Christopher Machell

★★★★★ After debuting at Cannes last year, celebrated Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s In Front of Your Face arrives on UK screens. A typically minimalist outing, director Hong’s film is a devastating drama whose affect creeps up on the audience so quietly that it is barely noticeable until after the final blow has landed.

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★★★★☆ Aspiring comic artist Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) has just graduated from high school with long-suffering friend Miles (Miles Emanuel). After witnessing the death of his esteemed, unconventional art teacher, Robert leaves home, gets a job and sets out to make his name as an artist in this idiosyncratic, unsettling and very funny coming-of-age story.

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★★☆☆☆ Television director Tom George makes the leap to big screen features with quirky 1950s-set whodunnit See How They Run. Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell head a cast of international stars and British TV alumni, but sadly charismatic turns from the likeable leads rarely detract from a shallow archness to proceedings.

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★★☆☆☆ Have you ever wondered who would win in a fight between Idris Elba and an enraged African lion? Well wonder no more, dear reader, as Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is here to answer one of the question of the ages with Beast, an entertaining-enough survival romp that at only 90 minutes long feels oddly…

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★★★★☆ Jordan Peele reunites with Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya for his third film, Nope, a typically tense, frightening and frequently funny reinvention of the flying saucer B-movie. While its social satire is perhaps not as sharp as Get Out, nor its scares as creepy as Us, Nope is nevertheless another triumph from Peele.

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★★☆☆☆ Four years on from the last attempt at a reboot courtesy of Shane Black, 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg arrives to do what no other director has managed and rejuvenate the Predator franchise. Sadly, though the attempt is admirable, the direct-to-Disney+ Prey is an oddly blunted affair.

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★★★★☆ Based on Isaka Kōtarō’s 2010 novel MariaBeetle, Bullet Train comes thundering out of the station, a runaway delight of forward momentum, style and excess. Directed by the man behind John Wick, Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, David Leitch once again proves himself one of the most adept action directors in Hollywood.

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★★★★☆ Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Perry Henzell’s classic 1972 crime thriller makes its way once again to British screens. With a sensational soundtrack, a terrific central performance from reggae master Jimmy Cliff, and violence as unvarnished as Mean Streets, The Harder They Come has lost none of its excitement.

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★★☆☆☆ At a retreat in upstate New York, law student Lark (Ayumi Patterson) gradually uncovers a web of mystery and deceit that has ensnared her friends. American director Jaclycn Bethany’s second feature, The Falling World contains moments of intrigue but a limp script and a cast of unengaging characters make this effort fall flat.

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★★★★☆ On 3 June 1991, famed French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft made their final, fateful expedition to an erupting volcano. The eruption at Mount Unzen, near Nagasaki, killed the pair in a devastating pyroclastic flow. Documentarian Sara Dosa crafts an impassioned picture of the world’s most celebrated married volcanologists.

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