1. Lady Bird

• Molly's Game
• The Social Network
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 
• The Shape of Water
• Darkest Hour
• The Post
• I, Tonya
• Get Out (free)
• Goodbye Christopher Robin (plane)
• Murder on the Orient Express (plane)
• Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (plane)
• Lady Bird
• Reasonable Doubt (Netflix)
• Me Before You (Netflix)
• Phantom Thread
• Snowden (Netflix)
• Notting Hill (Netflix)
• Julie & Julia (Netflix)
• Dazed and Confused (Netflix)
• Isle of Dogs
• A Quiet Place
• Ready Player One
• Roman J. Israel Esq. (plane)
• All the Money in the World (plane)
• Kramer vs Kramer (Netflix)
• Miss Sloane (Netflix)
• Vertigo
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
• The Children Act (free)
• Crazy Rich Asians
• American Animals (plane)
• Tully (plane)
• Game Night (plane)
• A Simple Favor
• Leave No Trace (plane)
• Ocean’s 8 (plane)
• First Man
• Widows
• Three Identical Strangers
• A Monster Calls (Netflix)

Ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony each year, I try to watch as many films nominated for the Best Picture category as possible — this is easier some years than others, given the UK cinema release date schedule. This year, I watched the last remaining film on my list, which means I have now seen all nine films nominated for Best Picture, as well as most of the films that feature in the nominations in the other seven categories I consider in my own almost-annual 'Oscar picks' post.

Best Picture: Lady Bird [9/9 watched]
Of the nine films nominated, I really liked seven (I wasn't wowed by Darkest Hour or Phantom Thread) and of those, I found it very difficult to choose between Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards and Call Me By Your Name. This year's nominated films are so diverse and I loved them for different reasons. The Shape of Water and Dunkirk stayed with me for a long time after I watched them, but the understated but funny, moving, keenly observed and well-acted Lady Bird won me over in the end. As someone who graduated from high school around the same time as Lady Bird, albeit across the pond, I found that the movie rang very true and was a delight to watch. It sounds as though Three Billboards — or perhaps The Shape of Water — will win this tonight.

Best Director: Guillermo Del Toro, The Shape of Water [5/5 watched]
Regular readers will know that Christopher Nolan is one of my all-time favourite directors and until I saw The Shape of Water, I couldn't imagine any film would persuade me to choose anything other than Dunkirk for my best director pick. And yet, Guillermo Del Toro won me over with his beautiful, enchanting and ethereal tale of love, communication...and amphibians. Like Dunkirk, this cinematic magic is best experienced on the big screen, if you have the chance.

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [5/5 watched]
Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name [4/5 watched]
All five of the women nominated for Best Actress put in superb performances and I would be happy to see any of them take home the prize. My personal choice is also the likely winner — Frances McDormand, as the feisty, uncompromising Mildred in Three Billboards, whose strong performance anchors a sometimes uneven movie. In the Best Actor category, I have a different problem: I've only seen four of the films and wasn't overly enamoured by either Darkest Hour or Phantom Thread. I thought both Timothée Chalamet (my pick) and Daniel Kaluuya were great, but probably won't win (not this year, anyway), as it is Gary Oldman's year...

Best Supporting Actress: Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird [4/5 watched]
Best Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [3/5 watched]
Although I did enjoy Allison Janney's performance in I, Tonya (which will probably win), it was rather obvious and OTT, whereas Laurie Metcalf's quieter, more nuanced Marion McPherson — mother of the titular Lady Bird — was more interesting and complex. In the Best Supporting Actor category, although Sam Rockwell is likely to win for his role in Three Billboards, I thought his co-star Woody Harrelson was the stronger of the two. Again, Harrelson is more understated, but impressive nonetheless.

Best Original Screenplay: Get Out — written by Jordan Peele [5/5 watched]
Best Adapted Screenplay: Call Me By Your Name — screenplay by James Ivory [3/5 watched]
It was a close call between Get Out and Lady Bird in the Best Original Screenplay category. I missed Get Out when it was first out in cinemas, but caught a recent screening at BAFTA and it entertained me greatly, while challenging my expectations. The script is sharp, funny and very, very dark. Over in Best Adapted Screenplay, despite my soft spot for Sorkin, I was a little underwhelmed by Molly's Game, while James Ivory's adaptation of Call Me by Your Name was by turns sweet, sharp, funny and sad, but always utterly engaging.

The flip side of all the travel I've been doing this year is that I've had only limited time (and money) to spend on movies. Some of long-haul flights I took did allow me to catch up on films that I wanted to see at the cinema this year, but I only managed 18 cinema visits, and saw a further 18 films (some of which were re-watches) at home or on planes or buses. I did my best to see as many of this year's major releases as I could and also caught a few indie films, especially when prompted my free (preview screening) or cheap (Peckhamplex) tickets. Next year, I'm going to try to do better.

1. Moonlight. I went to see Barry Jenkins' remarkable film — which chronicles in a clever triptych structure the youth of a gay, African-American male growing up in the projects in Miami — at New York's iconic Angelika Film Center not quite knowing what to expect. Or, rather, I thought I knew exactly what to expect, but Jenkins confounded my expectations with its beautiful, melancholy and utterly moving coming-of-age tale. The performances are powerful, the three distinct sections fit together perfectly and this genre-defying film stayed with me for days. By turns heart-breaking, uplifting, intimate and all-encompassing, Moonlight gripped me throughout its 1h50 running time and left me wanting to spend more time with the central character in Jenkins' harsh but sensual world.

2. Dunkirk. Like Moonlight, Christoper Nolan's Dunkirk is also a story in three parts, but this time they are intricately interwoven and — because this is Nolan — they also take place over different timescales that range from one hour to one week. The central story is the odds-defying evacuation of trapped Allied soldiers during the titular World War II battle. Owing in part to the fact that World War II was covered in neither my GCSE history nor A-level (early-modern) history syllabuses, it wasn't a story I knew much about before watching the film, but I think that made Nolan's storytelling even more dramatic. There are some fantastic performances, including from RAF pilot Tom Hardy's sole visible eye, shellshocked soldier Cillian Murphy and especially Mark Rylance who, as usual, steals every scene in the most understated of ways as the skipper of one of the hundreds of civilian boats that were crucial in the rescue operation. Visually stunning and with a haunting score from Hans Zimmer, Dunkirk was rather overwhelming and definitely the kind of film you should watch on as big a screen as possible (I saw it at the Gloucester Cinema in Massachusetts, a rather low-tech venue where I also happened to see Jurassic Park, some 24 years earlier).

