With this year's festival opening on Wednesday and my press pass arriving yesterday I managed to catch a couple of the advance screenings today (a few more tomorrow).

First up was A Single Man (not to be confused with the new Coen brothers flick A Serious Man, also playing at the LFF). This debut feature from designer Tom Ford concerns a day in the life of English professor George (Colin Firth), mournful after the death of his lover Jim (Match Point and Watchmen actor Matthew Goode). Adapted from the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood there is a somewhat episodic structure to the story and use of fractured narrative throughout, allowing us to travel back and forth with George's memories as he interacts with a few other characters in Los Angeles; his old friend Charly (played by Julianne Moore seemingly channeling Joanna Lumley from Absolutely Fabulous at times!?) and an eager pupil (About A Boy actor Nicholas Hoult).

Ford's background as a designer lends a strong artistic bent to the film's direction and there's beautiful cinematography, lighting motifs and a muted, sixties styled design that manages to linger the right side of retro. However what really makes this film utterly compelling is the performance of Colin Firth. Firth has muddied about since being propelled to fame post-Pride and Prejudice and his most notable works have been Bridget Jones' Diary and Mamma Mia!, so it's somewhat easy to overlook his gifts as an actor; believe me I didn't expect much from the man. But as George he manages to bring so many wonderful levels to what could be a rather maudlin character, finding both the humour and the tragedy in his situation, oftentimes simultaneously. I'm not sure if this is the kind of role that might earn Firth the attentions of the Oscar board, but I would go so far as to say it's the actor's greatest screen work of his career to date and a very deserving winner of the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival. Director Tom Ford is also a talent to keep your eye on.

Second film of the day had a strong pedigree; from a script by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, the pair responsible for Sexy Beast and a great ensemble of British cinema stalwarts. The film in question, 44 Inch Chest, begins with a broken home (literally) and the collapsed, depressed figure of Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) listening to Eric Carmen's All By Myself on repeat. We are then steadily introduced to Colin's associates including Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt, Ian McShane and Stephen Dillane as they rally together to help their friend. Colin's just discovered his wife (Joanne Whalley) has had an affair and they've grabbed her new man and locked him in an run down building.

The film's plot falls somewhere between Resevoir Dogs and Last Orders, but it's tonally very blurry. Winstone, at first, impresses with his heartbroken performance, but as the film's very stagey set-up begins to drag with the lack of development and some rather pointless dream sequences and asides, not even the usually dependable cast can buoy things. There are funny moments here and there, but also some painfully written exchanges between the cast that smack of overwrought theatricality; indeed an early exchange recalls the Steven Berkoff play Dog, only for Berkoff himself to crop up scenes later in a brief cameo.

This seems like a backwards step for the British 'gangster' genre, a move away from the likes of Layer Cake and Sexy Beast and back towards films such as Love, Honour and Obey (another smudge on Winstone's C.V).

For more information on the BFI London Film Festival go to: http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/