The Informant! is the true(ish) story of Mark Whitacre, the highest ranking whistleblower in corporate history. Mark (Damon) is a biochemist who has been promoted to the heady heights of agricultural giant ADM’s corporate infrastructure. But when his division loses money for a record year, he pretends that a Japanese competitor has infected ADM’s corn stock, and before he knows it the FBI is involved. Mark is clearly not a man who thinks his decisions through very carefully – he is one of those polite and hopelessly naïve Americans that we don’t see enough of outside the US – and so he decides to tell Agent Shepherd (Bakula) about ADM’s involvement in one of the largest global price-fixing scandals in corporate history. More

Kicks centres around Nicole (Hayes), a lonely girl who has been forced to grow up very quickly in financial and emotional poverty. Her only passion is for Lee Cassidy (Doyle), Liverpool’s star midfielder, who also happens to be single. While waiting outside the gates of Anfield to catch a glimpse of her lothario, Nicole meets Jasmine (Burley), a WAG-in-training from a considerably more wealthy part of the city. Despite their cultural and class-based differences, the two hit it off immediately due to their shared passion for Cassidy. More

Wah Do Dem tells the tale of Max (Shaun Bones), a Brooklyn kid with messy hair, an American Apparel hoodie, and a pair of lime green Ray Bans permanently attached to his face. Max is looking forward to taking his girlfriend, Willow (a cameo by Norah Jones), on a Caribbean cruise that he won in a competition. But within the first minute of the film (the award for fastest inciting incident goes to…) Willow dumps him and Max is forced to go on the cruise alone. From the moment he embarks, he is forced into an exhaustive series of odd encounters with people he would probably never have met in any other situation… and this makes for an exciting and funny film. More

“She is Mei, an enigmatic young Chinese woman raised in a backwater but longing for a different life.” This is the basis for Xiaolu Guo’s fairly well anticipated feature film, She, A Chinese. The story follows Mei from her rural Chinese village to a larger city, and then on to London. Unfortunately, this physical journey is not accompanied by any emotional or thematic growth within the film. More

In a week filled with documentaries and experimental features, I was glad to find that the Friday afternoon screening at the first LFF press week was a laid-back, quirky, slacker road movie set in East LA with a soundtrack consisting of Dinosaur Jr, Wilco, Leonard Cohen, and a host of other indie rock legends. More

Don’t Worry About Me is the feature film debut of David Morrissey, one of Britain’s finest acting talents. Morrissey seems to have been plying his humble trade on the British airwaves forever. His “big break” was probably his portrayal of Gordon Brown in Stephen Frears ‘The Deal’; and since then he has starred in the superb ‘Blackpool’, and the internationally acclaimed ‘Red Riding’ trilogy (not to mention major motion pictures like ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.) I think it is fair to say that, despite his relative lack of experience behind the camera, the debut of such a well-disciplined, talented, and experienced actor (who can count the likes of Stephen Frears and Anand Tucker amongst his friends and associates) is a deservedly well-anticipated event. More

There are three things that may never cease to fascinate me: the early 90s (because it was so recent, and is considered by the generation who shape our conscious to be irrelevant in comparison to their “special” generation of the 60s, and yet it was so vibrant and culturally rich); the internet (because nobody is capable of predicting where it will go… it is like a wild frontier, but every time someone thinks they have discovered California a whole new plain appears before them); and finally men (and I use that word to denote a member of my species, not necessarily my gender) who seem to have it all, but then manage to throw it all away. More

A film should, according to Godard, have a beginning, middle, and end (even if they aren’t in that particular order). I am, personally, a huge fan of this ideal. It is the careful structuring of a story that engages the audiences and whisks them away into the world of the characters. More

According to filmmaker Greg Barker, Sergio Vieira De Mello is “the most famous man you’ve never heard of”. Having spent his entire adult life working for the UN (he started in the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees after leaving the Sorbonne at the age of 21) Sergio became one of the most influential and renowned figures in global politics. He was one of Kofi Annan’s most trusted advisors, rewarded for his selfless passion and dedication with the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2002. More