Reviewed by Lee Hill
Francois Truffaut will never be entirely forgiven by some of the country’s film buffs for saying that British cinema was a contradiction in terms. For every bold visionary like Michael Powell, Nicolas Roeg, Derek Jarman or Lynne Ramsay, there are countless directors whose plodding efficiency and middle brow choice of subject can make one long for the personal signature of a Richard Donner (yes, he did churn out those Lethal Weapon films, but we did get The Omen and Superman). In recent years, the London Film Festival, doubtlessly for a complex of political reasons, often opens and closes its otherwise eclectic programme with the latest paint-by-numbers example of a homegrown literary adaptation, docudrama or biopic that is often the filmic equivalent of “please stand for the national anthem.”
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