3. Call Me By Your Name. I had hoped to watch Luca Guadagnino's Italy-based coming-of-age story at the London Film Festival, partly because I was so impressed with Armie Hammer's performances in the two films I saw him in during last year's festival, Free Fire and Nocturnal Animals but I couldn't get a ticket. Instead, I finally caught up last week at a packed screening at the Peckhamplex. In the film, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is spending another summer with his academic parents at their villa in a small northern Italian town. Each summer, Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg) hosts a graduate student at the villa as a research assistant and this year, it is the turn of tall, handsome, confident Oliver (Hammer). Over the course of the summer, the friendship between Elio and Oliver grows, as does Elio's own confidence and sense of self, gently encouraged by his cultured, liberal parents. Call Me By Your Name is beautifully shot and perfectly captures those lazy dog day afternoons of the southern European summer. It's a slow-burner, for sure, but builds up momentum without you noticing, and by the time it reached its crushing conclusion, I was completely captivated. Both Hammer and Chalamet were very good, and there's a certain monologue during the final act that Stuhlbarg nails.

4. The Death of Stalin. Armando Iannucci's darkest of dark comedies, The Death of Stalin, was just what the world needed in 2017. The film offers a depiction of Stalin's final days and the chaotic aftermath of his death, as his advisors circle, posture, plot and betray. It is a funny film, and there is a cracking script that crackles with energy, as well as some top-notch performances (Isaacs and Buscemi were particularly good) from the ensemble cast, most of whom seem have impeccable comic timing. Of course, many of the laughs are more nervous chuckles at the absurdity of what is happening, and at times, you do wonder whether it's even appropriate for you to be laughing (which is precisely the point Iannucci is trying to make, I'm sure).

5. The Handmaiden. Not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale, Chan-Wook Park's film The Handmaiden is based on a novel by Sarah Waters called Fingersmith, although I only found this out after watching the film. Park's most famous film Oldboy is an all-time favourite of mine and I also enjoyed his English-language film Stoker. Based on these past experiences, I was expecting The Handmaiden to be both twisty and violent and it certainly delivered. It's hard to say too much about the plot without spoiling the film, but it centres around two young women in 1930s Japan-occupied Korea. One woman is a wealthy heiress, who is kept in isolation by her uncle on her large estate. The other is hired as her handmaiden, but has other intentions and plans for the heiress too. At almost 2h30 long, The Handmaiden kept me gripped throughout with its clever, unexpected volte-faces, leaving the viewer in a constant state of uncertainty about whom to trust and with whom to sympathise. Park is a master storyteller and this film is well worth seeking out.

NB: I did later read Waters' novel, but enjoyed it somewhat less than the film — perhaps because I knew what was coming.

The complete list of films I watched this year is as follows (re-watches are in italics:

- Silence
- Children of Men (home)
- Sing Street (home)
- Hidden Figures
- Boys Don't Cry (TV)
- Lion
- Hacksaw Ridge
- State of Play (home)
- Jackie
- Hell or Highwater (plane)
- Florence Foster Jenkins (plane)
- Moonlight
- Elle
- Personal Shopper
- Fargo (home)
- The Handmaiden
- My Cousin Rachel
- Olympus Has Fallen (home)
- To the Bone (home)
- Inception (home)
- Loving (plane)
- Fences (plane)
- Dunkirk
- The Circle (home)
- A Ghost Story
- Mother!
- Breathe
- Battle of the Sexes
- Blade Runner 2049
- Baby Driver (plane)
- Hunt for the Wilder People (bus)
- Logan (plane)
- Bad Moms (plane)
- The Big Sick (plane)
- The Death of Stalin
- Call Me By Your Name

My second — and sadly final — 2017 London Film Festival screening was for Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Battle of the Sexes. The 'it's not really about tennis' story of a 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and former tennis champion turned hustler and self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig, Bobby Riggs.


Many of the cast and crew were out on the red carpet on Leicester Square last night, as well as assorted ball boys and girls and other tennis-related paraphernalia. I spotted Dayton and Faris posing together first, and then Emma Stone and later Elisabeth Shue and Heather Watson. Alas, I was ushered on into the cinema before Billie Jean King herself appeared.



Once festival director Clare Stewart got things started, however, we got to hear from various actors and crew members. Producers Danny Boyle and Christian Colson, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and both directors came onstage to talk about their work on the film — and how they were all terrified that King would hate the end result.; "we wanted to do her justice," Faris explained. As it turned out, they did and King was delighted to be depicted by Emma Stone, urging the audience members to keep fighting for equality and freedom.





And so to the film... I wasn't aware of the titular battle until I started reading about the film and although I tried to avoid finding out the outcome, I didn't succeed. This didn't really matter, though, because as the directors, Boyle, Beaufoy and Stone all noted, Battle of the Sexes is much more of a love story with elements of political drama than a sports movie. As the film opens, Billy Jean King (Stone) has just won a tennis championship but finds out that at another upcoming tournament, the men's champion will receive a prize eight times greater than the female winner. She and Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman), a fellow advocate of the women's tennis game, protest to Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman), who has just issued a press release for the US Lawn Tennis Association about this news, but he doesn't see the problem. "The men are more exciting to watch, faster, stronger... It's just biology," he says.

King decides to found a separate Women's Tennis Association, signing up some of her fellow female players, including Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) and Rosie Casals (Natalie Morales), and creating a women's only tennis circuit, to Kramer's consternation. King's husband Larry (Austin Stowell) remains at home for much of the tour to avoid distracting her, and one day she meets and soon forms a friendship with hair stylist Marilynn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough; in reality, Barnett was King's personal secretary). Before long, her feelings for Marilynn develop into something more and the two become lovers, despite her own anguish and warnings from some of her friends, including the players' wardrobe master (the ever-wonderful Alan Cumming).

Meanwhile, after enjoying much success as a tennis star in his youth, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) has fallen into a cycle of hustling and gambling. He wins a Rolls Royce, which turns out to be the final straw that leads his wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) to kick him out. He needs one big, final gambit to win her back and soothe his aching ego, and decides that playing King in a televised tennis match is the way to do this. In 1973, King was 29 and at the top of her game, while Riggs was 55 and no longer quite as good as he would like to think. King refuses to accept the challenge for some time — she sees it for the spectacle that it is. But eventually, she gives in when she realises that it may be her best opportunity to prove not that women can be as good at tennis as men, but that women deserve to be treated fairly and equally. Will it all backfire or will the time Riggs dedicates to being parodically sexist, arrogant and obnoxious prevent him from practising enough?

