In pictures such as ‘Tangerine’ and ‘The Florida Project’ writer-director Sean Baker has chronicled in a non-judgemental and empathetic way characters trying every which way to live their lives in hardscrabble circumstances. ‘Anora’, his cheeky twist on C…

Adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s ‘What Are You Going Through’, Almodóvar’s first feature length English language film is an immaculately orchestrated, sensitively played and clearheaded study of friendship, mortality and fate. Moore is Ingrid, a best-selling n…

Director: Mati Diop French-Senegalese director Diop's documentary clocks in at a mere seventy minutes but contains multitudes. In 2021 it was announced that a handful of treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in what is now Benin, plundered …

Given the prescience of the subject matter, this is a disappointingly middlebrow Palestine-set drama from British-Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi. ‘The Blue Kaftan’s’ Saleh Bakri is Basem an English teacher in occupied Palestine. Two of his pupi…

Writer-director-star Alice Lowe’s absurdist sci-fi comedy has its moments but does not really add up to a satisfying whole. She is Agnes, a woman living through a number of periods in history, in 1680s Scotland, in 1790s England, in 1840s Britain and in 1…

Investigative journalist turned director Shiro Ito takes audiences through her painstaking efforts to bring to light her sexual assault at the hands of a media executive in this harrowing but vital documentary. In 2015 Ito, then a 26-year-old intern at Th…

François Ozon's latest is a frothy but fun comedy noir loosely adapted from the 1934 play ‘My Crime’ by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil. Madeline (Tereszkiewicz, recently seen in bearded lady biopic ‘Rosalie’), is a struggling actress in Paris who shares …

This thrilling tale of exploration, derring-do and awe from the makers of ‘Free Solo’ charts the 1915 voyage of Ernest Shackleton’s ‘The Endurance’ to the South Pole, alongside the ‘Endurance 22’ expedition on the South African Icebreaker ‘S.A. Agulhas II…

Canadian actor-turned-writer-director Park’s comedy drama sports a clever conceit that it only partially takes advantage of. Elliott Labrant (Stella) is a queer eighteen-year-old just finished high school and about to set off to college. During a mushroom…

The biggest hit of the year in its native Japan, this manga adaption chronicles the adventures of a high school detective who, as the intro informs us, was turned into a child by a mysterious organisation. Adopting the identity Sherlock Holmes-evoking mon…

Folk horror ahoy in this handsome but inert and derivative adaption of Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel, co-adapted by the author. Matt Smith is Richard Willoughby, an archaeologist who has moved back to his grim rural Yorkshire village with his obviously re…

British writer-director Rizwan’s feature debut is both a reality bending psychological thriller and showbiz satire. Rizwan is Aden, a struggling young British-Asian actor whose life is a round of dehumanising thankless auditions relieved by the occasional…

Europe’s turbulent 70 milieu is effectively evoked in a single setting in French director’s Kahn’s vivid recreation of the 1976 Goldman trial at which Jewish leftwing activist and revolutionary turned robber Pierre Goldman (Worhalter), imprisoned for alle…

Normally foreign directors can be relied upon to bring something new to the staid period drama genre. Sadly, this adaptation of Elizabeth Freemantle’s ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ from director Karim Aïnouz fails to break the trappings, despite a promising premis…

Shades of Hirokazu Koreeda’s ‘Nobody Knows’, albeit slightly lighter ones, in this tale of a trio of children left to fend for themselves on a Swedish housing estate. After their mother quits the house and fails to return, wily sixteen-year-old Laura (Del…

Chinese director-co-writer Guan Hu’s picture is a laidback but arresting combo of Western, road movie, redemption tale and deadpan absurdism. A surreal opening sequence sees a small bus making its way along the outskirts of the Gobi Desert before it is at…

Shades of late 90s Canadian cinema at its most clinical and unsettling, a la Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg, in this involving psychological horror. Gariepy is Kelly-Anne, a model who specialises in edgy photoshoots with a lucrative sideline in playing …

A strong whiff of déjà vu hangs over this brash cinematic sequel to Crockett Johnson’s 1955 illustrated book. A charming hand drawn intro, based on the book’s illustrations and narrated by Alfred Molina, shows how four-year-old how boy Harold, who lives w…

