This fascinating picture from documentarians Jennifer ‘Burn This Letter Please’ Tiexiera and Camilla Hall is part where-are-they-now catch up, and part ethical examination of the experiences of people who have agreed, with various degrees of willingness, …

Multi-hyphenate star-director-co-writer Kelley Kali’s pandemic era-set picture is a social realist fable a la ‘Bicycle Thieves’ with some droll laughs. Danny (Kali) is a widowed young mother living with her eight-year-old daughter Wes (Moss) in a tent by …

The third instalment for the boxer Adonis ‘Donnie’ Creed, and the ninth in the overarching ‘Rocky’ saga, draws cannily on horror and thriller elements to subvert the series’ outsider underdog formula. A prologue set in 2002 charts how the teenage Donnie w…

In Anonymous Club, first-time documentary filmmaker Danny Cohen provides an insight into the life of Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett shortly after the release of her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. For fans of the musician, the fi…

Writer-director Koreeda’s second picture outside of Japan, following the disappointing showbiz-adjacent French drama ‘The Truth’, is a typically humane ensemble piece meets road movie set in South Korea. It begins with a young woman So-young (Lee Ji-eun) …

Actor turned director Manuela Martelli’s debut is a stylish and engrossing drama. Carmen (Küppenheim) is an elegant middle-class housewife married to a doctor, Miguel (Goic) in 1976 Chile. Her husband teases Carmen in front of dinner party guests saying s…

Richard Eyre’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play, scripted for screen by Heidi ‘Call the Midwife’ Thomas, is a warts and all love letter to the NHS and the doughty staff who keep it running. Bally Gill is resident physician Dr Valentine, a conscientious h…

Inspired by real events, Spanish director’s Sorogoyen’s film, co-scripted with Isabel Peña, is pitched somewhere between sociological study of gentrification and brooding thriller a la ‘Straw Dogs’. Olga (Foïs) and Antoine (Ménochet) are a middle-aged mid…

Belgian writer-director Dhont’s follow-up to his impressive but flawed feature debut, ‘Girl’ the portrait of a Trans ballet dancer, is a heart-rending and empathetic coming of age drama set in rural picturesque Belgium. Thirteen-year-olds Léo (Dambrine) a…

Shades of 'Doc Hollywood' & 'Local Hero' in this charming Bhutanese drama from writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji, as a city slicker learns life lessons in a remote mountainous Himalayan village. Ugyen (Dorji) is a teacher who lives with his grandma in t…

Brandon Cronenberg’s follow-up to his unnerving feature debut ‘Possessor’ is a lurid sci-fi horror with a pitch black comic streak and splashes of twisted hallucinatory eroticism. The setting is a luxury resort in Li Tolqa – a fictional, impoverished coun…

British actor Mia Goth cements her reputation as Scream Queen de nos jours in this stylish and mischievous sort-of prequel to ‘X’. In ‘X’ a film crew shooting a porn film fell afoul of disproving locals. Here West winds back the action from 1979 to 1918 t…

This feature-length animation, adapted by co-writer-director Camp from his trio of YouTube short films that were a huge viral hit in 2010, is inventive and emotionally engaging enough, if a little overextended. Documentary filmmaker Dean (co-writer-dire…

The modest irreverent charm of the earlier adventures of the divorced petty thief turned diminutive superhero is absent from this simultaneously slight but bloated sequel. After a brief quantum realm-set prologue, we catch up with hero Scott Lang (Rud…

Sarah Polley's richly allegorical and audacious adaptation of Miriam Toews 2019 novel, itself based on a true incident, is a bracingly original and vital piece of feminist cinema. It’s set in the present day in a remote Mennonite community where a grou…

Art, activism and Situationist protest collide in this thematically rich and compelling documentary profile of photographer and activist, Nan Goldin from filmmaker Laura ‘Citizen Four’ Poitras. The picture is broken into two distinct but interlocking thre…

Documentarian Alice Diop ventures into fiction for this controlled, and provocative spin on the courtroom drama. Kayije Kagame is Rama, a pregnant writer travelling to Saint-Omer in Northern France to observe the trial of Laurence (Malanga), a student and…

A businessman finds himself enmeshed in the past in this beautifully shot and lyrical drama from Mario Martone, an adaptation of the novel by Neapolitan writer Ermanno Rea. Pierfrancesco Favino is Felice, a fifty-something who now lives in Cairo, returnin…

French playwright turned director Florian Zeller’s follow-up to the revelatory and audacious ‘The Father’, which sees him teaming up once more with English writer and translator Christopher Hampton, is a maudlin misfire. Jackman is Peter, a very successfu…

A fine central performance from Brendan Fraser elevates this flawed drama adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his own play. Fraser is Charlie, a reclusive and severely obese teacher living in a dank apartment who makes ends meet conducting writing lessons vi…

Octogenarian director Jerzy Skolimowski's reimagining of Robert Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ is an inventive, audacious and stirring depiction of a donkey being shifted from pillar to post. We first encounter EO in a circus being petted lovingly by Pol…

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…