I enjoyed Battle of the Sexes — it is entertaining and uplifting, and while Stone's performance as King stood out, Carell deserves kudos for being quite so pitiable. It's Pullman's Kramer who seems the more insidious character, however; as King points out during the film, Riggs is just putting on an act for the attention, but Kramer genuinely seems to believe that women belong in the kitchen and the bedroom and sees King and her 'women's lib' compatriots to be a danger for the game of tennis. I think the film would have been stronger had it been a broader biopic of King, focusing less on the pantomimish Riggs, whose story consumed all too much of the film. The best scenes were between King and Barnett, and the subtler scenes between King and her husband. Although Larry tells Marilynn that they are both just sideshows and that "tennis is her first love," actually, it's her love for these two important people in her life that comes through most strongly.

Another year, another London Film Festival — my eighth, in fact, and you can read my coverage of previous years here. I usually try to go to four or five films, including the Surprise Film, but this year I'm only going to two — unless a ticket becomes available for the screen talk with David Fincher, one of my favourite directors. The reasons for this are twofold: first, I will be out of the country for part of the festival, and second, I've been trying to save for my big out-of-the-country trip, and LFF ticket prices have become very expensive over the years.


I was really pleased to score a ticket to last night's opening night gala, Andy Serkis's directorial debut, Breathe. I missed out in the ballot, but checking back regularly on the BFI website landed me a great seat in the fourth row of the Odeon Leicester Square. It had been a while since I'd attended an opening-night gala and I'd forgotten how busy Leicester Square gets. Usually, I loiter near the red carpet until the cast or crew member I am hoping to see heads on to start giving interviews, but the queue was so big last night that I just had to go to the end and cross my fingers that the queue gods were on my side.

Happily, I managed to snap a few photos of one of the stars, Andrew Garfield. Funnily enough, it was at the LFF opening-night gala for Never Let Me Go in 2010 — also attended by Garfield, along with Kazuo Ishiguro, who just won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature — where I first developed a fondness for Mr Garfield.




The show was running late but organ music kept us entertained, and I was also excited to have a minor encounter with Jason Isaacs, who was in the audience.


After BFI Chief Executive Amanda Nevill and the ever-colourfully-attired London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart had made their introductions, director Andy Serkis and producer Jonathan Cavendish came on stage and introduced some of the cast members, including Garfield, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander and Hugh Bonneville. Jonathan Cavendish is also the son of the couple depicted in the film, and his mother Diana also joined the cast and crew.






After all of this excitement, it was time for the film to begin. Breathe tells the true story of Robin (Garfield) and Diana Cavendish, who meet and marry in the 1950s before moving to Kenya where Robin begins a tea-broking business. Disaster strikes, however, when Robin contracts polio and becomes paralysed from the neck down, his survival relying on a mechanical respirator. Given just months to live, he wants to die and begs Diana to take her freedom and start again. She refuses and what follows is powerful, warm and inspiring tale of love and of challenging expectations.

Supported by Diana, their families (including Diana's twin brothers, both played by Tom Hollander) and friends, Robin is able to 'break out' of the hospital to move home and live an increasingly full life. Eventually, he is able to travel — thanks in part to innovations, such as a wheelchair with a built-in respirator, created by his friend Teddy Hall (Bonneville) — and goes on to become a campaigner and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, defying the assumptions of the time.

If Tom Hardy's single eye stole the show in Dunkirk, Andrew Garfield's eyebrows deserve their own credit in Breathe. The actor's whole face is wonderfully expressive, though, and the convincing and tender relationship between him and Foy and their chemistry really carry the film and stop it becoming overly sentimental. Although often emotional, Breathe is also very funny at times; Garfield achieves much of this with his facial expressions and dry remarks, while Hollander's Blacker twins often act as the comic relief (one scene was perhaps a little too Chuckle Brothers). Added to a beautiful score from Nitin Sawhney and gorgeous cinematography from Robert Richardshon — showcasing England's green and pleasant lands as well as the sun-drenched Kenyan landscapes — and Serkis's film is a pleasure to watch.

With the crystal clear vision of hindsight, it seems obvious that John F. Kennedy would become known as a great president (especially given the recent plummeting of the bar) but in November 1963, it was, for his wife Jackie, far from inevitable. Pablo Larraín's new film Jackie focuses on the briefest of windows in the days after JFK's assassination during which the titular widow attempts to stage manage his death and secure his legacy. Natalie Portman is fascinating in the lead role and although the film is a little slow in places, her performance won me over by the end.

The film opens as a journalist (Billy Crudup) arrives at the Kennedys' Cape Cod home to interview Jackie a few days after her husband's death. Grief-stricken but desperate to be a good hostess and to give a good interview, Jackie reflects back on her husband's brief presidency, offering up all-too-honest reactions the journalist knows he will never be able to print. "You'll have to say something personal eventually," he goads her, but it isn't clear that he is right. She tries again and, over the course of the 100-minute film, we get various snapshots of grief: the assassination (the full brutality of which only comes towards the end), the funeral arrangements, the handover to the new president and the leaving of the White House.

There are happier memories too, though, including Larraín's version of the real White House Tour documentary during which Jackie presented her remodelling of the residence to the American people. It helps presidents to be surrounded by things that have belonged to previous great presidents, she explains. And it is this pursuit of greatness that drives her actions after the assassination. She quizzes staff members at random about obscure presidents, contrasting their responses with their reactions to her questions about Lincoln, eventually deciding that she should seek inspiration from Lincoln's funeral for JFK's own funeral. "History's harsh," she notes.

Legacy is central, then, but legend and myth play a key role too as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue becomes Jackie's own Camelot. Lerner and Loewe's musical of the same name made its début just three years earlier and its music, lyrics and essence echo throughout Larraín's movie. Form and beauty are crucial in this world. Portman's Jackie never allows her pain to distract her long from her decisions about appearances — whether to continue wearing the iconic, bloodstained pink Chanel suit, for instance.

Beautiful and stylish as the film is, its bleaker moments outnumber the lighter intermissions. Tonally, it reminded me a lot of a French New Wave film — you can almost imagine Claude Chabrol or François Truffaut's influences in places. Mica Levi's haunting, questioning score only deepened these resemblances.

All told, Jackie is an interesting, if not always easy to watch, film (I found Larraín's 2012 film about the 1988 referendum in Chile much more enjoyable). Portman really does carry the film — Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy and especially Greta Gerwig as White House social secretary Nancy Tuckerman are somewhat wasted — so it's lucky she is so good in the role: charismatic but complicated, and forceful but grief-stricken.

I seem to have spent a high proportion of my cinematic viewing time this year in the company of Andrew Garfield in Japan fighting for what he believes in — or, rather, not fighting for what he believes in. I've admired Garfield's acting talents since I saw him in Red Riding, the 2009 TV adaptation of David Peace's quadrilogy of the same name, which is the main reason I went to a preview of Hacksaw Ridge on Wednesday night. It certainly wasn't because I enjoy war films (I don't), but although I wouldn't say that Mel Gibson's latest film was enjoyable, I did think that it was a gripping, if brutal, story about courage and conviction.

