The personal becomes political in this understated North East-set drama that also serves as a worryingly timely and necessary reminder of how institutional bigotry is hawked under the pretence of concern for ‘family values’. Rosy McEwan is Jean, a private…
This rich family drama, the supremely confident debut from writer-director Sadiq, has already caused a stir in its native Pakistan due to its examination of taboo subject matter. Haider (Junejo) is a handsome but meek unemployed married man living in a to…
As punchy and to the point as its title, this airborne Gerard Butler vehicle never quite soars but is undemanding and entertaining enough. Butler is commercial pilot Brodie Torrance. Ex-forces (tick), widowed (tick) and looking forward to seeing his daugh…
Writer-director Damien Chazelle’s sprawling, exhausting look at pre-talkies Hollywood is simultaneously a love letter and poison pen to the industry told via five (or maybe six) disparate protagonists. The director sets out his subtlety-averse stall in th…
Spanish director Pereda’s debut feature, based on her short of the same name, is a bold, wildly entertaining and constantly surprising melding of coming-of-age-picture, black comedy and bloody horror. Sara (Galán) is an overweight teen living in a small S…
Vicky Krieps follows up her dazzling turn in royal period drama ‘Corsage’ in this low-key and affecting drama, rendered even more poignant by the recent death of her co-star Gaspard Ulliel at the age of thirty-seven in a skiing accident. She is Hélène, a …
Mendes’s latest is a contrived and cloyingly self-conscious love letter to film (shudder), focusing on the lives and loves of the staff of a shabby but ornate picture house. Olivia Colman is Hilary, the troubled manager of the seafront cinema. The staff a…
Mark Jenkin’s follow-up to the singular but over-praised ‘Bait’ is an oblique and elusive folk horror tale. Mary Woodvine is an unnamed volunteer environmentalist working on the Cornish Coast sometime in the 70s, recording the progress of a rare flower gr…
Co-written with playwright and regular collaborator Tony Kushner, Spielberg's latest is part semi-autobiographical coming of age drama and part, inevitably, ode to the power and potency of cinema. Newcomer Gabriel Labelle is Sammy Fabelman, a boy growing …
Over its hefty 240 minute running time, writer-director Todd Field’s picture, his first since 2006’s ‘Little Children’, is a frequently inspired, occasionally frustrating character study. Blanchett is Lydia Tár, the accomplished and feted conductor of a m…
Iranian Swedish-based filmmaker Abbasi’s follow-up to the underappreciated ‘Borders’ is a riveting and timely thriller, based on a true story, set in the early 2000s in the Iranian city of Mashhad. The titular Spider is a serial killer who targets sex wor…
Ten years after the release of James Cameron’s original ‘Avatar’, a picture which despite being absolutely huge left no significant pop culture footprint, comes this soggy sequel. It’s a decade after the events of the first film and human turned 9ft blue-…
Forty-three year and twenty minutes of recorded music* later, four fifths of the enigmatic and short-lived post-punk band Rema-Rema reunite for this fascinating rockumentary meets cultural excavation from Italian-Canadian director Marco Porsia. The ban…
This English language debut of Polish director Agnieszka ‘The Lure’ Smoczynska – a disturbingly immersive account of real life siblings June and Jennifer Gibbons – brings to mind Peter Jackson’s ‘Heavenly Creatures’. Born into the only black family in a s…
Two young West African immigrants struggle to survive in the Dardenne’s latest, a typically humane but unsentimental and uncontrived social realist tale set in Liège. It begins with an extended one-shot close-up sequence as adolescent girl Lokita (Schils)…
Following deep dive movie studies such as ‘Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist’ and ‘Memory: the Origins of Alien’, documentarian and film buff Alexandre O. Philippe, assembles an impressive range of directors – Karyn Kusama, John Waters, Just…
This animated biopic charts the life and career of Charlotte Salomon, a German-Jewish artist who came of age on the eve of the Second World War, who is chiefly remembered for producing an autobiographical series of works called Leben? oder Theater? (Life?…
Writer-director Seidl’s latest picture is a comparatively lighter affair than his standard grim depictions of the wretched and the dammed. The excellent Austrian actor Michael Thomas is Richie Bravo, a down-at-heel lounge singer who performs his corny bal…
