Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited will close the London Film Festival tonight, with a sold-out screening in the West End.  The film follows three brothers - reunited for the first time in the year since their father's death - who take a train journey across northern India, in the hope of renewing their relationships, finding someone they lost and, in true gap-year style, findin…

Sicko was shown at the London Film Festival last week. It is Michael Moore's latest effort, looking at the mess that is America's privatised healthcare system, relying as it does upon insurance claims to pay medical bills.  As Moore's average, middle-class, insured subjects show us, though, having the insurance may still not be enough. The industry does all it can to avoid payouts, d…

Subtitled "The Oil Crash," this is, as co-director/producer Basil Gelpke puts it, "A film that promises to be a bit of a downer." He isn't  really joking: the documentary looks at the amount of oil likely to be left in the ground (not much) and what preparations have been made for a post-plentiful-oil society (not many). It's a wake-up call that comes without t…

  Britain's latest and remotest filmfest in the Shetland Islands got off to a great start with a screening of BBC 4's drama Reichenbach Falls, a fast-moving drama made by a BBC Scotland team. The TV programme clearly proved that low budget does not exclude high production values - something known to indie filmmakers for a long time - but clearly the message is now getting through to TV d…

Will Self, I think, once blamed Hollywood in part for the current 'war on terror' because its depiction in epics such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter of good and evil as black and white absolutes leads the audience to simplify incredibly complex situations. Even Star Wars  – where Obi Wan rebuked Anakin's Bush-like 'you're either with us or against us…