Garfield stars as Desmond Doss, a sweet and caring young man who lives in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He has a strained relationship with his father (Hugo Weaving), an alcoholic scarred by his experiences fighting in the First World War, and is thinking about pursuing medical training, particularly after meeting a comely young nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). But World War Two is raging in Europe and in the Pacific and although Desmond could have deferred the draft, he enlists in the army, determined to work as a combat medic.

He excels during training but, as his company-mates, sergeant (Vince Vaughan) and captain (Sam Worthington) soon find out, he refuses even to touch a rifle and won't commit any act of violence. He is a Seventh-day Adventist and has joined up as a conscientious objector — a conscientious objector or, as he puts it, a conscientious cooperator. The second act of the film is split between Top Gun-esque mess room banter ("you son of a...n exhibitionist") and scenes that resemble A Few Good Men more closely as Doss fights with all of his might to be allowed to go to war with his fellow soldiers despite his unwillingness to carry a weapon.

It is not until halfway through the film that the titular Hacksaw Ridge — a sheer cliff face, the top of which represents a key Japanese stronghold, control of which proves critical to the Battle of Okinawa — makes its appearance and the violence begins. And boy is it violent, loud, bloody and brutal. I can't remember the last war film I watched on the big screen but the seemingly endless senseless death, destruction and gore in the central battle sequence was particularly hard to watch.

It was only during this section of the film that I really began to understand Garfield's award nominations for this film. Doss's company members think his refusal to carry a weapon is a sign of cowardice, but his heroism and humanity are clearly demonstrated throughout the battle scenes, as he dispenses morphine and compassion in equal doses, tending to the wounded and offering dignity to the dead. And there is plenty of grit and determination in Garfield's so-often doleful brown eyes (he often plays characters who are misunderstood or betrayed) as he carries out the acts for which the real-life Doss was decorated.

Hacksaw Ridge takes a long time to get going but Doss's back story is an essential part of understanding what happens on top of the eponymous cliff and frankly, I'm not sure I could have watched any more of the fighting. That being said, although the story is well-structured, it could have been shortened by about 20 minutes. There is a large — mainly male, of course — supporting cast, and, other than Garfield, who I did think put in a moving and convincing performance, Weaving and Worthington were the standouts for me. The script was snappy and the film was visually very arresting ('beautiful' would be the wrong word). Although Gibson's film is never going to be the kind of film that makes it into my all-time favourites, it impressed me considerably.

A five-year-old Indian boy falls asleep on an out-of-service train, which doesn't stop until it reaches Kolkata, some 1,600 km to the east. He is desperate to find a way to return home to his beloved mother and brother Guddu but he can't speak the local language and is only able to offer minimal details about his home. After living on the streets, he is taken to an orphanage and eventually adopted by an Australian couple, and grows up to be happy and successful. But he is haunted by half-remembered dreams of his Indian family and, some 20 years after leaving India, begins the Sisyphean task of searching for his hometown using Google Earth.

The phrase 'based on an incredible true story' gets thrown around a lot by film promoters and yet the story of Saroo Brierley, the subject of Garth Davis's film Lion, is so remarkable — so unlikely — that it's hard to believe someone didn't make it up. Lion is sometimes painful, but also compelling, warm and very emotional — there was nary a dry eye in the screening I attended last night.

Dev Patel stars as the adult Saroo but we don't see him on screen until at least a third of the way through. Instead, Sunny Pawar takes centre stage as the young Saroo and he's in pretty much every scene during the film's first act. Pawar is terrific and he holds his own against much older actors. Patel convinces too as the older Saroo, conveying the character's emotional struggle between wanting to keep his Australian family happy and his deep, inner need to find his hometown and his Indian family. Nicole Kidman, as Saroo's adoptive mother, and Rooney Mara, as Lucy (a composite of several of the real Saroo's girlfriends), are solid in their supporting roles, although neither gets much screen time, despite their top billings. Kidman, in particular, puts in a sensitive and nuanced performance a Sue Brierley.

Couple these performances with Luke Davies's thoughtful screenplay (based on Brierley's memoir, A Long Way Home), Greig Fraser's stunning cinematography, and Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O'Halloran's lilting, haunting score and you get a thoroughly enjoyable and moving film.

Contrary to the clues, which seemed to point towards Pablo Larraín's Jackie, Monday night's Odeon Screen Unseen screening was Hidden Figures, a film about three black women who worked as 'computers' at NASA during the Space Race. I read Margot Lee Shetterly's excellent book of the same name towards the end of last year and was looking forward to seeing such a fascinating and important story being brought to the big screen, but although entertaining and with good performances from the female leads, the Theodore Melfi's film was rather underwhelming.

The film opens in the early days of JFK's presidency. When the world learns that the Russians have put a man into space, the pressure is on Al Harrison (a composite of three NASA Langley directors, played by Kevin Costner) to follow suit and surpass Russia's achievements.

Katherine Goble Jackson (Taraji P. Henson) is a brilliant mathematician working in the computing room until she is invited to join Harrison's Space Task Group as a computer, as the team works on the Mercury programme to put John Glenn (Glenn Powell) into space. Katherine enjoys the work and is good at it, often impressing Harrison, but is stymied by the discrimination she faces from her white and (predominantly) male co-workers. She has to run a quarter-mile to reach a bathroom for African Americans and her colleagues won't even drink from the same coffee pot as her. Nor is she allowed to put her name to reports on which she has done most of the work.

Meanwhile, her friend and colleague Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) struggles to obtain a formal promotion to be the supervisor of the computing department — a role she is already doing. When faced with the arrival of an 'International Business Machine' in the department, knows that she and her team must become programming experts if they are to avoid becoming redundant following the automation of the computing role. Then there is Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), who shows talent in engineering but who cannot become an engineer until she has taken a course at a school that only accepts white students.

Despite being inspired by the lives of three brilliant women who made hugely important contribution at NASA to computing, mathematics, physics, engineering and programming, it is unfortunate, then, that Hidden Figures isn't more inspiring. The performances were good — Spencer was as compelling as usual and Henson, in a quieter role, was also very watchable — but the film didn't seem to know which story to tell so it told them all: women in science, race relations in the 1960s, the Russian space race, and so on. And, of course, there had to be a romance sub-plot. The script seemed hackneyed and just rather ordinary — Powell's John Glenn was particularly grating (maybe that was intentional), but the dialogue felt clunky at times, despite the best efforts of the actors.

