★★★★☆ It’s hard to be objective about George Best. Growing up in the 1970s, Best came to us less as a footballer and more as a cautionary tale. He was a tragi-comic hero of Faustian proportions played out through the tabloids, drunken TV interviews and clip-reel nostalgia.Director Daniel Gordon’s new Continue Reading
Casino Royale is widely regarded as one of the most famous casino movies. In fact, you could even say it’s one of the most iconic casino movies of all time. It introduced us to Daniel Craig’s James Bond and was a huge success at the box office, grossing $600m. Fans Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund first achieved international acclaim with his withering wintry take on middle-class masculinity in Force Majeure, causing quite a stir when it showed three years ago here in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.Now competing in the main competition, his new film The Square is a grander Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Prolific French director François Ozon returns to UK screens with his slightly camp psychological thriller L’Amant Double (The Double Lover), a kind of Fifty Shades of Dead Ringers. But will it be pegged back by its now notorious sex scenes? Marine Vacth (who starred in Ozon’s Jeune et Jolie) plays Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Head On and Soul Kitchen director Fatih Akin returns to UK cinemas this week with In the Fade, a solid courtroom/revenge drama elevated by a superb performance – acting for the first time in a German production – by Diane Kruger. We first meet Katja in prison where she is about Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ With a director as prolific as South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo, it’s not particularly surprising that he has two films showing at Cannes this year: Claire’s Camera, a colourful novella of a movie starring Isabelle Huppert; and, up for the Palme d’Or, The Day After.Bong-wan (Hong regular Kwon Hae-hyo) is Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Satire comes in two modes: Juvenalian – harsh, critical and in service of a serious point – and Horatian – light, humorous and affectionate. In attempting to do both, David Michôd’s War Machine doesn’t quite succeed at either, never fully gelling into the absurdist War on Terror satire to Continue Reading
★★★★★ The Red Turtle is an animated dream, a transcendent work of beautiful, heart-rending art from Studio Ghibli and Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit that features no dialogue but speaks volumes of humanity, an indefatigable spirit and mankind’s inter-relationship with nature.Ostensibly a story of survival, this fusion of sound, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Outside of Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pirates of the Caribbean is one of Disney’s most successful franchises, amassing millions at the worldwide box office over four films. Thirteen years after the first, a fifth is here.Salazar’s Revenge, or Dead Men Tell No Tales as it’s known Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope is a funny, heartfelt story about the Syrian refugee crisis that’s not dissimilar to the Finnish director’s Le Havre: a compassionate comedy about the experiences of an African boy arriving illegally in the titular French port town.Kaurismäki’s latest is another tale about Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The debut from Welsh-Zambian director Rungano Nyoni, I Am Not a Witch created quite the stir on premiering in Cannes. It’s the tale of a young orphan girl played by nine-year-old Maggie Mulubwa, who is accused by villagers of being a witch.The tone is set by the comic police Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. However, in Xiaogang Feng’s I Am Not Madame Bovary, amid bouts of understandable fury, it’s more an overwhelming sense of aggrieved betrayal that drives Li Xuelian (Bingbing Fan).Left spurned by her husband when a scheme to divorce and then remarry – Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Detour is not exactly a remake of the 1945 film noir of the same name, but in making explicit reference to that film more than once, certainly owes it a debt of gratitude. Indeed, Christopher Smith’s teen neo-noir – think Brick in Vegas – is nothing if not a Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Robert Pattinson has done his damnedest to lose the fangs from his Twilight fame. Indie credentials have been the crux of the process with the likes of Cosmopolis, Maps of the Stars and The Rover. Now he’s back with Benny and Josh Safdie’s street-level crime thriller Good Time. Pattinson plays Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Sergei Loznitsa first came to prominence with 2012’s In the Fog, a powerful drama of guilt and suspicion. His new film A Gentle Creature is loosely based on a Dostoyevsky short story and is redolent with the suffering and heaviness of the great Russian worrier. Despite a first half Continue Reading
