sometimes adopted by British filmmakers, and once again, the acting on all sides, including a fresh-out-of-Hogwarts Matthew Lewis, is one of the best features within the film.
