Christopher Machell

★★★★☆ Inspired by the execution of Troy Davis in 2011 – whose conviction was dogged by controversy and who maintained his innocence to the end – Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency is a sombre, layered study of the human cost of capital punishment. One of this era’s most powerful actors, Alfre Woodard, leads with one of her…

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★★★☆☆ For his third feature, animator Salvador Simó turns his attentions to the early career of twentieth-century director, Luis Buñuel. Labyrinth of the Turtles is a charming and occasionally moving love letter to the legendary Spanish-Mexican surrealist, and at a spry 80 minutes, doesn’t outstay its welcome. Functioning as a biopic of Buñuel in the early…

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★★★★☆ Colombian filmmaker Franco Lolli directs his second feature with astonishing confidence, crafting a tender family drama that captures the exhausting bitter-sweetness and competing priorities of family life in middle-age. Centred on a naturalistic, deeply empathetic turn from Carolina Sanin, Litigante transforms the banal into the elegiac. The first scene finds an elderly woman being examined…

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★★★☆☆ Enormous structures built of steel and glass, protecting their occupants from the infinite vacuum outside. Housed within are the flora and fauna of planet Earth, improbably situated on some alien surface.  A testament to human ingenuity, the final conquering of the cosmos’ final frontier: such are the images conjured when we imagine extra-terrestrial colonies…

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★★★★☆ In thick fog, a car drifts through the winding roads of the Icelandic countryside before inexplicably veering off the verge, through the crash barrier and down into oblivion. Almost lyrical in its luminous bleakness, it’s a precise and devastating opener for director Hlynur Pálmason’s aptly-titled second feature A White, White Day. The following shot…

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★★★☆☆ German auteur Werner Herzog’s latest has been described by some critics as his strangest film in years. His first fiction(ish) film since 2016’s Salt and Fire, it’s not hard to see why. Based on the phenomenon in Japan of hired family members, Family Romance, LLC is billed as a ‘constructed reality’ that follows real-life rent-a-relative…

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★★★★☆ As the public allegations against Harvey Weinstein mounted in 2017, #MeToo became a viral campaign exposing the culture of sexual assault not just in Hollywood, but throughout the entertainment industry. In December of that year, former music mogul Drew Dixon came forward with her own allegations against music producer Russell Simmons and Sony exec…

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★★★★☆ Despite its bland paperback title, French writer-director Stéphane Demoustier proves hasty assumptions wrong with his gripping, thoughtful third feature, courtroom drama The Girl with a Bracelet. On the night before her trial, 18-year-old Lise Bataille (Melissa Guers) stands accused of murdering her best friend, Flora. In her first role, Guers is supported by an…

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★★★☆☆ A charming, if an insistently odd musical representation of Joan of Arc’s early years, Bruno Dumont’s latest offering Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc is a compelling blend of juvenile dissatisfaction and Catholic anxiety – minus the humdrum historical accuracy. Jeannette is instead a psychological portrait of the young Joan of Arc, imagined…

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★★★☆☆ Magical realism is the order of the day in Christophe Honoré’s surreal, high concept sex dramedy On a Magical Night. After her husband, Richard (Benjamin Biolay), catches her cheating, Maria’s (Chiara Mastroianni) past physically manifests in the form of her old lovers, leading both Richard and Maria to reflect on the could-have-beens, never-weres and…

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