Craig Kennedy over at Living in Cinema, or LiC to its devoted following, ponders the distorted impression one gets from seeing films at a film festival:
I might be stating the obvious here, but something has come into clearer focus for me these past few days: Beware of reviews from film festivals. They’re not to be trusted. Environment, expectations and state of mind are all mutable, they all have an impact on a reviewer’s reaction to a movie and a film festival is a kind of pressure cooker that tends to magnify those variables beyond ordinary proportion.
I have long suspected this and in fact back in the early days of oscarwatch, we rarely covered or even considered film festivals like Cannes or Sundance. But things have changed somewhat. Festivals are the best place to highlight films that might have otherwise been obscured in limited release. Kennedy admits his bias but then goes on to discuss the film Choke.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter’s talks up the Turin film festival’s celebration of the “renaissance of the U.K. film industry” in the period from 1980-1990, shining a light on the work of Terence Davies, Stephen Frears, Peter Greenaway, Neil Jordan, Mike Leigh, and Michael Radford.