Six films I'll be giving a shit about in November

INTERSTELLAR







I'll be honest, I'm looking forward to this a lot less now that I've actually seen it. A loose medley of Red Dwarf skits with all the fun removed, it aims for the stars but its narrative inelegance keeps its feet nailed to the earth. (7th)



NOVEMBER MAN




 

Now you might think that November Man looks like complete shit, but look at the evidence: Disney are opening it

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal cuts a slim, skeletal figure in Nightcrawler as scruple-blind newshound Lou Bloom, a walking moral and ethical vacuum hunting for the most graphic crime scenes he can find and film. Harvesting images of dead, mangled victims of car crashes and shootings in order to flog the footage to Rene Russo's desperate news director, Bloom stalks the LA night fuelled by the teachings of a

Felony

I've got all the time in the world for Joel Edgerton, part of Animal Kingdom's stunning ensemble cast, co-writer of The Rover and surely about to go global as a blinged-up, eyeliner-wearing Rhamses in Ridley Scott's forthcoming Exodus: Gods And Kings. That's why I sought out Felony, despite it being a straight-to-DVD shelf-botherer in the UK over a year after it premiered at the Toronto Film

LFF 2014: The rest of the fest

Apparently the 2014 London Film Festival ended on Sunday, but we're still truckin' here at The Incredible Suit. Actually we're not, my eyes have melted and my bottom is moulded to the exact shape of seat O16 in the Odeon Leicester Square.

So in order to put my festival coverage out of your misery, I've rounded up the final five films in one convenient, easily-ignorable post so you don't have

LFF 2014:Foxcatcher

There's still no sign of the long-awaited Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks film powerslamming into cinemas any time soon, so in the meantime wrestling fans are going to have to make do with Foxcatcher, a true story even more alarming than that of a 26-stone man called Shirley who wore a leotard for a living. In this tale, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo play Mark and Dave Schultz, two

LFF 2014:Fury

"Don't get too close to anyone," Brad Pitt's Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier warns wet new recruit Norman (Logan Lerman), as the latter begins his tour of duty at the arse end of the 20th century's most extreme exercise in population control. Given that Norman's about to spend the rest of his war wedged inside a sweaty metal box no bigger than a VW Beetle with four other men for whom soap and

LFF 2014:Whiplash

What does it take to be the best of the best? Innate genius? Passion? Endless hours of practice? Sacrifice? Being pushed by a mentor who believes in you? According to Whiplash, the answer is all of the above, but the most important thing is to be viciously abused by that mentor until you're driven to the very limits of your mental and physical capabilities. Few people are prepared to put up

LFF 2014:The Salvation

Danish writer/director Kristian Levring is familiar with all the iconography of the western but none of the nuance, as he displays in this cackhandedly abysmal collection of hollow clichés and atrocious dialogue. Mads Mikkelsen plays a Dane in 1871 America who's out for revenge on those who murdered his family, and that's it. Potential plot threads go nowhere, the ropey CGI threatens to fall

LFF 2014:Mr. Turner

I'll be honest: as far as the visual arts go, I kind of hit a brick wall after cinema. Painting really isn't my forte; I'd be hard pressed to tell a Monet from a Manet and only recently expressed an interest in visiting the National Gallery because I wanted to see the bench where James Bond and Q sat and stared at a picture of "a bloody big ship" in Skyfall. So it was with some trepidation

LFF 2014:White God

12 Years A Slave meets Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes by way of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey in this barking Hungarian canine uprising film that puts the "der" into Border Collie. When teenager Lili's loveless Pop abandons her lovely pup Hagen in the street, it's the beginning of an odyssey for both pooch and pal. Like a cute, furry Solomon Northup, Hagen finds himself sold from owner

LFF 2014:The Imitation Game

Mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing's single greatest achievement (although there were plenty of others) was cracking the German Enigma decoding machine. Did you get the name of that decoding machine? The ENIGMA. It's important you get that. Because guess what? Not only was Turing trying to crack the Enigma... HE WAS AN ENIGMA. I know, right?! But don't worry if you haven't worked out

LFF 2014:Ne Me Quitte Pas

Bob and Marcel are two Belgian alcoholics stumbling aimlessly through life, losing their families, their dignity and their balance - but never each other - in this none-more-vérité documentary. Bleak but tragically comedic, it's a tough watch because for all the pair's blustery talk about one day committing joint suicide, you can literally see them killing themselves on screen over the course

LFF 2014:The Duke Of Burgundy

If there's one thing I've learned to expect from a Peter Strickland film, it's the unexpected. I was surprised in Katalin Varga by a farmer in a neck brace and very small pants; in Berberian Sound Studio I did not predict that the film would melt to reveal a documentary on the English countryside, and before watching The Duke Of Burgundy I was unprepared for an end crawl which mentions every

LFF 2014:Jamie Marks Is Dead

The netherworld between death and the afterlife becomes a metaphor for confused adolescence, as if that's a new and exciting idea, in this frustratingly obtuse YA adaptation. Cameron Monaghan plays a charisma-free teen we're meant to invest in, Morgan Saylor (even more irritatingly brattish than she is as Homeland's Dana) is his hot-and-cold-blowing apparent love interest, and Noah Silver the

LFF 2014:10,000 KM (aka Long Distance)

Director Carlos Marques-Marcet's first feature is the sharply observed story of two Barcelona-based lovers divided by the titular ten megametres when Alex (Natalia Tena) lands a year-long work placement in LA. She and Sergi (David Verdaguer) conduct their long-distance relationship online, and everything goes as smoothly as you'd expect, i.e. not very.

An elegantly structured two-hander,

LFF 2014:My Old Lady

Kevin Kline plays a failed writer, recovering alcoholic and triple divorcé who thinks he's inherited the answer to all his money problems when his father leaves him a sprawling Paris apartment in his will. Due to an archaic French property law, however, he actually inherits a 2,400 Euro monthly debt and a plainspoken nonagenarian (Maggie Smith), and the apartment's closets are heaving with