Here’s the first trailer for Dexter Fletcher’s directorial debut, Wild Bill. The movie stars Will Poulter, Liz White, Andy Serkis and Jaime Winstone. We got to see the movie at the London Film Festival and you can read our review of it here. Fletcher has been on our screens for years and became famous amongst teenagers back in the late 80s – early 90s when he appeared in the TV show Press Gang but this is the first time we’ve seen him behind the camera.

Have a watch of the trailer below and check out Andy Serkis as the bad guy!

Wild Bill is released 30th March.

The film follows Bill Hayward, out on parole after 8 years inside, as he returns home to find his now 11 and 15-year old sons abandoned by their mother and fending for themselves. Unwilling to play Dad, his arrival brings them to the attention of social services.

With the danger of being put into care looming, Dean forces his Dad to stay by threatening to grass him up for dealing. Dean soon connects with Jimmy and through this new bond starts to realize what he’s been missing.

He has a family and a place in the world, but when Jimmy gets into trouble with Bill’s old cohorts, he quickly has to decide what kind of Dad he wants to be. A good one, or a free one.

Source: Yahoo UK

The death of a young boy at a remote schoolhouse and the supposed ghostly circumstance of the incident draws the attention of Florence Cathcart, a young woman well-known for exposing fraudulent supernatural happenings, to investigate the matter and uncover the true nature of the tragic event.

With The Awakening director Nick Murphy and his co-writer Stephen Volk have crafted something special, a ghost story to get the blood pumping with a chill that lingers beyond the roll of the credits.

Rebecca Hall and Dominic West lead the film as the emotionally constrained skeptic Cathcart and the beleaguered headmaster convinced of the paranormal nature of the boy’s death and the success of the film lies in the ability of the two to immerse themselves in their roles and the writing of the characters to allow them to overcome the challenges of the genre. Defiant in the face of the decaying post-modern scary movie The Awakening evokes the spirit of the classic ghost story, with a genuine understanding of the creation and application of fear which needs no gore-strewn slaughterhouses or operatic disembowelment; this is a welcome return to the grip of death and its effects.

The post First World War setting is a rich foundation for the themes of the story, with a rawness of feeling following the overwhelming scale of death, the new reality of a decimated generation and a shell-shocked homeland making the search for an afterlife a seemingly normal activity. West’s bruised and battered soldier returning to his profession as teacher is wonderfully played with a restrictive sense of duty to his boys (and a necessary return to the normality of teaching) tested by the unnatural death of a boy and the presence of the groundskeeper whose medical reasons for avoiding conscription or volunteering to fight are dubious at best. Death is in the air and the opening scene in which a séance takes place is heavy with the air of accepted and much-needed delusion that there is something more to this world.

Rebecca Hall effortlessly holds the film together as the skeptic whose fearless pragmatism shelters and contains her own personal demons, and it is her awakening above all else which proves the story’s heart. She has an ability to ground a film in the real world that is most useful here, as the boundaries between this world and the next are glimpsed, disproved then begin to blur. Much of the imagery (unexplained presences in photographs, brandished candles seeking out unexplained happenings in darkened corridors etc) is familiar and yet, like Volk’s Ghostwatch, the path we are led down ends up somewhere very different to a place we might expect. Imelda Staunton’s kindly school nurse was never simply going to be virtue and reason, the surly groundskeeper was bound to crop up somewhere towards the end, the secret of Florence Cathcart’s past was never going to be a happy one and yet when the final twist of the knife occurs not only does it feel right and cast the whole film in a new light it also never cheats the audience.

The Awakening is Murphy’s debut feature and it is an assured first film, making the most of the staples of the genre and allowing the script room to breathe. Where I found it worked best was the scene with the dollhouse (and if you’ve seen it you’ll know exactly which bit I mean) where the slow creeping fear is given the most effective treatment, providing a genuinely nasty and memorable moment. There is some CGI that drags a few scenes down, and I can’t help but feel that the decision to go with practical effects would have improved matters, particularly at one point where, if you’re looking in the right place, the unconvincing CGI rids the moment of any potential terror.

But this is a rich and real ghost story, and I don’t mean the ‘classic’ setting or the lack of pretty, screaming teenagers. It understands what scares us and suffuses the air with a sense of dread and unease and stays true to its characters and the tone of the piece. The resolution may initially feel unlikely but it is evident and possible from the early scenes and as the characters are revealed and their motives unearthed everything comes together and the scares, when they come, are all the more effective because of it. Like the ghosts of the film, everything at the end has been with us, unseen, from the beginning.

****~ (4/5)

The Awakening is a welcome return to the big screen for writer Stephen Volk, self proclaimed ‘tub-thumper’ for the horror genre and the man behind the acclaimed small screen horrorshows Afterlife and Ghostwatch.

His new film (out in UK cinemas tomorrow ) was directed by Nick Murphy and is as far from the Death-by-irony gorefests which litter the horror landscape of the last ten years as can be. It is a proper character based ghost story which I enjoyed immensely and has Rebecca Hall and Dominic West investigating the supposed supernatural death of a boy at a remote boarding school.

Our conversation took place on Hallowe’en, nineteen years to the day since his celebrated and controversial TV drama Ghostwatch aired and I couldn’t begin the conversation without talking about the huge impact it has had on the depiction and popularity of the supernatural on TV.

During the conversation we wander into spoiler territory about The Awakening and The Turn of the Screw, so tred with care.

I  watched Ghostwatch again today and was surprised that it still got to me. Since 1992 TV has moved on so much, and I think Ghostwatch paved the way for things like Most Haunted and the Reality Ghosthunting programmes we see…

It is great fun watching it, as I did last night at the Mayhem film festival, with an audience and I always introduce with the proviso that you have to realise that this was made for a small screen and not for a hundred and fifty people watching it on a big screen, and that it was made twenty years ago. But they had a great time watching and I think the passing of time has been kind to it in some ways in that a lot of the people watching it weren’t even born when it was made, and it has a mythology around it. There was laughter but it was kind laughter, because it was getting under their skin a little which is always fun to see.

It quickly became a Hallowe’en tradition for me and a group of friends watching in video and looking in the shadows for any new sightings of Pipes. Nothing has come close to it since, possibly because of the reaction to the programme and no-one has attempted to make anything like it since, I doubt you could make Ghostwatch today.