At 2h07, the film also ran slightly too long, and the pacing was a little off: it took a while to get going and the majority of the dramatic tension was crammed into the final few scenes. That said, Hidden Figures is an easy-going and entertaining, if unmemorable, film and, if you don't think you'll get around to reading Shetterly's book, I would recommend the movie. However, if you want to know the real story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, check out the book as well (or instead).

Martin Scorsese's new film Silence was a bit of a grim choice of movie for New Year's Day but after my reduced cinema attendance last year, I wanted to get 2017 off to the right start.

In the film, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver play Portuguese missionaries (Rodrigues and Garupe, respectively) who journey to Japan in the 1640s to find out whether their former mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), has indeed recanted his Christian faith under torture, as rumour suggests. The two men refuse to believe that this could be true and, accompanied by a jittery Japanese guide named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), they sneak into the country, which has forbidden Jesuit priests from entering for almost a decade. They are heartened to discover a village with a large population of secret Christian converts who are delighted by the arrival of the two priests, even though concealing Jesuits carries a stiff penalty.

Rodrigues' faith is constantly challenged as he must first watch from afar as exposed converts are tortured and executed in slow, brutal ways, and is later captured by Inoue, the Inquisitor (Issei Ogata), who is trying to stamp out all vestiges of Christianity in Japan. Rodrigues dreams of martyrdom but Inoue has learned from past experiences of the negative consequences of executing Jesuit priests in brutal ways and instead initiates a long, psychological battle with Rodrigues, using tactic after tactic to make the priest renounce his faith — outwardly, at least, if not in his heart — and end his efforts to spread Christianity throughout Japan.

Silence isn't always an easy film to watch: it's slow-burning, often brutal and with an ending that is drawn out for so long that it loses some of its effectiveness. It is, however, ambitious, thought-provoking and accomplished, and Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is simply stunning. The Japanese cast — particularly Ogata and Tadanobu Asano (who plays Rodrigues' interpreter) — are great, but it is Garfield's central performance that holds the film together as his character struggles with his guilt over the suffering of the Japanese converts, the "terrible weight of silence" of his god, and his own delusions of grandeur.

Throughout the film, Rodrigues sees himself as a Jesus figure — he is literally ridden into a town on a donkey in one scene; in another, delirious with thirst, he drinks from a stream, his reflection merging with that of the portrait of Jesus he has always held in his mind. The tortures inflicted by the Inquisitor's men are cruel but as Inoue notes, Rodrigues has the power to stop the suffering and prevent the death of these people simply by recanting. "They're dying for you," one character tells him later in the film. It's easy, too, to sympathise with floppy-haired, doe-eyed Garfield's character and yet, although he believes he is doing the right thing, motivated by the most worthy of causes, he and Garupe arrive in Japan, the last two Jesuit missionaries, an "army of two", expecting to simply change the faith of an entire country.

I've liked most of Scorsese's films although loved very few (controversially, The Departed is one of my favourites) and it's hard to believe that he directed this right after The Wolf of Wall Street (talk about going from the ridiculous to the sublime). Clearly, though, Silence has long been a passion project for Scorsese and that really comes across during the film. Although you need to be in the right frame of mind to see it, Silence is a serious and sad but very engrossing film and is well worth a watch.

My cinema visits have declined again in 2016, thanks to a combination of longer days in the office and busy weekends either in London or abroad. I only watched 54 films this year and only half of those were at the cinema. It was only a few years ago that I was going to the cinema twice a week, although it was cheaper to do so then and I lived very close to multiple cinemas. On the plus side, these reduced viewing figures made picking out my top five films rather easier than last year.

1. Arrival. I was always going to enjoy a film whose central character is a female linguist, but it wasn't a given that I would like it as much as Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, which stars Amy Adams as an American linguist who is tasked with communicating with a pair of alien beings that have arrived in a strange spacecraft that has landed in Montana. The film is so much more complex and clever than this brief plot description suggests, however. It is powerfully moving, lovingly made and cleverly constructed. I felt emotionally drained when I left the screening and yet although its 1h56 runtime was just about right, it left me craving more, which, in this age of 3h30 epics, is something I rarely feel about a film.

2. Nocturnal Animals. Without wishing to sound like the London chapter of the Amy Adams fan club, I thought she was terrific in Tom Ford's second picture too, although her self-absorbed and often shallow character in Nocturnal Animals contrasted starkly with her performance in Arrival. Like Villeneuve's film, though, Nocturnal Animals' clever and precisely choreographed structure and hugely compelling plot kept me gripped until its understated but powerful conclusion. Nocturnal Animals is a visually stunning film, but one that isn't often easy to watch; rather, it's harrowing and sad, and with the theme of vengeance featuring as prominently as in the fifth film on this list. With great supporting performances, particularly from Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ford's movie is very accomplished indeed.

3. Manchester by the Sea. Speaking of harrowing... Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, which comes out in the UK on 13 January, is filled with physical and emotional pain. It isn't so much heart-wrenching as heart-pummelling as it gradually tells the story of a solitary janitor (Casey Affleck) who returns to his hometown after a tragedy in the family. His return to the town awakens many of his barely acknowledged (let alone defeated) demons. Although the film could be more concise, Affleck's central performance as the broken, heartbroken man holds it all together. Just make sure that you have something comforting and light-hearted queued up to watch after the emotional battering you will probably receive.

4. Hail, Caesar! Several people walked out of the screening of the Coen brothers' latest film that I attended in Portland and if you are not a fan of the Coens, you probably won't be too fond of this anthology of wackiness set in 1950s Hollywood. It's light on plot — or, rather, it's light on coherent plot — but is wonderfully funny and a delight to watch. I saw the film almost 11 months ago and "would that it were so simple" remains one of my most common ripostes.

5. The Revenant. Back in early January, before 2016 became too bleak, The Revenant was a tough film to watch and I suspect it would be even harder to watch now. Alejandro González Iñárritu's epic tale of vengeance is as brutal as it is beautiful, with strong performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. You need to be in the right frame of mind — and to have access to as large a screen as possible — but this powerful piece of filmmaking has stayed with me throughout the year.

Bonus: La La Land. OK, so Damien Chazelle's relentlessly joyful depiction of love and ambition in a technicolour Los Angeles didn't quite make it into my top five. But as someone who has little interest in musicals, I was bowled over by how much I enjoyed the film, and I still can't get the haunting, lullaby-like refrain City of Stars out of my head. The chemistry between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling is remarkable and La La Land is a delightful film. The movie is released in the UK on 12 January. Go to see it!

