“Over here George, over here”

James Whitmore, managing director at Postar, gives a low-down of the London Film Festival…

I am taller and thinner than George Clooney. It’s not much I know. I owe this knowledge to the London Film Festival, which has given me significant red carpet time with the great man. On two nights running we were within touching distance, as he turned up to promote a couple of new films.

That is one of the beauties of the festival. You rub shoulders with filmmakers and actors. Not all of them are as shy and reserved as Mr Clooney. The less famous ones actually speak to you.

I learnt a couple of interesting things from Jake Doremus, the director of the excellent and largely improvised romance, “Like Crazy”. He claimed that it had been shot with a camera that could be bought in a typical high street store for less than £1,000. Admittedly he had added special cinematographic lenses but the basic work was done with a piece of kit that can be found in many homes.

Furthermore, Felicity Jones, the English lead, had filmed her own audition at home and emailed the result to him in Los Angeles. No need for her to fly anywhere, or indeed to leave her east London flat. I don’t see that it is any easier to break into movies than it was before but it is obvious that cost and distance is no longer an excuse.

The other obvious thrill is to see so many films in such a short space of time. In many cases you do so long before they get a theatrical release and the publicity and critics contaminate your views. Sadly, I was away for six days of the fortnight but I was still able to catch fifteen films.

I’ll start with the also-rans. These ranged from the offensively bad, “Restless”, a twee cancer romance; the shoddy, “360” a sort of “Love Actually” for the chattering classes; to those I just didn’t get, specifically the award winning “Faust”, which had so many people shouting in German that I got a headache and left.

I saw a couple of mainstream movies featuring my mate George. “Ides of March” is out now. I thought “The Descendants” was even better. It is a Hawaiian family drama with excellent performances, not least by our hero.

Werner Herzog has produced a typically offbeat documentary about kids on death row in Texas – “Into the Abyss” is both bleakly funny and tragic. It is also brilliant filmmaking.

British drama was strong. I didn’t think that “Wuthering Heights” quite worked; it is atmospheric, wonderful looking with bravely sparse dialogue but the leads did not convince me of their passion. Contrast this with “The Deep Blue See”, where Rachel Weisz is compelling as a woman racked by emotional torment. “The Awakening” is a good ghost story starring Dominic West and Rebecca Hall, however, the best by far was “We Need To Talk About Kevin”, which went on general release immediately after showing in the festival.

Roman Polanski has adapted the stage play, “God of Carnage” to create a tensely claustrophobic middle class car crash where smug parents meet to reconcile a fight between their sons. Kate Winslet on top form as ever.

The Norwegian crime genre was represented by “Headhunters”, a typically bleak and well plotted example of the genre.

Of course you have to add an oddity to your list and Sean Penn as an aging Goth rock star fitted the bill. Although “This Must Be The Place” is perhaps too self-consciously cultish for its own good, it has wonderful moments and I imagine that it will go down well with its intended target.

I leave my favourite discovery until last. “The Artist” is a new French movie. It is silent and it is in black and white. Don’t ask me why it works but it does. It is charming, affecting and very funny. Go and see it.

Of course there were many dozens of titles that I did not see. The marvel of the festival is the sheer variety, the chance to unearth things for oneself and the delight of sitting in packed auditoria with an eclectic and committed audience.

I suppose the challenge for the industry to determine how best to unleash the commercial potential of these wonderful films when the perceived wisdom is to saturate the market with blockbusters and effects-laden 3D “events”. The present balance doesn’t seem right to me.