Shades of Gregg Araki but with a grainy video aesthetic in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s impressively mounted 90s-set teen drama. Owen (Smith) is a seventh grade loner in high school, obsessed with the supernatural ‘Buffy’-style YA TV show ‘The Pink O…

Less a feature film, more pandering panto this occasionally amusing but ultimately tiresome sequel should hopefully put an end to the anything-goes, multiverse-straddling superhero pics. After a short prologue in which Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynold…

London-based Croatian director Pusić’s film is a tonally uncertain allegorical look at mortality. Lola Petticrew is Tuesday, a fifteen-year-old-teen with a terminal illness who lives in London with her American mum Zora (Louis-Dreyfuss). We first encounte…

Scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce, this animated adaptation of the Micheal Morpurgo novel is a slow burning but stirring tale of universalism as well as a plea to conserve the ecology. Michael (voiced by McGregor) is a pre-teen boy who, along with his elde…

Writer-director Sean Wang brings an appealing freshness to the familiar coming-of-age tale. Chris Wang (Wang), nicknamed Didi, is in his final year of middle school in 2008 Freemont California. His dad is mostly away, and his mother Chunsing (Chen) is str…

British director Hussain’s feature debut is a moody and oblique study of identity and alienation. Adam (Ayub) is an unassuming young man working at a fast food restaurant in the Sky Peals Green motorway service station. Adam is mixed race: his mother (Rus…

Adapted from Yu Hua’s novella ‘Mistakes by the River’ director-cowriter Wei Shujun’s 90s-set film is a neo noir that spins off into intriguing directions. It begins with a Hitchcock-style murderer’s eye view shot of their first victim, a woman standing by…

This biopic of the Irish Republican rap combo, starring the band as themselves, is a rambunctious, provocative delight. Working class lad and drug dealer Naoise Ó Cairealláin, along with his friend Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, are taught Irish Gaelic by Naoise’s f…

Tatiana 'Prayers for the Stolen' Huezo's lyrical and melancholy picture, while a documentary, is thematically similar to her previous one in its depiction of female solidarity in a patriarchal Mexican environment. The film observes three families in the s…

Destined to be hawked around as ‘big-hearted’, this broad small-town musical romance is big on visuals but undone by poor writing. Helen (Brealey, Molly from ‘Sherlock’) works in the titular chicken-packing factory in a small Welsh town where she spends d…

Released approximately a year after their triumphant Wembley Arena gigs, this fairly standard rockumentary juxtaposes reminisces from the band – singer, frontman leader Damon Albarn; guitarist Graham Coxon; bassist Alex James; and drummer Dave Rowntree - …

No returning stars from Jan de Bont’s 1996 original ‘Twister’ here, but the protagonists are rival storm chasers and the typeface on the poster is the same, so this counts as a sequel we guess. A scary prologue has Kate (Edgar-Jones) and her buddies (all …

Writer-director Oz Perkins’ 90s-set horror picture is nicely crafted but buckles under its own portentousness. Shades of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ as FBI agent Lee Harker (‘scream queen’ Monroe) is assigned to an unsolved case involving a seemingly supernatu…

Horror begins at home in this elegantly constructed and atmospheric feature debut from Korean writer-director Jason Yu. The recently passed Lee Sun-Kyun is Hyun-su, an actor who has attained a moderate level of success, living in a small but nicely furnis…

Not quite the wacky love story mooted in trailer, this is a curiously unfocused and overlong combination of Doris Day and Rock Hudson romcom, space-age nostalgia and conspiracy tale. Scarlett Johansson is Kelly Jones (not the Stereophonics honker obv) a h…

The third part of Ti West's loosely connected slasher trilogy, once again starring the fearless Mia Goth, is impressively mounted but over-ambitious, unfocussed, and muddled. It begins with a nod to 'Peeping Tom' via scratchy black and white home movie wh…

Billed as the most violent and goriest film India has ever produced writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s picture, set almost entirely on a speeding train, is the type of no-frills purposeful actioner that is always welcome. A brief prologue introduces u…

This cross cultural romance feels a little rote but is elevated by impressive lead performances. Hardy is Luke, a single dad with a five-year-old who works alongside his dad as a mechanic. He has one night stands via Tinder to relieve his loneliness. One …