No, it’s often that someone says, or a producer says to me ‘Would you do it again?’ and I think you wouldn’t. The climate of TV now is that if you were to do it then you’d do it as a reality TV show, you wouldn’t go to the bother of writing the damn thing and getting actors and making it into a drama. If you did do it as a drama what would it be commenting on? It would be like making a parody of something that was beyond parody, I mean Ghosthunting with Coronation Street, or everything with Yvette Fielding in… I was astonished when I saw a lecture by Ciarán O’Keeffe who used to be the resident skeptic on Most Haunted and he gave a talk on how paranormal reality TV started in the 80s and  I was astonished at how many of these show are out there now, people with their metal detectors and night vision cameras. It seems anyone with a camcorder now can make one of these shows, though I would like to think that Ghostwatch was the first to use the night vision camera for sinister effect, before then I’d only seen it in footage from the First Gulf War.

Looking at the Hallowe’en releases in the cinema we’ve got Paranormal Activity 3 and there are some very strong similarities to Ghostwatch with the two young girls about the same age and the shadows in the bedroom on lights out…

I haven’t seen any footage from it but I did get an email from Lesley Manning, the director of Ghostwatch, saying ‘Have you seen this! It’s awfully like Ghostwatch…’ I don’t even know what the premise of the film is…

It’s going back to the 80s to the two sisters as young girls and tells how the haunting began. The advertising plays heavily on the image, very similar to an earlier scene in Ghostwatch with the two girls in their bedroom and an eerie shadow cast on the wall between them.

Well, of course they could have got that imagery from some of the stills from the Enfield poltergeist, and there’s only so many ways you can shoot that to be innocuous and scary. But it’s the innocuous nature of it which makes it scary. I would be interested to see the film, but I keep thinking that the camcorder approach to filming hauntings must be running out of steam but it seems to be that new people come along and breathe new life into it so maybe it’s a sub-genre that’s here to stay?

A horror story has the ability to be told in many ways and from Ghostwatch almost twenty years ago to now when you have people with HD cameras built into their phones so you combine that with the domestic setting then you have something…

When I was doing Ghostwatch I was very conscious that I was trying to find in televisual terms the equivalent of someone saying, as they often do at the start of ghost stories, ‘Please believe me,’ or ‘this really happened…’ and of course it’s the documentary technique. Pointing a camera at someone and asking them questions is the equivalent of what you read in a ghost story on the page, and I think that has become the new language of authenticity. Another benchmark for me, but of the opposite sort, was What Lies Beneath – that ghost story with Harrison Ford, I thought that did almost everything wrong. It had the big stars, immaculate photography and it felt like a big Hollywood blockbuster and all those things mitigated against it being scary. That, for me, was the end of that kind of big budget scarefest. You couldn’t do something with those big stars in it and make it as creepy as these films which come under the radar.

Do you think the audiences are more savvy now?

I think it’s harder work to put George Clooney in a film and say ‘This is going to be a ghost story’ because the ghost story genre demands that you try and reject it. No other genre, comedy, western, war films, demand that you reject it, while supernatural films demand so much of your irrationality and your rationality fights that even though there’s an artifice going on. So at every conceivable moment you want to not get scared, to not get involved. It’s self protection and yet what you’re going in for is the exact opposite of that and maybe it’s the tension between the two which makes the experience so rewarding in the end. There’s a complex and banal kind of psychology going on which is that you have a jump moment, everyone in the cinema laughs as an expulsion of the tension you feel.

In The Awakening Rebecca Hall’s character could be seen as symbolising that rationality as she is initially resistant to being drawn into the mystery of the film.

The character who has doubt is very important in a ghost story. If people accept what’s happening to them then you have not a ghost story but a fantasy so something like Blithe Spirit or Randall and Hopkirk. Yes, there are ghosts there but there’s no threat. You don’t grapple with the nature of what we’re seeing. Because you always want your characters to go on a journey, the person who tries to dismiss the ghost is always the most interesting, especially if they have intelligence and perhaps scientific knowledge and can bring that rational thinking to challenge what’s happening, rather than some dumb eighteen year old kid who wanders into a haunted house, screams and runs out being chased.

The film is a very different type of horror film given the last ten years of Hollywood horror, not least the post First World War setting…

That was something it became, rather than something it began as, but Nick [Murphy] really developed the emotional landscape of that time but at the beginning it was set in the 1880s. I was teaching some screenwriters and a film I discussed was The Innocents and how I loved that there was always this sense of the uncanny because you always questioned the reliability of the narrator , was she neurotic, was it all going on in her head? And what struck me watching was at the end of the second act Flora, the little girl, is sent away and I wondered what happened to Flora when she grows up? So the first version of The Awakening was a sequel to The Turn of the Screw and it was about Flora grown up, who becomes Florence – so there’s still a connection there in the name – and she becomes a ghost-hunter, but a debunking ghost-hunter and she’s blanked out the memory of Quint and Miss Jessell. So, she busts seances because she believes in rationality and science and the process of the story was her returning to Bly, the house in The Turn of the Screw, which is now a school and she confronts the older Miss Jessell.

Why did it change?

The BBC felt we couldn’t do a straight sequel because only people who had read The Turn of the Screw would get it, so I changed the back story, though it had echoes of the idea, to a young girl and a benevolent maid who dies and becomes the ghost which she revisits. It was all about recovered memories, ghosts as recovered of denied memory. I had an image, you know like in The Piano with the bonneted women, I had an image of a bonneted woman floating around the inside of a school. I took a guess at how old Flora would be and set it in the 1880s and as it deals with repressed memory and repressed sexuality there’s a very Freudian element – all buttoned up, their clothes and the way they spoke. It was all about repression and finding the reality. But a lot of things changed, the main thing was that they wanted to update it to the 1920s as they thought it would appeal to the audience and that in setting it post war it made sense  in terms of spiritualism. Certainly the 20s was when Arthur Conan Doyle made his pilgrimages, preaching about spiritualism. So it went through about fifteen or so drafts, from a sequel to The Turn of the Screw to a film about grief and loss post following the war.

And Florence or Flora remains the centre.

It was still this character who was essentially based on Houdini who, as well as being a fantastic escapologist and magician, used to debunk mediums and it was always claimed by the medium community that secretly he was desperate to believe in the afterlife and it always intrigues me about any kind of extremist is whether they’re afraid of the opposite of what their agenda signifies. So there’s that element but also the idea that ghosts can give some kind of closure on the past.

It’s fascinating to think there’s a version of the film linked to The Turn of the Screw, I’m almost sorry you didn’t make that version…

Well, there’s also a version which I set in Paris and had Florence as a nurse and a young Sigmund Freud who is a doctor at Salpêtrière hospital and the story she tells is in a flashback. At that stage I called it The Interpretation of Ghosts which is still a reference in the film. That was the title of the screenplay for most of its life and then when the setting was changed it lost its Freudian repression so it didn’t feel right.

But the characters are still what drives the story forward rather than the mystery.

