BOASTING a record-breaking year for attendances the 58th London Film Festival ended, as it began, on a martial note, with Brad Pitt gracing the red carpet for the closing film Fury as both producer and actor.

In it, he plays a battle-hardened sergeant who commands a Sherman tank behind enemy lines in the last months of WWII. Gritty and brutal, it depicts how war is both a loud and ugly undertaking.

The festival opened with Morten Tyldum’s nail-biting drama The Imitation Game, starring Keira Knightley and Benedict Cumberbatch, which centres on mathematical genius Alan Turing and how he cracked the German enigma code, saving millions of lives during WWII in the process. Cumberbatch gives an astonishing performance as the controversial Turing.

The war theme continued with James Kent’s Testament of Youth, a poignant adaptation of Vera Brittain’s much-appreciated WWI memoir, which again rams home the message of war’s futility.

Peter Sattler’s Camp X-Ray explores the effects the US “war on terror” has on the soldiers who enforce it.

It’s told from the perspective of a female private (Kristen Stewart) who is posted to Guantanamo Bay where she befriends a Muslim prisoner who has been there eight years.

It is an overtly physical role and a stark departure for Stewart, whose sullen demeanour is perfect for the role.

What seemed to be the most popular film screened was Whiplash, which focuses on the emotionally abusive relationship between a music prodigy (Miles Teller) and his bullying teacher (JK Simmons).

Both are electrifying as they embark on a frightening and nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game which could earn them Oscar nods.

Watching James Gandolfini’s last-ever performance in the enthralling adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s crime drama The Drop was painfully sad.

Tom Hardy gives the performance of his career as the slow-natured Bob, obsessed with a dog, who tends bar for his shady cousin Marv, played superbly by Gandolfini.

It’s a fascinating slow-burner, with some astonishing twists.

For art lovers the documentary Hockney: A Life in Pictures is a captivating and insightful look at David Hockney’s artistic career and his Bradford roots via archive footage and interviews with the artist himself and fellow colleagues.

Another noteworthy artist biography was Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, an exquisitely shot tribute to the artist JMW Turner.

Timothy Spall gives a remarkable performance as the painter, grunting his way through the action, for which he deservedly scooped the best actor award at Cannes.

One of the most delightful and tender films in the programme was Ira Sachs’s Love is Strange about a man who is sacked as a music teacher at a Catholic school after he marries his partner Ben of 39 years.

Alfred Molina and John Lithgow make a believable, loving couple who are forced to sell their home and live apart while they search for a new place.

Two foreign films which caught the eye were Andrey Zvyagintsev’s striking Leviathan — which won the best film award in the competition strand — about the conflict between an individual and a corrupt system in a small Russian town and the Ukrainian drama The Tribe, set in a school for young deaf people and acted entirely in sign language, which carried off the best first feature award.