Destined to be referred to as ‘like a real life Black Mirror’ this disturbing documentary examines the practice of digital afterlife companies who create avatars and simulations of dead people for their grieving friends and relatives to talk to. Users inc…

Zar Amir Ebrahami, star of the accomplished Iran-set thriller ‘Holy Spider’, shifts to more low-key fare with this affecting 90s set Australian drama, a semi-autobiographical tale from writer-director Noora Niasari. Ebrahami is the titular character, an I…

Pitched as an ‘ambient slasher’ this minimalist horror picture is, sadly, not as groundbreaking as mooted. Filmed in boxy aspect ratio, it takes place mostly from the vantage point (over the shoulder, mainly) of a demonic serial killer. It starts with the…

Writer-director Minia Chokri’s picture initially feels like a traditionally middlebrow, French, wryly comic, relationship drama, but it’s subverted by an audacious execution. The excellent Blondeau is Sophia, a fortysomething philosophy lecturer living wi…

Following the raucous steampunk fantasia that was 'Poor Things', director Jorgos Lanthimos returns, partially, to his austere and formalist Greek Weird Wave roots with this absurdist triptych in which he uses the same cast members to play different charac…

Form meets subject matter in Spanish writer and activist Prediaco’s audacious, playful and thought-provoking documentary essay, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ground-breaking 1928 novel. In Woolf’s book (and Sally Potter’s celebrated film adaption) an Eliza…

The last ‘Inside Out’ movie ended with the occupants of teenage girl Riley’s mind – embodied emotions, Joy (Poehler), Fear (Hale), Sadness (Smith) Rage (Black), Disgust and Sadness - discovering, via a red alarm bell, that they will have to navigate the c…

This Australian-made, Brooklyn-set, wilfully b-movieish horror has its moments but feels too much in thrall to its influences. Alyla Browne is Charlotte (as in Web, geddit?), a twelve-year-old living in a pokey apartment with her mum Heather (Mitchell) a…

George Miller’s prequel to his remake of the austerely plotted, but highly effective actioner 2015’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is a messier and more sprawling affair, which charts the origin of the fearsome Furiosa, who was played in the earlier picture by Cha…

Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze’s picture is a flawed, but nonetheless affecting romantic drama that explores a relatively neglected subject. The luminous Grinevičiūtė is Elena, a contemporary dancer who also teaches at movement classes. Elen…

Skilfully related from multiple perspectives, veteran Polish director Holland’s picture is a harrowing depiction of the refugee experience as well as a heartfelt plea for humanity. It begins in 2021 on a plane bound to Belarus where we meet a Syrian famil…

Inspired by the 1903 Henry James novella ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ and set over three time periods, French writer-director Betrand Bonello’s romantic drama meets dystopian sci-fi flick features compelling ideas, but the picture is undone by a lack of focu…

This middlebrow, but likeable enough drama, is loosely based on Clémentine Delait, ‘the most illustrious and celebrated bearded lady in France’. Tereszkiewicz is Rosalie, a young woman in 1870s France, who lives with her father (Kervern) in a French villa…

The Scorsese influence hangs heavy over this 60s-set biker movie, inspired by the photography book of the same name by Danny Lyon. (The picture uses Danny’s interviews with his subjects as a framing device.) In a singsong gossipy voice, Kathy (Comer), a c…

Following their excellent semi-documentary about LA barflies ‘Bloody Noses, Empty Pockets’ filmmaker brothers Turner Ross and Bill Ross VI head out into the wide open for this realist-ish road trip with moments of beauty and grace scattered throughout. To…

It may be little over eighty minutes long and barely possess a plot, but Belgian writer-director Bas Devos’s picture contains multitudes. Stefan (Gota) is a quiet Romanian construction worker labouring in Belgium. His down time is spent hanging out and en…

Written and directed by John Krasinski, this obvious labour of love aims for poignancy and fun but flounders due to bizarrely convoluted execution. Casey Fleming is Bea, a twelve-year-old girl who lost her mum some years earlier. When her dad (Krasinski) …

The latest instalment in the Apes franchise (dread word) from the director of the ‘Maze Runner’ series is, reportedly, the first part of a trilogy, and it feels very much like a part rather than a satisfactory whole. It’s ‘many generations’ since chimp…