I really believe that it’s all about the characters – it’s about who sees the ghost rather than the ghost itself. John Carpenter always says that horror is about the internal projecting into the external, that horror visualises what is in the mind. There was a Telegraph interview with Rebecca Hall and the journalists said something along the lines that taking a part in a genre film wasn’t the best career move and I thought ‘Bloody cheek…’ I’m a real tub-thumper for the genre but I’ve never thought that it needs to be less than intelligent and the person who proved that to me many years ago was Nigel Kneale. Two outstanding films which have affected my work are The Stone Tapes and Quatermass and the Pit. The intelligence there is so lively and not po-faced. The way he uses technology in a supernatural story and the way he incorporates characters in a way that they are not dumb but the story is nevertheless exciting.

The Awakening is out in the UK tomorrow. Read our review here.

To round off our coverage of the 55th BFI London Film Festival were taking a look back at one of the most prominent strands of the festival – the French Revolutions programme.

One of the festival’s chief pledges is to bring the best of the world’s cinema to London and Jack Jones leads us through the varied line-up and recommends which films we need to look out for when a theatrical release rolls around.

For all our other coverage of the London Film Festival click here, and read on for Jack’s take on the festival,

The Best Yet? French Cinema Just Keeps on Going

For those who are deeply engrained in cinema, it is often hard to admit that sometimes there are years when we have few films which impress us. For film festivals there is much the same sentiment. It seems as though every year critics hail the incumbent festival – whether it be Cannes, Venice or Toronto – as the best yet, and whenever a journalist ennobles said festival as the “greatest ever” there will inevitably be a great deal of trepidation surrounding such a claim. In the case of the 55th BFI London Film Festival, the overall programme exhibited a wide range of impressive films from debutant filmmakers such as Tinge Krishnan’s Junkhearts to the more accomplished skills of experienced filmmakers such as Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea – Of course there is always occasional stinker thrown in for good measure, Miranda July’s The Future being one of the main culprits. But was the 55th instalment the best ever?

This is almost an impossible question to answer. No one person has the capability to make it round the entire programme of films screening within the two weeks, and only a few of the most well established and long running critics have been to enough festivals over the years to judge. One thing that can be said of this year’s London Film Festival however is the strong presence of new French cinema, in particular the selection of films in the ‘French Revolutions’ programme. French cinema has long had a prominent role in the London Film Festival and is as strong an influence on UK cinema audiences as ever. A view that outgoing Festival Director Sandra Hebron shares; “French Cinema is important to us and it is important to recognise that there is a good audience for French Cinema in the UK”. With a rich blend of comedy, horror, historical and personal dramas, as well as audacious action thrillers, French cinema was on top form in 2011.

Among the main highlights were two refreshing comedies that really put to shame the current dearth of good comic cinema that sails over from across the Atlantic. In some respects both Nobody Else But You and The Fairy were startlingly reminiscent of some of the great comedy that Hollywood and American independent cinema has produced in the past. The Fairy in many ways harked back to the classical silent period of comic performers such as Keaton and Chaplin, whereas Nobody Else But You felt like a direct homage to the Coen Brothers at their quirky and idiosyncratic best. If the French are taking the baton for modern cinematic comedy then Nobody Else But You and The Fairy could be the start of a bright new future.

Some of the more serious and audacious projects screening this year also didn’t disappoint. Vincent Garenq’s Guilty – more accurately represented by its French title Presume Coupable – was one of the most heart wrenching and difficult films to watch across the entire programme at the LFF this year. In the spirit of Christian Bale’s physically transformative role for The Machinist, Philippe Torreton was one of the most overlooked performances this year in the true-life tale of about a shocking and consequently tragic miscarriage of Justice. National film sweetheart Mathieu Kassovitz also returned to the form of his confrontational picture La Haine with Rebellion, a fictionalised account of the clash between Kanak separatists and the French Army during a hostage situation in 1988. At the time the clash threatened to disturb the upcoming presidential election and with extreme pressure from the then government to solve the matter expediently, tragedy was inevitable. Interestingly Rebellion follows in the recent line of French films that are willing to uncover the darker parts of their nation’s history. One could say France is in a current era of politically and socially expressive filmmaking with recent films such as Of Gods and Men, Outside The Law, The Roundup and including both Guilty and Rebellion showing that filmmakers are more than free to question and criticise France’s establishments.

Other highlights included Early One Morning, a more personal and moving take on the style of ‘breaking point’ films such as Falling Down or Straw Dogs, and The Bird, a sad psychological uncovering of a woman who is distanced in her relationship with the rest of the world. Though not utterly spectacular, these films where hardly flops either. Perhaps the most standout film of the ‘French Revolutions’ programme was Mathieu Demy’s Americano, a love letter to his childhood with legendary parents Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. For a first time director, Americano exhibits all the skill of someone well into his or her directorial career. No doubt Demy has inherited a thing or two from Mum and Dad.

Overall, within the French programming at this year’s Festival was an atmosphere of consummate and self-assured filmmaking, and with hardly any missteps across the board, France was more than just “well represented” at this year’s LFF.

Last week, I got to chat with writer of The The Ides of March, Beau Willimon and one of the cast members, Evan Rachel Wood about playing the role of Molly Stearns in the movie which is released tomorrow, Friday 28th October. I’ve broken the two interviews and if you missed my interview with Beau, you can recap by clicking here to view or the video will play in the player below automatically.

George Clooney directs, co-wrote and stars in the movie alongside a stellar cast which includes Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Marisa Tomei. If you missed our review, you can have a read here.

In the interview with Evan, I ask her how she got involved in the movie, whether or not she know anything about US politics before taking the role and what it was like being directed by Mr. Clooney.

We’ve just been sent the winners list for The BFI London Film Festival 2011 and massive congrats to We Need to Talk About Kevin director Lynne Ramsay and all her cast and crew for winning the award. I’ll just make this post about the winners but I’m sure we’ll do a reaction post imminently. So watch this space. See see our review of We Need to Talk About Kevin, click here or here for all our LFF 2011 coverage.

Winners in a nutshell

• Best Film: We Need to Talk ABout Kevin, directed by Lynne Ramsay
• Best British Newcomer: Candese Reid, actress, Junkhearts
• Sutherland Award Winner: Pablo Giorgelli, director of LAS ACACIAS
• Grierson Award for Best Documentary: In the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life directed by Werner Herzog
• BFI Fellowship:  Ralph Fiennes and David Cronenberg (as previously announced)

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2011 AWARD WINNERS

London – 10.30pm, 26 October 2011: The 55^th BFI London Film Festival, in partnership with American Express announced the winners at its high profile awards ceremony, supported by Montblanc at London’s LSO St Luke’s this evening.   Hosted by Marcus Brigstocke, the four awards were presented by some of the most respected figures in the film world.

