Christopher Machell

★★★★☆ The opening credits to David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde boldly announce that this is not the story of the Berlin Wall’s fall – its symbolic destruction instead serving as a backdrop for superspy Lorraine Broughton’s (Charlize Theron) often thrilling misadventures.Opening on the first of many gorgeously composed, monochromatic shots, Lorraine emerges from an ice bath,…

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★★★★★ In 1944, a Japanese ship is sunk and its twelve crew seek refuge on the nearby Pacific island of Anatahan. Loosely based on real events, Josef von Sternberg’s 1953 tale of shipwrecked Japanese soldiers is one of desperation, base desire and the instability of moral codes.The crew quickly discover that Anatahan is already inhabited…

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★★★★★ Indian master Satyajit Ray once said that music was more important to him than his beloved cinema. In the director’s The Music Room, re-released under the UK’s Criterion Collection label this week, his passion for the former and mastery of the latter is clear. Based on a Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay short, The Music Room depicts…

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★★★☆☆ Lisa (Mandy Moore) has just been dumped by her boyfriend for being too boring. To prove him wrong, Lisa goes on holiday to Mexico with her sister, Kate (Claire Holt). Kate convinces Lisa she needs an adventure, in the form of cage diving with sharks, through a sketchy company run by two dudes they…

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★★★★★ While only Westfront 1918 is set during the First World War, it and Kameradschaft are about the madness, futility and trauma of that conflict. Set in the final months of the war, Westfront 1918 is Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s first sound film.Kameradschaft, released the following year, depicts a group of German miners rescuing their French…

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★★★★★ Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest masterpiece, the Russian director’s 1979 film Stalker is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality. Following a mysterious disaster that rendered a small town uninhabitable, the eponymous Stalker (Alexksanr Kaydanovskiy) illegally takes visitors in to the area now known…

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★★★★★ June 1940. Four-hundred thousand British soldiers prepare for evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk. While Privates Alex (Harry Styles), Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), and Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) await rescue, RAF pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) and pleasure-boat skipper Dawson (Mark Rylance) rush to help their comrades in arms.Opening on the streets of Dunkirk, Private Tommy dodges…

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★★★★☆ In 2011, no one thought that Rise of the Planet of the Apes would be much cop. But not only did this plucky prequel prove to be terrific fun, it spawned one of the best trilogies in recent years: its closing chapter, War for the Planet of the Apes, being the king of the…

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★★★★☆ Following three poorly received instalments and two franchise reboots courtesy of Sony Pictures, there’s a lot riding on Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) prodigal return to the Marvel stable, a near miracle in itself of cross-studio collaboration.Indeed, though the words, “with great power comes great responsibility” are never actually spoken in Spider-Man: Homecoming, the mantra weighs…

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