The 55^th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) starts tomorrow, October 12^th, and runs until the 22^nd. This year the festival will screen 204 features and 110 shorts from 55 different countries. A selection of films will compete for the festival’s 4 main prizes: the Best Film Award, The Grierson Award for Best Documentary, Best British Newcomer and The Sutherland Award (for most imaginative and original first feature). In addition, the British Film Institute will present its highest honour, BFI Fellowships, to actor Ralph Fiennes and director David Cronenberg, the first Canadian ever to receive the fellowship.

The festival comprises nine different sections, from big budget films by well-known directors, to first features, encompassing innovative new films from all over the world. There is a section devoted to European cinema, and special sections for British and French cinema. There are also separate sections devoted to shorts, experimental films, and classic films that have recently been restored.

For this year’s opening and closing films, the festival seems to have looked close to home, selecting UK productions or co-productions for both. 360, which kicks off the festival tomorrow, is decidedly international in scope, though: directed by Fernando Meirelles, who made his name with City of God (2002), the film revolves around a set of interconnected love stories that span the globe. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Jamel Debbouze star.

Rachel Weisz also takes the lead in the festival’s closing film, The Deep Blue Sea. This period piece is director Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a married woman and member of the haute bourgeoisie who falls for a young former RAF pilot.

George Clooney is another star who figures prominently in this year’s LFF: he plays an aspiring American presidential candidate in The Ides of March (which he also directs), and a dad who must step up to his responsibilities when his wife falls ill in Hawaii-set The Descendants.

The festival will treat the public to the work of veteran masters such as French New Wave icon Michel Piccoli (now 85), who plays the stressed pontiff in Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope. 81-year-old documentarist Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, Crazy Horse, explores life inside the eponymous Paris cabaret.

Though younger, director Michel Haznavicius also knows how to maintain links with the past. Having established a retro aesthetic over the past decade with two James Bond spoofs (OSS 117, starring Jean Dujardin), the director now turns his gaze further back in cinema history, alighting at the end of the silent era in The Artist.

Known for his contemporary French thrillers (Lemming [2005] and Harry, He’s Here to Help [2000]), Dominik Moll has set his latest film much further in the past. The Monk is an adaptation of a 1796 novel much admired by the Surrealists, and was filmed once before by Ado Kyrou in 1972, based on a script co-written with Buñuel. It will be intriguing to see whether Moll’s witty, modern approach to psychological tension comes through in his take on an original gothic novel.

Michael Winterbottom also takes inspiration from classic literature in Trishna, which sets the story of Tess of the D’Urbervilles in modern-day India, and stars Freida Pinto. In another promising meeting of past and present, Takashi Miike (13 Assassins) applies 3D technology to bring Japanese history to life in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.

Maintaining a focus on the East, following the success of Persepolis (2007) Marjane Satrapi co-directs another film based on her work as a graphic novelist, this time in a live-action feature, Chicken with Plums. In another a follow-up to a popular debut (Caramel, 2007), director and actress Nadine Labaki returns with Where Do We Go Now?, another joyfully female-centric film.

For more information on the London Film Festival programme, and to book tickets, go to bfi.org.uk/lff

For example: I often find myself writing things like, “The acting was atrocious, the script could have been written by a 3rd grader and the direction was all over the map, but at least the visual effects were spectacular.”  It seems studios are now focusing more heavily than ever on making something look cool to please the fanboys at the utter expense of character and story.  I’d be hard pressed to find a handful of blockbusters in the past five years, with the exception of last year’s “Star Trek,” to which I couldn’t apply that criticism.

And as hard as I try to infuse my criticism with as much creativity as possible, I fully expected my review of Louis Leterrier’s remake of Desmond Davis’ 1981 cult classic, “Clash of the Titans,” to contain a similar phrase.  And indeed, the acting is atrocious and the offensively bad script most probably could have been written by an elementary school student, but unfortunately for us all, this particular iteration of the mindless Hollywood action flick cannot even count an array of impressive visual effects among its redeeming qualities.  This criticism is not a slight to the design team.  I found some of the creature designs and landscapes to be quite good, actually.  But the technical execution of those designs felt thrown together, choppy and poorly incorporated into the fabric of a broader universe.  I could levy this blame on the technical craftsman who developed the CGI effects and who were responsible for assimilating the effects into a practical environment, but it all ends up on the director’s desk.  He is responsible for communicating his vision and molding the work of hundreds of individuals into a cohesive unit that tells a story.

“Clash of the Titans” feels like a hundred different little visions smashing into each other for 106 minutes.

I’ve never claimed to be a cinema elitist.  Sure, I love Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and Antonioni’s “L’avventura,” but also love “Back to the Future” and “Jaws.”  A good movie is a good movie whether it cost $100 or $100,000,000 to make.  And by every conceivable means of evaluation, “Clash of the Titans” is a terrible movie.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Phil Hay
Studio: Warner Bros Pictures
Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes
Release: March 26, 2010