BEST FILM: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, directed by Lynne Ramsay

Celebrating the most original, intelligent and distinctive filmmaking in the Festival, the Best Film award, presented in partnership with American Express, was chaired by John Madden who presented the award with fellow judge Gillian Anderson.

On behalf of the jury John Madden (Chair) said: “This year’s shortlist for Best Film comprises work that is outstanding in terms of its originality and its stylistic reach. It is an international group, one united by a common sense of unflinching human enquiry and we were struck by the sheer panache displayed by these great storytellers. In the end, we were simply bowled over by one film, a sublime, uncompromising tale of the torment that can stand in the place of love. We Need to Talk About Kevin is made with the kind of singular vision that links great directors across all the traditions of cinema.”

BEST BRITISH NEWCOMER: Candese Reid, actress, Junkhearts

This award is presented in partnership with Swarovski and honours new and emerging film talent, recognising the achievements of a new writer, producer, director, actor or actress.  The award for Best British Newcomer was presented by Edgar Wright and Minnie Driver to Candese Reid, for her acting role in Junkhearts, a sophisticated, social drama about hope and the search for redemption. Starting acting at the age of nine, she joined Nottingham’s prestigious Television Workshop, and her role in Junkhearts, at the age of 18, was her first professional acting role. Candese also received a bursary of £5,000 courtesy of Swarovski

Chair of the Best British Newcomer jury, Andy Harries said, “Candese is a fresh, brilliant and exciting new talent. Every moment she was on screen was compelling.”

SUTHERLAND AWARD WINNER: Pablo Giorgelli, director of LAS ACACIAS

The long-standing Sutherland Award is presented to the director of the most original and imaginative feature debut in the Festival. This year, Argentinian director Pablo Giorgelli took the award for his film Las Acacias, a slow-burning, uplifting and enchanting story of a truck driver and his passengers. The director received his Star of London from film director Terry Gilliam.

The jury commented: “In a lively and thoughtful jury room debate, Las Acacias emerged as a worthy winner, largely because of the originality of its conception. Finely judged performances and a palpable sympathy for his characters makes this a hugely impressive debut for director Pablo Giorgelli.”

GRIERSON AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY: INTO THE ABYSS: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life directed by Werner Herzog

The award is co-presented with the Grierson Trust, in commemoration of John Grierson, the grandfather of British documentary. Recognising outstanding feature length documentaries of integrity, originality, technical excellence or cultural significance, the jury was chaired by Adam Curtis and the award went to Werner Herzog’s coruscating study of the senselessness of violence and its consequences.

BFI FELLOWSHIP:  Ralph Fiennes and David Cronenberg (as previously announced)

Awarded to an individual whose body of work has made an outstanding contribution to film culture, the Fellowship is the highest accolade that the British Film Institute bestows and was awarded to Canadian auteur David Cronenberg whose film A Dangerous Method premiered at the Festival on Monday. The Fellowship was presented by Jeremy Thomas and Michael Fassbender.

Ralph Fiennes, one of Britain’s pre-eminent actors, who has just made a bold and critically well received transition to film directing with his festival film Coriolanus, was also presented with a Fellowship, this time from fellow actor and personal friend Liam Neeson.

Greg Dyke, Chair, BFI said: ‘The BFI London Film Festival Awards pay tribute to outstanding film talent, so we are delighted and honoured that both Ralph Fiennes, one of the world’s finest and most respected actors and David Cronenberg, one of the most original and ground-breaking film directors of contemporary cinema, have both accepted BFI Fellowships – the highest accolade the BFI can bestow. I also want to congratulate all the filmmakers and industry professionals here tonight, not only on their nominations and awards, but also for their vision, skill, passion and creativity.’

The Star of London award was commissioned especially for the Festival and designed by leading sculptor Almuth Tebbenhoff.

Jurors present at the ceremony included: Best Film jurors John Madden, Andrew O’Hagan. Gillian Anderson, Asif Kapadia, Tracey Seaward and Sam Taylor-Wood OBE; Sutherland jurors Tim Robey, Joanna Hogg, Saskia Reeves, Peter Kosminsky, Hugo Grumbar, and the artist Phil Collins. Best British Newcomer jurors Anne-Marie Duff, Tom Hollander, Edith Bowman, Stephen Woolley and Nik Powell; and Grierson Award jurors Mandy Chang of the Grierson Trust, Charlotte Moore, Head of Documentary Commissioning at BBC, Kim Longinotto and Adam Curtis.

Other guests included:  Alfonso Cuarón , Sheharazade Goldsmith, Duncan Kenworthy, Aaron Johnson, Paul Gambaccini, Chair of the BFI Greg Dyke, Chief Executive Amanda Nevill and Festival Director Sandra Hebron.

Last week, I got to chat with writer of The The Ides of March, Beau Willimon and one of the cast members, Evan Rachel Wood about playing the role of Molly Stearns in the movie which is released this Friday 28th October. I’ve broken the two interviews into two posts and today you’ll get to hear from screenwriter and original play-write of Farragut North on which the movie which is directed and starring George Clooney is based.

Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Marisa Tomei round off the fantastic cast in this fantastic movie. If you missed our review, you can have a read here. In the interview with Beau, I got to speak with him about how George Clooney found out about the movie, what it was like to get the call that it was actually being made, what it was like writing and working with Clooney and the cast in which ended up playing the roles he’d written.

As the second week of the LFF draws to a close, a film we’ve been following at HeyUGuys  for quite some time, Wild Bill – the directorial debut of Dexter Fletcher – finally makes its UK debut.

We rather enjoyed the movie, so hot footed it down to Vue in Leicester Square to catch up with the cast and crew.

JASON FLEMYNG

On working with Dexter

Well he’s my greatest, oldest friend, so it was so nice to go full circle and have him directing. Between us we’ve made 150 films now, and it’s just fantastic to get one of us [behind] the camera, and it was always going to be him. He’s a hard worker and a grafter.

The great thing about actors who direct is that they understand about actors very well, so it was great to have another actor direct you. Whatever you say about Dex, he’s a classy actor so if he says it should be this way, it should be happening. Matt Vaughn, who’s sort of the Godfather of all of us, he’s not technical, he couldn’t direct an actor if he tried, so it’s lovely to know Dex.

WILL POULTER

On ‘stealing’ the film from Charlie Creed Miles

Ah no, I didn’t do that. Certainly not. I was just very grateful to be involved. I think everyone did this for the love, the entire cast. To work with a man like Dexter, he’s the most enthusiastic man on the planet, and he just set the tone for the incredible working environment so everyone could do their job, and we all loved it.

