London Film Festival 2017: Day Thirteen

And with that, we’re done again.  Back home.

Another October fortnight spent gallivanting around the nation’s capital playing dress-up as a respected member of the Film Press in the books, with the articles and memories to prove that this wasn’t all a Wizard of Oz/Dallas Season 9-type scenario.  Honestly, I’m somewhat glad to be back home, although give it a few days and I’ll want to be as far away from here as possible again.

That old cliché of sequels never being as good as the original has turned out to have enacted itself upon my London Film Festival experiences.

London Film Festival 2017: Day Three

When I first had a glance through the festival programme this year once it was announced in mid-September – I may just be applying rose-tinted spectacles to last year since it was my first time, but I swear everything was better-organised last year in advance of the fest (the staff have all been super kind and helpful as the festival has gotten underway though) – I felt like it lacked a lot of the obvious “wow” that 2016’s line-up had in abundance.  

It wasn’t like last year when I saw names like Arrival, and Free Fire, and La La Land, and The Handmaiden, and so many others littering the programme from top to bottom.  That’s not to say that there aren’t big names at this go-around, I’ll be jostling to get coverage for many of them later on in the fortnight, just that there were less big-ticket names that excited me by their mere mention.