13 Assassins

Here's what to expect from the 120 minutes (minus credits) of Takashi Miike's new samurai smackdown, 13 Assassins:

Six out of ten.

The 54th London Film Festival: Ten Things To Maybe See If You Want, I Don't Know, It's Up To You

Having spent the weekend poring over the programme for the American Express American Airlines Mofilm Windows 7 Renault Jameson Empire Lovefilm Vue Green & Black's London Film Festival (apols to the sponsors I didn't have space for), it's painfully apparent that this is a good year for intimate depictions of family life / the horrors of war / people struggling with their sexuality, not to mention five-and-a-half-hour biopics of terrorists. All well and good, but what else ya got?

Well, ignoring the obvious (Never Let Me Go, 127 Hours, Black Swan etc), here's just ten of the flicks I think I'll go and see if the elusive LFF Press Pass comes my way; if not I suppose I'll just have to pay, though that hardly seems right.

Archive Gala: The Great White Silence 

Restored footage of one of history's most tragic wastes of time, Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole. The kind of thing that makes you truly question yourself when you use the phrase "Brrr, I'm freezing".

Film On The Square: Submarine

Written and directed by The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade, starring Paddy Considine in a mullet and featuring the words "desirable eczematous classmate" in the BFI's write-up. Who wouldn't want to see that?

Film On The Square: 13 Assassins

A retired samurai has to gather a team of hard-nuts to overthrow an evil warlord in 19th Century Japan. Exactly like The Expendables,

but (I'm guessing) 100% less shit.

New British Cinema: Edge

Character drama about a bunch of lost souls in a hotel located on the edge (geddit?) of a disintegrating clifftop. Features amazing wallpaper.

New British Cinema: Upside Down

Yes, it's a music documentary, but sadly no, it's not about the 1990s boy band who hit the heady heights of No. 11 in the UK charts with "Change Your Mind". It is instead about the rise of indie record label Creation, responsible for some of the songs that CHANGED YOUR LIFE. If you're me.

French Revolutions: In Your Hands

Nobody does taut, intense, claustrophobic, psychological thrillers like the French, and when it stars Britain's Most Famous Bi-lingual Actress Who Was In Four Weddings And A Funeral, who could say non?

Cinema Europa: The Temptation Of St Tony

I know literally nobody who's ever said "I'm not interested in a completely mental Estonian-Swedish-Finnish film about severed hands, dead dogs, gravity-defying priests and chainsaw-wielding surgeons". NOBODY.

World Cinema: Catfish

I'm there.

World Cinema: The Parking Lot Movie

The documentary that may go some way to explaining why Steve Guttenberg's character in Police Academy hated the customers in his car park so much. And if that's all it achieves, it's succeeded.

Treasures From The Archive:

Man With A Movie Camera

The film I was made to read the most about without actually seeing

as a student arrives at the LFF in all its 1920s Russian experimental glory.

If you've ever enjoyed a special effect of any kind, watching this

would appear to be the respectful thing to do before commenting on

the blue guys in Avatar.

Obviously there are a bajillion more films worth seeing this year, and it's entirely possible that some from this list will be complete cack, but when else are you going to get the chance to find out? Exactly. See you there.

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