Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 278: Thu Oct 10

La Cocina (Ruizpalacios, 2024): Curzon Mayfair, 5.45pm

68th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (9th - 20th October 2024) DAY 2

With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews, so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.

So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.

Here then (from October 9th to October 20th) are the films you are likely to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.

Today's film also has two more screenings (at Curzon Soho) on October 12th. You can find all the details here.

Guardian review:
For a cinematically exuberant burst of political urgency, the most arresting fiction in competition at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival – and a strong contender for top prize the Golden Bear – was La Cocina by Alonso Ruizpalacios, the Mexican director of 2021’s extraordinary docudrama hybrid A Cop Movie. Here he adapts The Kitchen, the 50s British drama by Arnold Wesker, transplanting it to New York, to a vast factory of a Times Square restaurant, where staff struggle to keep sane together through the rigours of a working day. Ruizpalacios focuses on the experience of the migrant workers, notably a harassed cook (Raúl Briones), who is in an intense, fraught relationship with a waitress (Rooney Mara, excellent in a far harder-edged role than usual). Apart from a beautifully contemplative lunchbreak interlude, La Cocina is nonstop – with bustling choreography of cast and camera, and an electrifying performance from Briones, on a par with early vintage Al Pacino. We might be feeling a bit stuffed with restaurant dramas, but La Cocina makes The Bear look like a cuddly cub and Boiling Point like a gentle simmer.
Joanathan Romney

Here (and above) is the trailer.

 

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