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 to waste four more clicks going to posts you won't read. Thanks to the BFI for being ace as usual, although I'm not impressed about the whole Birdman business so we need to talk about that. I'll be round after work today, get the kettle on.

In the meantime, in the unlikely event that anyone gives a shit how I felt about the twenty films I saw at the LFF and would like that information in a handily-ranked list, head this way.

Land Ho!

Septuagenarian brothers-in-law - one an introspective Aussie, the other a brash American - drive a Hummer around Iceland in an attempt by the latter to cheer the former up. A road movie along the lines of The Trip but without the Michael Caine impressions, Land Ho! is largely improvised, its pace as glacial as its setting, and may be just a little too subtle to truly entertain. The odd couple at the centre make a sweet pairing but this is only fractionally more fun than watching your grandparents' holiday video. Contains dangerous levels of Big Country.

Night Bus

Miniscule-budget effort set entirely on the N39 to Leytonstone and featuring a series of observational vignettes aiming to show that all life can be found on London's night buses. This translates as middle-class couples arguing about Stanley Kubrick, teenagers playing music too loud, lives quietly falling apart on opposite ends of phone calls and a driver somehow keeping calm despite the ceaseless churn of numpties passing through his bus. An admirable experiment, well-acted by a largely unknown cast, but this might have worked better as a documentary.

The Drop

Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace bimble through this knotty pulp drama about low-lifes, has-beens and idiots. Solid but unexceptional, it gets by on the charm of its stars and a cute ickle puppy but betrays its short story roots.

The Falling

It's 1969, and a class of English schoolgirls' sexual awakening is signposted by bouts of over-dramatic narcolepsy. Lyrical, obscure and baffling, The Falling has a lovely mood about it and some good work from Game Of Thrones' Maisie Williams, but is ultimately a bit too nebulous to get a firm grasp on its mysteries. (translation: I didn't get it)

Tokyo Tribe

Eye-poppingly mental Japanese gang-war hip-hop musical that looks like the kind of dream you might have after eating a couple of kilos of sakura cheese while knocking back sake and watching a Blade Runner / Batman Forever double bill. With all the excess of Scarface but none of the calmer moments and set to a rap battle soundtrack, Tokyo Tribe boasts a hilarious tiny girl beatboxing, a katana-wielding henchman in a thong with penis envy and a mob boss called Lord Buppa whose look might best be described as Jabba The Hutt in gold lamé. Exploitative but deliriously entertaining trash.

The Girl Who Kicked The Nest Of The Hornet, Or Possibly Hornets

The big question about the third part of the Millennium Trilogy is just how many hornets are in the nest being kicked. Some posters claim it's just one lonely hornet having his or her home trashed while others suggest there are many hornets who will soon find themselves seeking new accommodation.

In actual fact it makes no difference at all. No hornets get their nest kicked at any point in this film. In fact there are no hornets, no nests and precious little kicking of any note whatsoever. Which is a shame because if there had been it might have been remotely interesting, instead of two and a half hours of soul-crushingly tedious TV drama accidentally let loose in cinemas.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornetses Nest continues the hard work put in by its predecessor in trying to erase all the hard work done by the first film. It's another painfully dull succession of medium shots of people talking, with a small fight in the middle to wake you up and a ridonkulous final showdown that seems to have been imported from a different film. The unforgivable clichés are still present, provided this time by a beardy, long-haired hacker geek in a dark room full of cables lit only by the glow of his Mac, and a low-speed car chase which includes the obligatory pram being almost run over but pulled out of the way at the last second.

Michael Nyqvist continues his semi-comatose Bergerac impression, not even bothering to explain the plot which went missing half way through The Girl Who Played With Fire, while Noomi Rapace spends the first unthrilling hour in a hospital bed and the second in an action-unpacked courtroom. Even she is so bored by it all that she dresses up as Edward Scissorhands in a vain attempt to enliven proceedings.

The most entertaining part is when we discover that the Swedish for "nasty shit" is "nasty shit", but that hardly makes it worth forking out cold hard cash to go and see it. What's more, at no point does anybody tuck into a delicious packet of Walker's Southern Style Barbecue flavour Sensations, and I think you already know how I feel about that.

Still, I did see it in the basement of an insanely expensive West End hotel where the cheapest glass of wine is eight pounds and the cinema seats are made of shiny new red leather. Proof:

I actually smelled the seat next to me to see if it really was leather, and as a result I can confirm that sniffing cinema seats is a surefire way to attract suspicious glances from film critics. Top tip: don't do it.