This intimate and quietly inspiring documentary, which profiles a German schoolteacher working in the provincial industrial town Stadtallendorf, is hearteningly redolent of the 2008 French tribute to teaching ‘The Class’ in its warts and all celebration o…
Cleary a massive influence on such high-octane fare as Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’ and Edgar Wright’s ‘Baby Driver’, Walter Hill’s 1978 noir car chase picture ‘The Driver’ is released theatrically in a spanking 4K restoration on 11th November (with a l…
All the requisite ingredients are here in this sequel to hugely successful afro-futurist Marvel picture ‘Black Panther’, which lands just over two years after the untimely death of its original title star, Chadwick Boseman, but the film undone by an exces…
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when this adaptation of Kurosawa classic ‘Ikiru’ was announced. Thankfully, this reimaging boasts an intelligent, if slightly mannered, script from author Kazuo Ishiguro, and crucially a commanding central perf…
This low-key and affecting father-daughter drama marks an impressive feature debut for Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells. Precocious twelve-year-old Sophie (Corio, a real find) is on holiday with her dad Callum (Mescal). Sophie’s parents are separa…
While the mega-rich and beautiful may be easy targets for satire, there are striking sequences and great performances in this sprawling, unwieldy triptych from Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund. The first segment is a typical Östlund depiction of soci…
Adapted from the book of the same name by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, German director Schrader’s film charts the duo’s efforts to bring to light sexual abuse claims made against film producer Harvey Weinstein. The results igni…
This big screen take on the hit stage musical, adapted by the show’s director Matthew Warchus, is a rousing, occasionally stirring experience. Excellent newcomer Alisha Weir is the gifted six-year-old child, neglected by her obnoxious nouveau riche parent…
This Afro-futurist queer experimental allegory, helmed by rapper, poet and actor Saul Williams and Rwandan actress Anisia Uzeyman, is probably the most unique and challenging release of the year. Intersex character Neptune (played by two actors, Cheryl Is…
Luca Guadagnino’s latest, a genre juggler adapted from the novel by Camille DeAngelis, is an inspired and audacious melding of road movie, dark comedy and gruesome horror. Taylor Russell is Maren, an awkward teen living with her single father. Her outside…
This lyrical documentary with an ecological message follows two Muslim brothers, Nadeem and Saud in New Delhi, who have set up a clinic in their basement. For seventeen years they have been treating black kite birds who have fallen from the polluted sky. …
Adding a pinch of Greek Weird Wave to the mix fails to redeem writer-director Peter Strickland’s latest slice of dark whimsy: a misfiring art satire. The setting is a Sonic Catering Institute that’s been established in order to monitor culinary and alimen…
This low-budget Brit drama, the feature debut of Marcos Mereles, begins as a compelling chamber piece, chronicling a photoshoot power struggle, before it spins off in an unexpected and unsuccessful direction. In a fashionable London warehouse a photograph…
Director Alli Haapasalo's effervescent, melancholy, and ultimately rousing coming-of-age story, profiles a trio of Finnish teenage girls as they attempt to navigate the adult world of work and relationships. The smart, acerbic Mimmi (Milonoff) works in a …
Korean director Park Chan-wook's latest picture is an immaculately-realised noir puzzle with shades of Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’. Park Hae-il is Hae-joon, a happily-married homicide detective working the Busan beat, who is partnered with the inexperienced hot…
This tale of a middle class teenage artist trying to get a foothold in the underground comics scene marks a cracking debut for actor turned writer-director, Owen Kline. Robert (Zolghadri) is the seventeen-year-old budding artist who outrages his aspiratio…
Made with the consent of the artist’s estate who granted the director access to a wealth of previously unseen footage, Brett Morgen’s David Bowie biopic is an impressionistic and intense (almost overwhelmingly so) collage of Sound and Vision. Narrated by …
Cronenberg is very much in vintage body horror mode in this darkly amusing but conceptually overstuffed piece, set in the obligatory near future in a grotty, non-specific Interzone-like country. Advances in biotech means technology can interact with human…