On the chance to get away from being described as a ‘child actor’

Yeah, I suppose it is a bit of a transition. I relish the opportunity to play a very mature character, which is a challenge for me, but I loved it. Dean’s a character that really attracted me. He’s a 16 year old who carries responsibilities that most 16 year olds can’t imagine. It was a real wake up call for me to see what real life is like. I’m very lucky, I come from a great family and don’t have to think about those things. It’s a real eye opener, and the character’s fantastic and I enjoyed every minute of it.

DEXTER FLETCHER

On the serious tone of the film

That was striking a balance. The great thing about Danny [King – Fletcher’s co-writer] is that he does have a great comedic bent, and that was something that I completely exploited and wanted to very much be a part of Wild Bill, and why I initially started speaking to him right away, because I knew the subject matter was particularly, or could be particularly dark and bleak, and I didn’t want to make a bleak, dark film. I wanted to make a film that actually had a point, and I felt that this story had that, but at the same time I didn’t want us to come out of it feeling like we’ve just been bashed over the head for 90 minutes. So my way of thinking was, if I got someone involved like Danny King, he was going to elevate that humour in the story, and find the things that were funny. We talked about how someone trying relentlessly and failing is kind of funny, Laurel and Hardy trying to get a piano up the stairs is funny, because they can’t do it, and they don’t stop trying, and they’re beset with obstacles and things that knock them back, and that’s where the humour comes from, and I knew that Danny  had that in spades. He knew the Language, he knew the people, and he knew the world, so that was where that came from.

On having young actors in the film

I was very lucky with the kids that I got. Sammy Williams is phenomenal and Will Poulter is a massive talent emerging and I exploited that. As soon as I met them I knew they were the guys I needed, but also I have a history of being a child actor myself, and I know that world, and I was very comfortable, very confident that I would be able to work with these young actors, and I think they give two of the best performances in the film.

Last night, London saw the UK Premiere at the London Film Festival for the brand new Geroge Clooney movie, The Ides of March. Clooney not only stars in the movie but co-wrote the screenplay along with Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon who I got to sit down with and interview earlier today.

The film sees a stellar cast alongside Clooney including Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, (who I also spoke to at today’s junket) Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright and Max Minghella.

It’s out in the UK 28th October and you can read our review here.

These interviews were carried out by the fabulous people at Upbeat so scroll down and have a watch.

The release of a inmate from prison and their subsequent reintegration into ‘regular’ society is an area that is filled with potential for interesting drama.

Ulu Grosbard’s under-seen and underrated 1978 film Straight Time (based on the equally excellent book No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker) uses this premise to explore the way in which the released inmate’s, played by Dustin Hoffman, life is defined by the way in which they have been labelled by society.

In his debut film, Wild Bill, Dexter Fletcher treads similar territory with his lead character struggling to adjust to life outside of prison but in addition he introduces an intense family drama to the mix.

The titular Bill (Charlie Creed-Miles) returns home from prison after many years inside and in the interim period his two sons, Jimmy (Sammy Williams) and Dean (Will Poulter), have been abandoned by their mother and left to fend for themselves. In Bill’s absence 15 year-old Dean has taken on the role of the family patriarch and cares for his younger brother whilst trying to hold down an illegal job on a construction site. Rather amusingly, and with a hint of social commentary, the construction site in question is the London 2012 Olympic Velodrome.

Shortly after Bill’s release he is deposited unconscious onto Dean and Jimmy’s sofa, Bill’s old friends do a good job of celebrating his return by helping him get totally inebriated. Dean and Bill instantly clash, Dean clearly blaming his father for, in his eyes, abandoning them. The animosity intensifies when Bill later highlights the boy’s living arrangements to the social services leading to a rather awkward home visit.

Bill is at first a reluctant father, uninterested in taking care of the boys and anxious to get away from his old criminal life, planning to move up north for work and a new start. Dean manages to blackmail him into staying though, at least until the social services are off their backs.

The remainder of the film follows a path that is perhaps not too difficult to predict, with Bill upsetting the apple cart by refusing to get back involved with his old friends’ criminal activities, Dean and Jimmy reconnecting with their father and a slight romantic sub-plot between Bill and local prostitute Roxy (Liz White). The film rests not on dramatic twists and turns though but on a slow and engrossing story that pulls you into the world in which the main protagonists and a number of side characters (populated by very recognisable British actors) live. This is done with expediency and an economy that ensures that a lot of the characters really get under your skin without the film feeling crowded or over-reaching.

The way in which the actors inhabit their roles is also essential to this investment and there are many performances to commend here. Poulter is perhaps most noteworthy, unsurprising to anyone who has seen his impressive debut in Son of Rambow in 2007, but Liz White is also excellent in a role that could have so easily been a simple stereotype. The way her character is drawn has subtlety and she brings a lot of warmth to the role.

Fletcher perhaps lives up to a widely held belief here about the ability of actor turned directors to coax strong performances out of actors but a lot of the groundwork is clearly already there in the script (written by Fletcher and Danny King). Fletcher’s direction is also mostly very competent with the film feeling entirely cinematic, no complaints here about this looking like an ITV drama, but retaining an intimate and small scale approach. Cinematographer George Richmond does excellent work too, helping give the film a look of its own and technically notable shots such as a long tracking shot early on, which weaves through their flat and the corridor outside, belie the low budget roots of the film but are appropriate to the content, not simply grandstanding.

Far removed from the nonsensical and childishly excessive gangster films that have clogged up DVD shelves in the UK, particularly in the wake of Lock, Stock  and Two Smoking Barrels (in which Fletcher starred), Wild Bill is a convincing and absorbing drama and an impressive début feature.

Wild Bill is playing as part of the London Film Festival on the 21st and 23rd of October.

***½~ (3.5/5)

Tilda Swinton generally never fails to impress audiences in anything she turns her hand to. Indeed, what can honestly be said about Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s riveting and utterly chilling book, We Need To Talk About Kevin, is that the role was written unquestionably for Swinton – or even the book’s character for that matter.

Shriver even quotes in the back of her book that the film adaptation is “well cast, beautifully shot and thematically loyal” to her novel. Any anomalies that arise from watching the film are purely subjective as a result of what you’ve already visualise while reading mother Eva’s (Swinton) story – and there are a few, perhaps, minor ones.

Travel journalist Eva never wanted to be a mother, certainly not to a boy who murders seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years after Kevin’s horrific rampage, it’s time for her to come to terms with her teenage son’s actions, fearing she may have been partly responsible.

