Best Films to Watch in London This Week
All the movies worth catching in the capital, from a portrait of a former First Lady to an unconventional romance...
Out and about this week? Fancy a film but can’t make your mind up what to see? Look no further: we’ve assembled the best of what’s showing in London and gathered them here to make choosing a great movie as easy as possible. Whatever you’re in the mood for, WeLoveCinema has you well and truly covered…
The Kingmaker
This new documentary from Lauren Greenfield (who also helmed the excellent Queen of Versailles) finds its subject in former Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos, and works as a sort of unofficial follow-up to the 2003 documentary Imelda. But what starts as a fairly straightforward biopic about Marcos’ life, exile, and return to the country she left crippled slowly becomes something far more insidious. As Marcos refuses to come to terms with what can only be considered a rotten legacy, it makes for a truly gripping, fascinating, and – eventually – horrifying study of a woman whose reality is entirely self-created. “Perception is real, but the truth is not,” she explains at one point, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Get The Kingmaker showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Citizen K
Alex Gibney is best known, perhaps, for his excellent Scientology documentary Going Clear, which riled the organisation and lodged itself into the public consciousness in 2015. His latest film, Citizen K, which hones in on the life and times of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, isn’t quite as incendiary, but it still makes for an interesting if somewhat more conventional watch. Khodorkovsky, a billionaire known for buying up Siberian oil fields in the ’90, was later imprisoned – an act which eventually lead to his pegging as an anti-Putin martyr. This film features interviews with Khodorkovsky about his experiences – not to mention a whole host of journalists from around the world – as it paints not merely a frightening picture of Putin’s tight control over his country, but maybe Khodorkovsky himself.
Get Citizen K showtimes in London.
Pink Wall
Actor Tom Cullen, brilliant in romantic film Weekend, has turned his attention to writing and directing with Pink Wall, an unconventionally-structured romantic drama starring Jay Duplass and Tatiana Maslany. The story concerns a wannabe photographer and a TV producer, whose relationship is presented to us through six scenes, all of which are told out of order. It’s a little bit like musical The Last Five Years crossed with recent drama Cold War, in that we’re left to deduce what may or may not have happened between the scenes. Duplass and Maslany make for a convincing couple (Maslany is especially good), resulting in a somewhat slight but highly watchable film with a ton to say about modern relationships.
Get Pink Wall showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
One of the greatest and most popular musicals of all time, Fiddler on the Roof has more than earned its right to a documentary feature film of its own. This one, directed by Max Lewkowicz, takes in the origins, legacy, and impact of the acclaimed show, and even ropes in musical theatre geniuses such as Lin-Manuel Miranda and Stephen Sondheim to back up its claims of greatness. Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles won’t appeal to those who outright hates musicals, but anyone with even a passing interest in the show and its history are sure to find themselves tapping along to this infectious love letter. All together now: “If I were a rich man…”
Get Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles showtimes in London.
Honey Boy
Few filmic reputations have flip-flopped as much as Shia LaBeouf’s, whose eclectic body of work has found itself interspersed with highly publicised antics from the drunkenly offensive to the artistically batty. Recently, however, LaBeouf’s rep seems to be on the up and up, and so Honey Boy – a film he wrote in rehab based on his own childhood – couldn’t have come at a better time. Documentary filmmaker Alma Har’el, making her feature film debut, directs this meta journey into LaBeouf’s life thus far, as “Otis” – a Shia surrogate played by Lucas Hedges – wrestles with his inner demons and – in a separate timeline – the complicated relationship he shares with his father (in a brilliant twist, LaBeouf plays his own old man). Deeply strange but also highly poignant, it’s a star’s soul laid bare, and one of 2019’s most original films.
Get Honey Boy showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Ordinary Love
This film’s title isn’t messing around: Ordinary Love is more than happy to exist in the most banal of places, as emphasised by the union between retired couple Tom and Joan, played by Liam Neeson (taking a break from his skull-splitting action gigs) and Leslie Manville (wonderful here), whose life in Belfast is calm and uneventful – albeit in a nice, comfortable way that suits them just fine. Things change, however, when Joan is faced with a breast cancer diagnosis, and Ordinary Love zeroes in on the pair as they try to make sense of the situation. Playwright Owen McCafferty’s subtle script wisely refuses to collapse into melodrama, and the result is a wry and mediative film about the ways in which we comfort one another in times of need.
Get Ordinary Love showtimes in London or read our full review here.
So Long, My Son
This heartbreaking, poignant, and historically-minded drama from Chinese writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai unfolds over the course of an admittedly weighty three-hour-long runtime, but it’s a film – like Martin Scorsese’s recent masterpiece The Irishman – that needs you to feel the years in order to tell its era-spanning story spanning four decades. Beginning somewhere in the mid-1970s and culminating in the present day, So Long, My Son zeroes in on the mostly tragic tale of a couple haunted by the death of their only son. Using shifting time frames that occasionally disorientate and add mystery, it’s a sad and melancholy piece about China’s changing policies and the power of the family unit, but one that’s not without hope.
Get So Long, My Son showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Motherless Brooklyn
Sometimes an actor/director is given the chance to cash in their chips for what can only be referred to as a “passion project.” Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn is one such film, for better or worse. Based on the best-selling crime novel of the same name by author Jonathan Lethem, the story sees a tic-addled private detective (Norton) traversing the seedy underbelly of ’90s New York in a bid to solve the murder of his mentor, played by Bruce Willis. Clearly taking its cues from classics of the noir genre like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and – of course – Chinatown, Motherless Brooklyn‘s heft is sure to divide audiences, though it’s a work that offers some distinct pleasures – mainly because they just don’t make films like this anymore, and also because Norton has roped in Willem Dafoe and Alec Baldwin in fun bit-parts.
Get Motherless Brooklyn showtimes in London or read our full review here.
Knives Out
Rian Johnson has taken a well-deserved break from the Star Wars universe to gift us with what might just go down as the year’s most entertaining film. Positioned as a modern take on the Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, Knives Out is a fast-paced whodunnit set in a house that – according to one of the characters – “looks like a Clue board.” It’s Christopher Plummer’s murdered patriarch, Harlan Thrombey, who draws a flamboyantly-accented Daniel Craig (having the time of his life) to interrogate the suspects: Harlan’s own family. With delicious turns from Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, and Chris Evans, and featuring a star-making performance from Ana de Armas, Johnson has crafted a relentlessly funny, clever, and razor-sharp yarn that doubles as a finger to the entitled rich.
Get Knives Out showtimes in London or read our full review here.
The Two Popes
A film about two old blokes meeting up for a chat doesn’t sound like the stuff of great cinema, but what if said blokes were actually Popes, and what if said Popes were played by Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce? Now we’re talking! Directed by Fernando Meirelles – he of City of God fame – and based on a script from Darkest Hour writer Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes imagines the friendly rivalry between Hopkins’ Pope Benedict and Pryce’s Cardinal Bergoglio as they come together in the wake of Pope John Paul’s death. It makes for a surprisingly entertaining film that’s at its unexpected best whenever its two leads are simply together in a room, mulling over life’s big questions and indulging what can only be described as a “Catholic bromance.”
Get The Two Popes showtimes in London.
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