LONDON FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW - 12 YEARS A SLAVE

12 YEARS A SLAVE
Sponsored by ST. ERMIN'S HOTEL, LONDON

Release Date: 28 January 2014 (UK)

Director: Steve McQueen

Running Time: 133 Minutes

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Lupita Nyong'O, Sarah Paulson

Screening Reviewed: London Film Festival Accenture Gala Press Screening

Reviewed by Kyle Pedley

From the offset, there is an almost indefinable gravitas and cinematic clout to 12 Years A Slave that cement it as important, meaningful cinema as well as a likely critical and awards darling. And whilst there are traces of his signature filmic traits and tropes, most notably a confident and unabashed intimacy with oft-taboo peels of the human condition such as graphic sexuality, nudity and violence, this is surprisingly director Steve McQueen’s most accessible and mainstream outing as mentioned offers only fleeting similarities to his previous works Shame and Hunger.

PROMETHEUS: MOVIE REVIEW

PROMETHEUS

Release Date: 1st June (UK)

Director: Ridley Scott

Running Time: 124 Minutes

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba

Screening Reviewed: UK FDA Press Screening (BFI IMAX 3D)

Reviewed by Kyle Pedley

Our Exclusive Prometheus Video Review is now available on Youtube!

To broker the most common concern surrounding Prometheus, it is clear from the first few moments of the film that this is very consciously and deliberately a different entity from the Alien franchise with which it shares both its universe and director. Whereas Ridley Scott’s 1979 seminal sci-fi masterpiece opened with the isolation, silence and cold of space, Prometheus begins with stunning sweeping vistas and panoramas, the sterility of the stars now replaced with roaring waterfalls and aggressive natural majesty. This juxtaposition is in many ways perfectly symbolic of how very different the two films really are, for where Alien was a masterclass of subtlety, prolonged silence and measured cutting, Scott’s latest outing is a far more visceral, bombastic, and even noisy, affair.