I happened to be at Chalk Farm tube yesterday, waiting for a train. As a bus user, I’m always curious to see what kind of ad campaigns studios are running on the underground for their current releases. At the moment, as a right-thinking film fan, you might be in a state of near-priapic delight at the wealth of prestige movies in cinemas. There’s posters up for The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Milk and Frost/Nixon, breathlessly described with attention-grabbing quotes like “the feel-good film of the decade”, or “a contender for Best Picture”. It is, of course, January, and rather shamelessly the studios are chucking out their high-calibre movies as we pile headlong into Awards season.
To Leicester Square this morning, and the launch of this year’s London Film Festival. There’s always something of a guessing game, prior to the announcement of the line-up, about what’ll be showing. This year, for instance, I’d been hoping we might get John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Mickey Rourke’s apparently astonishing comeback in The Wrestler and Sam Mendes’ film of Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates' novel I recently read and thought was incredible.
No such luck as at least two of them aren't finished yet, but still – the line-up is pretty strong. There’s an artful of choice of marquee name movies mixed with some excellent left-field selections, a fantastic looking documentary about one of the great 60s folk singers and a film which, despite having the most unwieldy name in film history, will be one of the biggest hits of the year.
Frank Capra's festive classic is one of those rare standards which not only lives up to its rep but reveals new treasures on every viewing. James Stewart is forlorn George Bailey, who thinks life just isn't worth living, 'til it's revealed to him how meaningful his meaningless existence really is. Containing more snow than a TV presenter's nostril, it'll melt even the frostiest among you.