The story looks at the ultimate ‘nature verses nurture’ question; was Kevin born evil or was his upbringing a factor in his actions? Ramsay addresses this, but in a subliminal way, rather than focuses on it head on, as the book does through a series of letters by Eva to her absent husband. The opening shot perfectly captures the pre-mother, carefree nature of travel nut Eva, as Swinton wallows in happiness in a sea of crushed tomatoes at the La Tomatina festival in Buñol, Spain, that simultaneously symbolise the destruction and reminder of the colour red of blood that now dominates Eva’s every thought.

Swinton is spellbinding as she sleepwalks through her everyday existence after the night in question, punctured by moments of intense pain as she is left trying to cope. Ramsay also keeps her stunning cinematography deliberately disorientating and menacingly unsettling between past and present moments that blur into one to add to Swinton’s faultless performance. It’s perhaps no coincidence then that the parts of Ramsay’s interpretation that jar a little are the ‘clearer’ re-enactments of Kevin’s younger years.

Jasper Newell plays a challenging feature-film debut role as the younger Kevin. But it’s this part of the book about Kevin’s manipulative ways that plant the seeds of despair that is crucial and does not quite translate across as well or as terrifying, and that’s quite disappointing. Things aren’t helped by Newell’s comical schlock horror glares, like a latter-day Damien, and the script that should help cultivate a deep sense of foreboding, before being introduced to Ezra Miller’s Kevin, seems contrived.

That said Miller captures the cool, calculating character as well as can be expected – a little more apathy would have satisfied further. However, those who have not been exposed to the book will find Miller pitch-perfect in this, both in look and in action. Nevertheless, the pivotal dinner monologue given to his mother feels less curt and unnerving than it should.

Thankfully, Ramsay doesn’t recreate a grand ‘killing spree’ flashback, merely touching on the carnage caused throughout, then showing one iconic Kevin pose in the gym, and keeping things in a state of suspended disbelief and focused on Eva’s angle. The director visually nails the shocking, end domestic scene in the book, as well as the last mother-son prison meeting, with Miller giving an incredibly underplayed but potent glimpse of human emotion and fear in Kevin at the very end.

As a standalone film, this is one of the most chilling social thrillers out this year with some powerhouse performances from Swinton and Miller. The problems arise when personal interpretations of the meaning behind Eva’s words in the novel get in the way of enjoying what is before you on screen, and trying to separate the power of the written word from the spoken/unspoken one is tricky. Hence, fans of the book will naturally be divided, but, as Shriver says in her book, should not fear watching the film: They will agree on Swinton being the only actor perfect for the dynamic role of survivor Eva.

****~ (4/5)

Nick Murphy’s debut film is an old school ghost story in every sense with Rebecca Hall’s journey to invesigate alledged spooky happenings finds her rolling up at a boys school in the middle of nowhere with a murdered pupil and a host of unanswered questions.

I caught the film earlier this month as it plays the London Film Festival in the next couple of weeks and found it to be a well crafted tale with some genuinely terrifying moments. Hall and her co-star Dominic West are perfectly cast and make the most of the script, co-written by Murphy and Stephen Volk. You can read my review on this site shortly but it’s well wrth catching as soon as you can.

In the meantime here’s your poster,

Those impy IMPA bods revealed this to the world. Thanks Be.

360 is set to open the 55th BFI London Film Festival this evening in London and we have the red carpet live streamed for you right here. Fernando Meirelles’ latest movie, 360 is set to open the festival and you can watch the stars of the movie arrive right here live.

360 stars Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Eminem, Moritz Bleibtreu and our review should be up later this evening.

Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s classic La Ronde, screenwriter Peter Morgan and director Fernando Meirelles’ 360 combines a modern and dynamic roundelay of stories into one, linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century. Starting in Vienna, the film beautifully weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerizing narrative.

The stream should begin at 18.30 GMT so stay tuned! You can see all our London Film Festival coverage here.

The 55th BFI London Film Festival opens tonight with 360,  Fernando Meirelles’ latest film and it is a suitably globe-trotting film for a festival whose programme is similarly drawn from all around the world.

Our review of the film will be up on the site later tonight, but if you want to hear what Meirelles, writer Peter Morgan and some of the cast had to say about the film at the press conference earlier today then look no further, we’ve got the highlights embedded below.

It’s a divisive film to be sure, and a very low-key opener for the festival however Meirelles and Morgan make a good case for the film and you’ll be able to find out how we found 360 shortly.

Here’s the video, check out the rest of the LFF programme and book your tickets right here – there are some stunning films this year so get stuck in.

There are many good reasons to venture into the capital during the month of October and from 12th to the 27th the BFI’s 55th London Film Festival is in full cinematic swing and we’ve got an exciting announcement for a very special evening we are hosting along with Jameson and our very good friends at Who’s Jack.

On Monday the 17th of October HeyUGuys will be taking over the Jameson Apartment on Greek Street for an evening of drinks and demons with a Q&A for the film Demons Never Die with confirmed guests writer/director Arjun Rose, producer Jo Podmore and star Jason Maza with more guests waiting to confirm. It’ll be an excellent chance to put your questions to the creative team behind the film and mingle with the cast and crew in the bar afterwards.

It should be a fun celebration of British film in the middle of the festival and we hope to see you there on the night. You can find out more about the night on the Jameson Cult Film Club website and we’ll have more details about how you can join us on the 17th shortly.

The BFI London Film Festival is the biggest film festival the UK has to offer, and one of the most prestigious and well-recognised festivals across the globe. This year, the festival is celebrating its 55^th run, and it has an absolutely fantastic line-up of films scheduled to play through the festival, from 12^th – 27^th October.

We’re now able to share with you the shortlists for the festival’s various awards, along with the juries for each of those awards. More excellent news also comes with the announcement that the BFI will be honouring both writer-director David Cronenberg, who is bringing his film A Dangerous Method to the festival this year, and actor-director Ralph Fiennes, who will be bringing his directorial debut Coriolanus to the festival, with its highest honour, in the form of the BFI Fellowship.

On receiving the award, Cronenberg has said,

“This is a monumental, in fact overwhelming, honour, and my being the first Canadian to receive it makes it all the sweeter. British cinema has been a potent inspiration for me, and to be associated with this particular group of filmmakers is tremendously exhilarating.”

And Fiennes, too, is just as humbled by the announcement,

“I’m extremely honoured and delighted to be given this fellowship by the BFI”

The festival’s awards are divided into four categories: the Best Film Award, the Best British Newcomer Award, the Sutherland Award (for most original directorial debut), and the Grierson Award for Best Documentary.

You can catch up on our coverage of the festival here, which we’ll be updating throughout the course of the two weeks this month as we go to the festival ourselves, something I’m really looking forward to.

The 55^th BFI London Film Festival (in partnership with American Express) will be running from 12^th – 27^th October, and you can find details about screenings and getting tickets right here. It’s going to be great. If you’re planning on coming to any of the films running at the festival too, do let us know in the comments below.