The full list of films I watched this year is as follows (re-watches are in italics):

- Joy
- The Danish Girl
- Mad Max: Fury Road (TV)
- The Revenant
- Oldboy (TV)
- The Hateful Eight
- Room
- The Big Short
- 99 Homes (TV)
- Looper (TV)
- Spotlight
- Trumbo
- Amy (plane)
- Ricki and the Flash (plane)
- Hail, Caesar!
- Eddie the Eagle
- Truth
- Rams
- Force Majeure (TV)
- Maryland
- High-Rise
- Midnight Special
- Lost in Translation (TV)
- Chocolat (TV)
- Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (plane)
- Edge of Tomorrow (TV)
- 45 Years (plane)
- Hannah and Her Sisters (TV)
- A Most Wanted Man (TV)
- The Talented Mr Ripley (TV)
- Tommy Boy (TV)
- Clue (TV)
- The Juror (TV)
- The Nice Guys
- Jason Bourne
- Deux jours, une nuit (TV)
- The Dark Knight (TV)
- Manchester by the Sea
- Sully
- The Girl on the Train
- Nocturnal Animals
- Free Fire
- Money Monsters (plane)
- The Accountant
- A United Kingdom
- La La Land
- Pan's Labyrinth (TV)
- Arrival
- Victoria (TV)
- The Edge of Seventeen
- Joy (TV)
- Serendipity (TV)
- Solace (TV)
- The Terminator (TV)

Despite the great acclaim it has been getting, I wanted to dislike Damien Chazelle's latest film La La Land. I am not, I should note, a great fan of musicals and the opening scene in which an epic traffic jam turns into an upbeat spectacle as drivers clad in colourful clothes leap out of their cars and sing and dance as they celebrate another day of sun in Los Angeles. Suffice to say that it grated.

Image ©La La Land

La La Land is a classic boy-meets-girl tale in which barista/actress Mia (Emma Stone) and musician-for-high/would-be jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) struggle to balance their budding careers with their nascent romance. The story itself isn't terribly original and yet before long, it had won me over — round about the time Sebastian grudgingly plays Take on Me in an '80s-style band at a party (for the A-Ha song is, surprisingly, my Achilles heel).

Part of the reason the film is such a pleasure to watch is the chemistry between Stone and Gosling. The scenes that they share are mesmerising, their exchanges charming but with enough just enough punch, although both individual performances are also strong. Stone's Mia, in particular, begins as something of a cliché or a cipher — she reminded me a lot of Betty in David Lynch's wonderful Mulholland Dr. (which would make a good double-bill with La La Land), from the giant Ingrid Bergman poster next to her bed and her love of Paris to her cheery optimism. As the film progresses and cynicism and self-doubt begin to set in after more and more auditions end poorly, she becomes at least somewhat more like Diane.

Sebastian too struggles with his dream of opening a jazz bar on the site of a samba/tapas joint that infuriates him ("pick one!"). Instead, he is forced to take gigs playing Christmas music in restaurants to an audience of indifferent diners until someone from his past makes him a tempting and potentially life-changing offer — one that may force him to choose between Mia and his career.

In musicals, I often find myself wishing the songs would end and that we will get back to the plot. This wasn't the case with La La Land and indeed, I was unable to get one of the songs — the beautiful, haunting City of Stars — out of my head for over a week after seeing the film. Although I wasn't quite sure that the few Sliding Doors-like moments worked perfectly, I did enjoy the movie's seasonal structure — the joke being that every season looks the same in LA.

La La Land is escapism, pure and simple. Chazelle has captured a relentlessly joyful, technicolour version of LA that harks back to a golden age of cinema and indeed of the United States. Without wishing to get too political, I should probably note that I saw the film at a preview last month on the night before the US election and it felt comforting and uplifting. I suspect, however, that if I had watched it two nights later, I might have had less patience for its cheery blend of optimism and nostalgia. Nonetheless, if La La Land can win over a cynical musical-skeptic like me, it's a strong sign that Damien Chazelle has created an extraordinary film, as is the suite of Golden Globe nominations it earned earlier this week.

La La Land is out now in US cinemas and will be released in the UK on 13 January 2017.

Amma Asante's new film A United Kingdom opens in 1947: just two years after the end of World War Two and London is finding its feet again. A young man and woman meet at a dance, fall in love and decide to marry. It's the oldest story in the book — what could be more ordinary? Yet Ruth (Rosamund Pike) and Seretse (David Oyelowo) are no ordinary couple and theirs is a most extraordinary true story.

Asante's film is a beautiful and powerful portrayal of a particularly shameful period in Britain's recent history in which Ruth is the daughter of a lower-middle-class salesman and who works in a typing pool. Seretse is the heir to Bechuanaland, the southern African country that would eventually become Botswana but at the time a protectorate of the United Kingdom. They meet after Seretse finishes his studies at Oxford and shortly before his uncle calls him back to his homeland to take up his birthright as king of Bechuanaland. The happy young couple decide to marry against the wishes of both families — and against the wishes of the British government, whose interests in this matter range from murky to downright questionable.

Still, optimistically — naively, perhaps — they press forward, hoping that their families and countries will come to accept their marriage once they have returned to Bechuanaland. Instead, what follows is a number of years of struggle, separation, courage and belief that love will indeed conquer all.

A United Kingdom is rich in its contrasts: golden, sun-parched African landscapes and grey, rainy London streets, accompanied by Patrick Doyle's haunting score. But the film's beauty goes far beyond its surface and its striking cinematography. It's a compelling story, with Oyelowo a magnetic and quietly commanding screen presence as always. Pike's role is, in some ways, more understated but it is to the actress's credit that Ruth's strengths shine through, particularly when she is forced to adapt to life in Bechuanaland in ways she had never anticipated. Her accent wavers at times — from Lardarn to upper crust — but this may stem from Ruth's own struggle to find her place in the world of which she was once so confident.

I'd like to say that the British government characters — particularly Jack Davenport's slimy Alistair Canning and Tom Felton's smug Rufus Lancaster — were caricatures (never has the phrase, "would you care for sherry?" made me rage more at the big screen), but alas, I suspect they are all too accurate.

Asante is rapidly establishing herself as a very accomplished director. As with her previous film, Belle, A United Kingdom is a complex but fascinating story about love, history, politics and race. It isn't a 'worthy' film in the negative sense of the word; it's just an engrossing, inspiring and very well-made film

"So, how many languages do you speak?" As a former student of linguistics, I have been asked this question a lot. The answer is: three fluently (English, French and Italian), one well (Spanish) and two a little (German and Japanese) but, as I would often explain, linguistics isn't about learning as many languages as possible, but the scientific study of language — how it evolved, how it is structured and how it varies. The cliché of the linguist as the polyglot is the biggest misstep of Denis Villeneuve's new film Arrival, but something likely only to irritate linguists, who are, in any case, too busy enjoying their discipline's moment in the spotlight to care too much; besides, there are a few good linguistics in-jokes too.

