“Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard’s soaring story of love, loss and killer whales, was named best picture at the London Film Festival on Saturday.
The movie is a thriller-cum-melodrama about the unlikely relationship between a bare-knuckle boxer (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a whale trainer, played by Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard, who suffers a tragic workplace accident.
The president of the award jury, British playwright David Hare, praised it as “a film full of heart, violence and love.”
French filmmaker Audiard won the same award at the London festival in 2009 for his prison drama “A Prophet.”
American director Benh Zeitlin took the best debut feature prize with his atmospheric bayou saga “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Juror Hannah McGill praised the “daringly vast, richly detailed” film, which has won wide praise since its Sundance Film Festival debut earlier this year.
The trophy for best British newcomer went to Sally El Hosaini for “My Brother the Devil,” the story of British-Egyptian brothers struggling with conflicting loyalties and identities in modern-day London. The best documentary prize went to Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” an investigation of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church.
Director Tim Burton and actress Helena Bonham Carter — real-life partners as well as creative collaborators — received career honors known as British Film Institute Fellowships during an awards ceremony at London’s Banqueting House.
Founded in 1957 to show the best of the world’s cinema to a British audience, the London festival has in recent years tried to carve out a place on the international movie calendar with bigger pictures, more glittering stars and more high-profile awards.
Highlights of the 12-day festival included Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo,” Michael Haneke’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Amour,” Rolling Stones documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” and Roger Michell’s “Hyde Park on Hudson,” a comedy-drama with Bill Murray as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Review: “Novocaine,” A Bloody Action-Comedy From Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Nathan Caine may not be able to feel pain, as the tagline for the new action-comedy "Novocaine" reads, but the same does not apply to audiences.
Although he doesn't scream when his leg is impaled with an arrow or when he sticks his hand in a vat of frying oil, you might. I certainly did. Out loud. In a theater. With other people. There may have been some phrases uttered entirely involuntarily too. Were other people reacting in the same way, I wonder? I couldn't hear them over my own groans. Hooray for the communal experience, I guess?
This is, in some ways, a film for people who thought John Wick wasn't stabby enough. It delights in the relentless mutilation of its hero, a regular guy (played by Jack Quaid ) with a rare condition that has rendered him immune from feeling any sort of discomfort to bodily harm. Unlike such high concept premises as "Crank," congenital insensitivity to pain analgesia (or CIPA) is actually real. But it's not exactly a superpower, Nate explains. He can still die; it just might be because he hasn't emptied his bladder in many hours. Or because he's accidentally bitten his tongue off eating a sandwich. These are real concerns of his.
His entire existence is devoted to preventing these kinds of crises, mostly through tried-and-true baby proofing techniques like using tennis balls on sharp corners. Like Kelly Ripa before a show, he only consumes "non-chewing food."
Work is stable and dull as an assistant manager at a bank. And dating is out of the question; He spends most of his free time playing online video games. Quaid, even with his two movie star parents, is somehow believable as this cautious introvert, though everything is played with a light touch and a wink. The movie, written by Lars Jacobson and... Read More