Multi-hyphenate Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s latest picture boasts the deceptive simplicity and profundity of a fine short story. Middle-aged former actress Sangok (Lee) has recently returned home to Seoul after spending some time in the US, and is st…
The slasher movie gets a perky reboot with this entertaining and spirited ensemble piece. It starts with a passionate kiss between Bee (Bakalova from ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’) and her new rich-kid girlfriend Sophie (Stenberg), followed by an awkward d…
Following her wacky sci-fi tale ‘Sky High’, French writer-director Denis returns to more down-to-Earth matters with this unsatisfying relationship drama. An almost kitschy dreamlike opening sequence has Sara (Binoche) and her husband Jean (Lindon) embraci…
A troubled ‘two-spirit’ young Native American man explores his heritage and his sexuality in this handsome but flawed coming-of-age tale. A rather on-the-nose opening scene has Native American, Link (Lewitski) turning his back on his roots by dyeing his h…
The debut from Polish writer-director Woszczynska plays like a cross between one of Micheal Haneke’s ethical examinations and Roman Polanski-style portrait of paranoia. Adam (Dymecki) and Anna (Zuleweska) are the seemingly ideal couple, both tall, blonde …
This satire from Argentinian directing duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat may prove a little too niche for non-cineastes, but boasts spirited turns from the estimable trio of leads. It begins at the joyless birthday party of billionaire businessman Humber…
Jordan Peele’s genre-straddling sci-fi horror western features some genuinely unnerving and eerie moments, but the muddled execution means it feels far less than the sum of its parts. Daniel Kaluuya, who starred in Peele’s ‘Get Out’ is Otis ‘O.J.’ Haywood…
Israeli writer-director Ari ‘Waltz with Bashir’ Folman’s animated fantasy, which attempts to shine a light on current woes via diarist Frank’s experience, is audacious and handsomely-mounted but suffers from an unwieldy structure. It begins in present day…
This fantastic debut from Iranian writer-director Panahi, son of Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, is a melancholy but zestful road movie that follows a family’s eventful car journey to mountainous North Iran. They are lynchpin mum (Panahiha), grumpy father (M…
Directors: Massashi Ando, Masayuki Miyaji Featured voices: Shinichi Tsutsumi, Hisui Kimura, Ryoma Takeuchi, Anne Watanabe Based on a series of Japanese fantasy novels by Nahoko Uehashi, this beautifully-rendered anime co-directed by Massashi Ando, one o…
This mildly diverting, self-consciously sophisticated sex comedy drama about a scatty thirty-year-old French woman struggling with life choices and romance, feels like a cross between Joachim Trier’s recent ‘The Worst Person in the World’ and 2017’s under…
British visual artist and director Beddington’s documentary, a meditation on migration, exile and longing, is slight but boasts some arresting imagery. Fadia Loubani is a Palestinian refugee who lost her husband when she was nineteen and now lives in a Le…
It’s unclear what attracted the revered multi-award garlanded Colman to this sentimental piece of uncut Irish blarney. Newcomer Charlie Reid is Mully, a twelve-year-old who we first meet at a pub cancer benefit event in memory of his mother who has recen…
Curious narrative choices topple this fanciful biopic of French civil engineering genius Gustave Eiffel. We first encounter Gustave (Duris, ee, he looks nowt like him!) in New York as the Statue of Liberty, which Gustave designed the metal framework for, …
This big screen adaptation of Delia Owens' hugely popular 2018 novel is a total misfire that exacerbates the flaws of the source material. ‘Normal Peoples’ Daisy Edgar Jones is Kya Clark, a reclusive young woman accused of murder in 1969 North Carolina. F…
Commissioned by Turner Contemporary, the MK Gallery and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, this discursive lyrical travelogue from British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong charts the cross country ramblings of a young Black British woman. The Wandere…
Adapted from a short film, this whimsical fantasy drama, co-scripted by and starring ‘Afterlife’s’ David Earl, struggles to justify its extended running time. Earl plays Brian, an eccentric loner in North Wales who collects scrap for his various ill-conce…
Released on the eightieth anniversary of this death, this engaging documentary charts the career of British artist Eric Ravilious, mainly focused on his World War II work. Freddy Fox narrates from Eric’s correspondence with his wife Tirzah (Tamsin Grieg r…
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