As usual, I've tried to avoid any major spoilers in this review, but this is one of those films that is best experienced by going in knowing as little as possible about it, so please consider coming back after you've watched the film if you would like to go into it with a blank slate. Suffice to say, though, that it was beautiful and moving, thoughtful and complex, and one of my favourite films of the year. The Contact connection is an obvious one but it reminded me more of Christopher Nolan's excellent Interstellar in its themes and tone.

The film's titular arrival is that of twelve huge ovoid spacecraft in random locations across the globe, prompting world leaders to try to work out who or what is inside them and what they want. Some nations react with suspicion, while others send in the scientists, including theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). The US military also sends in the country's top linguist, Louise Banks (Amy Adams) — or, at least, the top linguist who already has the necessary security clearance. Handily, she is also fluent in a wide array of languages.

Banks's task is to find out why the alien visitors are here. Unsurprisingly, she is apprehensive when she first enters the alien craft that has landed in Montana and the reveal of the alien beings — shadowy seven-legged cephalopods — is teasingly slow. After a brief attempt to crack the heptapods' 'spoken' language, Banks demonstrates writing, eventually encouraging the pair — whom Donnelly dubs Abbott and Costello — to reveal their own form of visual communication: complex, ephemeral ink patterns that resemble coffee rings. With Louise's knowledge of language and some hefty computational processing power, the team make very gradual progress in understanding what Abbott and Costello have to say.

At least, so they think; without any common points of reference, how could another being understand that if I point at myself and say 'Bex', I am referring to 'Bex the coffee blogger' rather than 'woman', 'human' or 'living creature', for example? There is a crucial difference, then, between the heptapods saying they have weapons and saying they have a gift. One of the film's central linguistic themes relates to linguistic relativity whereby the language you speak shapes how you perceive the world. Without saying too much about the language or communication system of the heptapods, the perception of time is a critical component of it, and this also becomes key to understanding the film.

While Banks endeavours to crack her toughest linguistic puzzle yet, she is also struggling with events in her personal life, which first surface in the film's opening sequence — an emotional and powerful montage that is accompanied by Max Richter's haunting and apt On the Nature of Daylight. And really, despite its alien catalysts, Arrival is a film about humanity, compassion and understanding. Adams is magnificent as Banks — empathetic, warm and convincing as the unlikely heroine, she manages to turn her character's inherent sadness into her biggest strength.

Villeneuve's film is cleverly structured and compelling to watch, particularly as the final pennies begin to drop. Like Interstellar, it is the kind of film that overwhelms you at the time and then stays with you as you gradually process what you have seen and experienced. Although quite different from Villeneuve's last film, Sicario, Arrival does have a lot in common with his 2011 movie Incendies, where the search for truth, identity and meaning also features prominently.

Although Armie Hammer appears in both Nocturnal Animals, which I saw on Friday night, and Free Fire, which was last night's BFI London Film Festival closing night gala, the two films have little else in common. It's a sign, perhaps, of Hammer's versatility, and I enjoyed them both a great deal.



Free Fire is the latest film from Ben Wheatley and if you don't like movies that involve a lot of blood, violence and swearing, it probably won't be your cup of tea. However, the 90-minute shoot-'em-up, which unfolds entirely inside a warehouse near Boston in the 1970s, is tightly edited, thrilling and, frankly, hilarious.



The set-up is reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs and the plot is thus: Justine (Brie Larson) arranges for ne'er-do-wells Ord (Armie Hammer) and Vern (Sharlto Copley — pictured in my second red carpet snap above) to sell some weapons to Frank (Michael Smiley) and Chris (Cillian Murphy). Both gangs show up at a disused warehouse and before they have even got to the stage of trying to screw one another over, gunfire breaks out between two of the more junior gang members (Sam Riley and Jack Reynor). Before long, it's a full-on bloodbath and, given the number of bullet wounds within the first 20 minutes, I did wonder whether any of the characters would live to see the halfway point of the film.

There are all sorts of surprises and betrayals along the way. Will anyone end up with the suitcase full of dosh? Will anyone even survive? Do we even want any of the characters to survive? These questions miss the point somewhat: no one has any particularly redeeming features and it doesn't matter who, if anyone, 'wins' because the film, in its dark and gory way, is hugely entertaining. It's also very stylish with a great soundtrack and some very '70s hairstyles and costumes.

The characters think that they are so smart, cool and hard, but in fact, Wheatley frequently shows them for the greedy, impulsive fools that they really are, and there is a strong sub-text of irony and self-knowing running throughout the film. There is a particularly brilliant use of John Denver's Annie's Song in one scene that in itself generated much laughter in the audience. Again and again (and not for the first time in a Ben Wheatley film), we have to ask ourselves: should we be enjoying this quite so much?

Copley, in particular, steals every scene he is in — so much so that I was desperately hoping for Vern to make it through to the end. Vern gets all the best lines, but Copley's comic timing and delivery are so impeccable that he turns even lines like, "redeem yourself and get that case", into something so funny that you question whether you should really be laughing quite so hysterically amid such intense violence. Hammer's performance is also very impressive. His character, Ord, originally seems to be the straight man, but as the film progresses, his funny, stoner side comes out too, and he too has wonderful comic timing. Murphy is as good as always, conveying so much with just a glance, and Larson, as the only woman in the film, more than holds her own against all the Y-chromosomes.

Last night, Wheatley was joined on stage at the Odeon Leicester Square by most of the cast (there are only 14 people in the cast) — Larson was the notable absence — and from the way they were jostling one another, laughing and taking selfies, you could tell how much fun they had making the film, which was actually filmed in Brighton. I won a ticket to the gala in the BFI ballot (having already spent all my pennies on three other tickets, I still felt I couldn't turn it down) and I was really glad to be in the front row. It was a great end to a wonderful London Film Festival experience.

After tonight's UK premiere of Nocturnal Animals at the London Film Festival last night, I saw someone tweeting that Tom Ford's talents are wasted as a designer. I don't agree with that and yet it is remarkable that Nocturnal Animals is only Ford's second picture. It is literally breathtaking, beautiful and devastating with a superb performances from Amy Adams, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.


Before heading into the cinema, I managed to snap a few red carpet shots, including of Mark Kermode interviewing Ford and Taylor-Johnson; co-star Armie Hammer and his wife; and the arrival of Amy Adams (wearing Tom Ford, of course).




They were joined on the stage by one of the young co-stars, Ellie Bamber, to introduce the film along with London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart. Ford didn't say much about the film: "it should speak for itself," he explained.




I hadn't read much about Nocturnal Animals beyond the description in the LFF programme — and after reading the blurbs about dozens of films, I didn't remember a great deal. This actually worked in my favour as Nocturnal Animals is the kind of film best experienced from a blank slate. Although, as usual I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, it's hard to discuss this film without going into some of the details about the plot so you may wish to click away now if you want to see this film completely fresh.