Without further ado, here are the four shortlists for the awards, each followed by the jury that will be judging them. The awards will be taking place on the penultimate day of the festival, 26^th October, and we’ll be sure to bring you the results as soon as we get them.

Best Film Award

• 360, Fernando Meirelles, UK/Austria/France/Brazil
• THE ARTIST, Michel Hazanavicius, France
• THE DEEP BLUE SEA, Terence Davies, UK
• THE DESCENDANTS, Alexander Payne, USA
• FAUST, Aleksandr Sukurov, Russia
• THE KID WITH A BIKE, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy
• SHAME, Steve McQueen, UK
• TRISHNA, Michael Winterbottom, UK
• WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, Lynne Ramsay, UK/USA

The jury for this award will include the brilliant director John Madden (Shakespeare In Love), Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), writer-director Asif Kapadia (Senna), producer Tracey Seaward (The Constant Gardener), novelist Andrew O’Hagan, and director Sam Taylor-Wood, OBE (Nowhere Boy).

Best British Newcomer Award

• Nick Murphy, Director, THE AWAKENING
• Tinge Krishnan, Director, JUNKHEARTS
• Candese Reid, Actress, JUNKHEARTS
• Nirpal Bgohal, Writer/Director, SKET
• Aimee Kelly, Actress, SKET
• Tom Cullen, Actor, WEEKEND
• Chris New, Actor, WEEKEND
• D.R. Hood, Writer/Director, WRECKERS

The jury for this award will include actress Anne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy), actor Tom Hollander (Hanna), director of the National Film and Television School Nik Powell, producer Andy Harries (the upcoming The Lady), Radio 1 presenter Edith Bowman, and producer Stephen Woolley (Interview with the Vampire).

Sutherland Award

• CORPO CELESTE, Alice Rohrwacher, Italy/Switzerland/France
• ETERNITY, Sivaroj Kongsakul, Thailand
• HERE, Braden King, USA
• THE HOUSE, Zuzana Liová, Czech Republic
• LAS ACACIAS, Pablo Giorgelli, Argentina/Spain
• LAST WINTER, John Shank, Belgium/France
• MICHAEL, Markus Schleinzer, Austria
• MOURNING, Morteza Farshbaf, Iran
• SHE MONKEYS, Lisa Aschan, Sweden
• SNOWTOWN, Justin Kurzel, Australia
• THE SUN-BEATEN PATH, Sonthar Gyal, China
• WITHOUT, Mark Jackson, USA

The jury for this award will include Phil Collins, producer Andrew Eaton (The Killer Inside Me), director Joanna Hogg (Archipelago), director Peter Kosminsky (White Oleander), actress Saskia Reeves (Page Eight), managing director of Icon UK Group Hugo Grumbar, and film journalist Tom Robey.

Grierson Award for Best Documentary

• BERNADETTE: NOTES ON A POLITICAL JOURNEY, Lelia Doolan, Ireland
• BETTER THIS WORLD, Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega, USA
• THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975, Goran Hugo Olsson, Sweden/USA
• DRAGONSLAYER, Tristan Patterson
• DREAMS OF A LIFE, Carol Moley, UK/Ireland
• INTO THE ABYSS: A TALE OF DEATH, A TALE OF LIFE, Werner Herzog
• LAST DAYS HERE, Don Argott & Demian Fenton, USA
• WHORE’S GLORY, Michael Glawogger, Austria/Germany

The jury for this award will include documentarian Adam Curtis (All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace), documentarian Kim Longinotto (Rough Aunties), the Grierson Trust’s Mandy Chong, and the BBC’s Head of Documentary Commissioning Charlotte Moore.

If you’ve missed our coverage of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen’s new movie, 50/50, I highly recommend that you spend a quick minute or two playing catch-up (which you can do here), because this is a movie to get excited about.

The film is written by Will Reiser, a long-time friend of Rogen’s, based upon events of his own life, making his writing feature film debut, and is directed by Jonathan Levine, the very talented director of The Wackness and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

“Inspired by a true story: Adam Lerner has a pretty great life — with a talented, sexy artist girlfriend and a cool job with NPR, the 27-year old seems to have it all. But when Adam discovers he has a rare and possibly fatal form of cancer, his entire life turns to chaos.

As his world starts to unravel in every way, Adam finds himself dealing with the wellmeaning but totally outrageous attempts by his friends and family to make it all better. His best friend, Kyle, uses Adam’s condition to lure girls into sympathy sex, his overbearing mother loses sight of him in her own fears, his otherwise-occupied girlfriend, Rachael tries to distract herself an increasingly frantic social life, and Katherine, the inexperienced therapist assigned to his case, struggles to keep up with the needs of her third client ever.”

Yahoo Movies have now got a terrific video of a short roundtable with the main cast, featuring Gordon-Levitt, Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Reiser in the middle. It’s only a few minutes long, but they all get to speak a little about the film and their characters, and Gordon-Levitt talks about his time-sensitive decision about whether or not to board the project. It’s short but sweet, and is getting me even more excited about this film’s release. The States is lucky enough to be getting this on wide release as of tomorrow, but we here in the UK will have to wait until 6^th January next year to see it on our screens.

We here at HeyUGuys will very fortunately be catching the film a little earlier when it screens at this year’s BFI London Film Festival next month, and I personally cannot wait to see what should be a terrific project on the big screen. No doubt I’ll be seeing it next month and then again when it comes out in January. Without further ado, here’s the brilliant roundtable clip to enjoy.

In a few short weeks London’s cinemaland cloaks itself in the finest festival garb as the 55th BFI London Film Festival comes to the capital.

Tickets go on sale today so click here to uncover the treasures on offer and then click here to buy all the tickets you can.

I’ve picked out a few films I can’t wait to see and hope that the choices inspire you to take a look at what’s playing as this year’s festival continues the tradition of an eclectic selection with broad horizons making up for the lack of premieres on offer.

Here are my choices, let me know what you’re looking forward to.

Dominik Moll takes on a true literary classic with his adaptation of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Vincent Cassell appears perfect casting for the magnetic, complex Ambrosio and I have high hopes that Moll walks the line between complete devotion and fanatic hysteria which makes the slow corruption of Lewis’s novel so potent.

Click here for further info and booking details

Famous for his unique adaptations of folk tales the director Michel Ocelot is perhaps best known for his Kirikou films, and he brings his new compilation of six fairy tales to London this year with Tales of the Night. The striking animation style, one of many Ocelot has used in his career and last seen in Dragons and Princesses a year ago, will be shown in 3D, and what I saw in the preview clip was enough to convince me to check this one out.

