I’m neck-deep in London Film Festival…

I know it seems like I’ve been rather absent over the past week or two, but that’s because I have been gorging myself on the orgy of movies that is the London Film Festival. This involves press and public screenings to the tune of three, four, and occasionally five movies a day. (I’ve also been wading through some non-film-related editing work, because rent and groceries are a thing. I wish I didn’t have to take on outside work — I would love to be doing nothing but writing about film all the time. But that doesn’t seem likely to ever be possible for me. Please subscribe and change my mind about that!)

LFF is a great way to delve into global cinema that I don’t often get to check out: so far I’ve seen little films (some of which may never get a general release in the US or the UK) from places such as Japan, South Korea, Norway, the Philippines, France, Ireland, Australia, Egypt, and even Brooklyn and Surrey. LFF is also an excellent way to get a jumpstart on awards season: I’ve already seen such likely Oscar contenders as La La Land, American Honey, A Monster Calls, Manchester by the Sea, Toni Erdmann, Paterson, Personal Shopper, Arrival, and Elle. (Reviews of many, perhaps all of these soon.) And there are five days of festival goodness to go.

I am very tired. And also wildly keyed up and high on cinema.

Anyway, this is why I haven’t posted many reviews or other pop-culture wailing lately. I’ll be taking a little break from everything for a few days next week, after the festival ends, but I will be back with a vengeance by the week of the 24th. (Which isn’t to say I won’t have a few reviews up between now and that. Apart from, I hope, a couple of LFF films, look for reviews of Inferno and the new Jack Reacher movie, at a minimum.)

My reviews from the festival are all tagged “London Film Festival,” and there are already some available for your amusement. You can follow my LFF adventures on Facebook and Twitter, if you aren’t already.

Thank you, as always, for reading my scratchings. I’m not one of those writers who writes for herself. If I didn’t have an audience, I would see no point in writing. So I appreciate your time and attention.