The opening scene is one of the most arresting I've ever seen: visual striking, it is at once brash and enigmatic, beautiful and sad — much like the film itself. It turns out that the sequence relates to the new opening at Susan (Adams)'s gallery. She and her businessman husband Hutton (Hammer) live in a beautiful house in Los Angeles and appear to have a perfect life and yet, she confesses to her friend at a party, "I feel ungrateful not to be happy." Her friend asks if she still loves Hutton but she never gets the chance to answer.

The following morning, Susan receives a package in the mail from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) — a proof copy of his first novel, entitled Nocturnal Animals. "I didn't know he could write," sniffs Hutton, before heading off to New York. Susan, meanwhile, begins to devour the book, and the film splits into three at this point, alternating between Susan's life in LA and her reactions to the novel; the dark story-within-the-story of the novel; and flashbacks to the earlier years of Susan and Edward's relationship.

In the novel, for reasons that remain unclear, Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal), his wife Laura (Isla Fisher) and daughter India (Bamber) drive off in their car through rural Texas late at night. But, after a terrifying car chase, they are driven off the road by a gang of young thugs headed up by Ray (a terrifying Taylor-Johnson), who clearly have far worse things than carjacking in mind. Later, Detective Bobby Andes (an understated but brilliant Shannon) must try to get to the bottom of the crime — and to ensure that justice is served.

Although the tone is more languorous than fast-paced, Nocturnal Animals remains supremely gripping as we try to unravel the various mysteries of the film and determine exactly what point Edward's novel is trying to make. Fragments of dialogue — sometimes even single words — seep from the flashbacks into Edward's novel and cause present-day Susan substantial pain. Watching her react to chapters of the novel immediately after we have, although with a very different perspective, is narratively very interesting. Adams excels in this challenging role, conveying so much just with her eyes. There are also some fabulous cameos from the likes of Michael Sheen (Susan's friend's gay husband), Jena Malone (a fellow museum board member whose 'creative' outfit trumps even her Hunger Games costumes), and Laura Linney as Susan's overbearing mother ("Just wait," she threatens. "We all eventually turn into our mothers.").

Visually, the film is as gorgeous as you would expect from Tom Ford, cutting from the twinkling lights and modernist architecture of LA to sunrise in the Texas desert. Abel Korzeniowski's haunting score could have slipped right out of a 1950s film noir and is the perfect complement. I left Nocturnal Animals feeling emotionally bruised (in need of a stiff whiskey, like Susan) and yet wishing I could watch the film again; I think I would get even more from it the second time. Complex, beautiful and tragic, I think it might make my top five films of the year.

Much as I usually dislike spending time in Leicester Square, the BFI London Film Festival is one notable exception. As soon as I arrive for my first film gala each year, I find myself swept up in the excitement of the festival. I booked three tickets this year and then was pleased to find I had also won a ticket to the closing night gala, Free Fire, in the ballot. Usually, the events I attend are split between the Vue cinema and the big, showy Odeon Leicester Square, but this year, they are all in the latter. On Saturday night, I went to two events, including the surprise film, which I've already blogged about. First up, though, was the European premiere of Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea.


I timed my arrival well and spotted both the gorgeous Michelle Williams and the film's lead actor Casey Affleck on the red carpet. Naturally, my LFF excitement levels immediately rose quite dramatically.





I had managed to book a seat in the third row — a little closer to the screen than I usually prefer, but it did mean that when Lonergan, Williams, Affleck and several producers took to the stage to introduce the film, I had an excellent view. Talking about the writing process — and the difference between writing and directing — Lonergan noted that it was amazing how you could be writing a film on a boat outside Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small town on the Massachusetts North Shore, and then a year later you're making a film about a boat outside Manchester-by-the-Sea. "It's the kind of film people should see," Lonergan added. "Even if you don't like it."






Well, although I thought that Lonergan's last film Margaret was interesting but flawed, I was very taken by Manchester by the Sea, a heart-wrenching family drama that leaves its audience as battered as the boat that gets so much screen time. Affleck stars as Lee Chandler, who is working as a janitor in Boston. He is good at his job but hates small talk and yet, as we see in a serious of vignettes, he is forced to try to listen to his clients' personal problems as well as to try to fix their plumbing. Some of these interactions are quite amusing (Lee overhearing a client ask her friend if it's wrong to fantasise about the man fixing her toilet), but the overall impression is that Lee is not a happy man. He seems to have particular problems letting people get close to him.

Then, a phone call bearing tragic news brings him back to his hometown, the eponymous Manchester by the Sea, where he must take care of his teenage nephew Patrick (the excellent Lucas Hedges). Uncomfortable in his father-figure role, Lee struggles to offer Patrick the support he needs, especially as his return to Manchester has awakened all sorts of demons from his past. Through a series of masterfully constructed flashbacks, Lonergan gradually reveals what happened to Lee. It isn't fair to say that he is reflecting on happier times — one has to wonder whether Lee is even capable of being happy — but he has a good relationship with his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and his three young children, plenty of friends and a supportive older brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler). So where did it all go wrong?

Although Manchester by the Sea could benefit from a little tightening up, the story kept me gripped, partly owing to Lonergan's subtle show-don't-tell storytelling techniques: for example, the recurring presence of Lee's three framed photographs, whose contents are never revealed, and the origin of the name of the family boat. In less skilful hands, these plot details would have been handled through clumsy exposition, but they feel all the more poignant here. Lonergan's treatment of sound is also excellent: from the loud, jarring organ music, to the mobile phone vibrating during a funeral, to the complete lack of audible dialogue during the funeral scene itself, leaving the audience to imagine what might have been said during these critical interchanges.

It is also a very visceral film, both emotionally and physically. A lot of the characters are in pain — there's a particularly nasty moment where Patrick bashes his head on the freezer door; we see it coming but are powerless to stop it, just like the emotional deluge that is about to break free. But despite the dark themes, Manchester by the Sea has some great comic moments. There are some funny lines — Hedges, in particular, has great comic timing — that help to lighten the tension.

But it's Affleck who holds all of this together. His Lee is broken-hearted and just plain broken: he wants to do the right thing but isn't sure that he can anymore. Afleck flips with ease from the lighter quips ("those are the Misery Islands — where your aunt Randi and I got married") to frustrated bouts of hot-headedness (he has a nasty habit of punching people in bars). This is a very on-the-nose portrayal of a man who has lost (almost) all that is dear to him and for whom life holds little attraction. His chemistry with both Williams, who is terrific in her very limited screen time, and Hedges what could otherwise be a brutal and devastating film a strong emotional core.