Click here for further info and booking details

A stern looking Michael Fassbender implores you to see one of his two films at the festival, here with Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method or reuniting with Hunger director Steve McQueen for a dose of Shame. I tried to find a trailer for Shame and failed utterly so I’ve put the one for A Dangerous Method in below – both look interesting but for my money McQueen’s second film will be the one to catch. Or watch both. Watch both twice if you want.

Click here for further info and booking details

The long awaited adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s compelling novel from Ratcatcher director Lynne Ramsey has played very well on the festival circuit and comes to London with great expectations. John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton lead this harrowing tale of a family coping with a high school shooting. Ramsey joined the project, which had already been in development for a number of years, after her ties to the adaptation of The Lovely Bones were cut. While it would have been fascinating to see her vision of Alice Sebold’s novel it is doubtful it would have had the impact and reaction Ramsay has enjoyed with this film.

As part of the Time Out screening there will be a Film in Focus event in which Lynne Ramsay, her co-writer Rory Kinnear, producer Luc Roeg and Director of photographer Seamus McGarvey will be discussing the film. You can find out more about this event and book your place right here.

Click here for further info and booking details

You’ll want to see this one. Just give the trailer a watch and see if your cockles aren’t warmed. Winning at Cannes and charming the stone cold hearts from cynics across the world this slice of silent Hollywood looks the business and is a definite one to make time this October.

Click here for further info and booking details

Director Yorgos Lanthimos won international acclaim for his 2009 film Dogtooth and his follow up film looks to be continuing his provocative and unconventional take on the world with a group of disparate people coming together under unusual circumstances. Death and the darkest comedy are sure to abound.

Click here for further info and booking details

I’m hoping the trouser emporia around Leicester Square are well stocked as there will be call for a fresh pair after the screenings of Nick Murphy’s The Awakening. Rebecca Hall and Dominic West lead us through a proudly traditional ghost story which is sure to benefit from a great cast, Stephen Volk’s writing and the general malaise of gut-emptying torture porn.

Click here for further info and booking details

At the preview event for the LFF we were treated to a scene from Gerardo Naranjo’s latest and it was a crucial moment in the film when everything changes for Laura, our beauty queen hopeful and it proved an excellent introduction to the world of Miss Bala. Take a look at the trailer for a hint of the action on offer.

Click here for further info and booking details

Elizabeth Olsen is winning all sorts of plaudits for her lead role in Sean Durkin’s dark tale Martha Marcy May Marlene and from what we’ve seen so far this film will be a very tough examination of a family reunited following the daughter’s return from an abusive cult. John Hawkes is in support and if the festival buzz is to be believed this is a film to take the time to see.

Click here for further info and booking details

Before his turn in Martha Marcy May Marlene, John Hawkes was a wonderful lead in Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know and this year’s London Film Festival welcomes July’s next film, The Future, into its midst. Featuring another triple turn of writer, director and actor Miranda July’s latest film features a stray cat and two people finding themselves facing an uncertain future. The two may, or may not, be related.

Click here for further info and booking details

Much loved stalwart of the British film industry, Dexter Fletcher, makes his directorial debut with Wild Bill and it’s entirely appropriate that it’s one of the films we are most looking forward to catching in London this year. Starring Charlie Creed-Mills and Will Poulter this is the story of a father who returns to his family after a prison term to find his two young sons fending for themselves and reluctant to recconect with a man who left them. We can’t wait to see what Fletcher has up her directorial sleeve.

There is an accompanying masterclass in which Dexter Fletcher and DOP George Richmond talk about the cinematography of the film. Here’s a link to find out more and book up those tickets.

Click here for more details and to book tickets

Oscar-nominated Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) has surrounded himself with an absolutely stellar group of people to help him make his latest film, 360.

With a script from two-time Oscar nominee, Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), and a cast headed up by Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, and Ben Foster, there’s definitely a lot of talent involved with the project.

We first got a look at the film back in July with a photo of married couple Law and Weisz, which was then soon followed up with more images from the film that gave us our first look at Hopkins and Foster, and a hint of discontent in Law and Weisz’s marriage. Then came the wonderful news that the film would be opening this year’s BFI London Film Festival on 12th October, marking its European premiere.

The film is based on a 1900 play by Austrian author, Arthur Schnitzler, entitled Reigen (a.k.a. La Ronde).

“Schnitzler’s original used ten pairs of lovers from different sections of Viennese society to show how sexual relationships can transgress social boundaries. Morgan and Meirelles broaden this out, as the film weaves through Vienna, Bratislava, Paris, London, Rio, Phoenix and Denver into a single, seamless narrative. An ambitious young woman sees sex as a way to escape her background; a respectable widower wrestles with the conflict between desire and religious principles; a man grieving his long-lost daughter forges a bond with a heartbroken girl; a married couple come to see each other with fresh eyes. Individual stories connect, choices are made and directions taken but, as always in Meirelles’ films, these are grounded in a sense of place. Each city the characters pass through feels real, vividly so.”

We’ve now got the first clip from the film to share with you, courtesy of The Playlist, ahead of its London premiere next month. It doesn’t give much away in terms of what we can expect plot-wise, but it does show so much promise for the film amongst the cast’s performances, with Hopkins really nailing his character, an alcoholic, who looks filled with regret in this scene.

There’s no word yet on a UK release date, so if you get to see this next month at the London Film Festival, count yourself lucky. Unfortunately, the film had something of a bad start when it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, with technical faults delaying the screening and sound problems affecting the screening itself. Let’s hope, however, that it will be shown precisely how it’s meant to be seen when it opens the festival next month, because this really does look like a film to watch out for. Without further ado, here’s the great first clip from 360.

My interest was sparked in Nick Murphy’s film the second I heard writer Stephen Volk had a new ghost story to tell, and today we finally have the chance to see a trailer for The Awakening.

What this first glimpse does is give a decent indication of the characters and their motives and agendas, as well as set the scene with some beautiful shots of the country-bound school where a ghost has been sighted. More than once I felt the spirit of The Haunting or The Innocents evoked while watching this and Rebecca Hall and Dominic West are two actors doing great work at the moment so hopefully this will draw a wide audience. The recent showing at Toronto enabled StudioCanal to secure a US distribution deal through Cohen Media which is an encouraging sign.

A note of caution though. While I couldn’t help but watch it, as the film plays perfectly to me,  it does give a few moments away which are good enough to stick in the mind and which might dull the impact when you see the film – it’s up to you. Typical trailer spoiler warning really.

The Guardian threw back the curtain and revealed this one to the world and if you’re in London next month the film is playing as part of the London Film Festival before its release on the 11th of November.

Spine ready to be chilled? Lights down, eyes front,