Joseph Walsh

★★★★☆ Earlier this year, Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling documentary The Act of Killing (2013) recreated the events of the 1965 military coup in Indonesia. Approaching equally harrowing material, Marc Wiese’s third documentary feature, Camp 14: Total Control Zone (2012), places us within the barbaric prison camps of North Korea in an arresting tale of human endurance…

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★★★★☆ Elusive, nuanced and poignant, Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s second feature together, Mister John (2013), fathoms the depths of masculine identity in crisis, with an emotionally resonant tale given additional flavour by its exotic locale. We first meet Gerry Divine (played by the under-used and underrated Aiden Gillen) in a haggard, unshaven and jet-lagged…

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★★★☆☆ Shot in sumptuous monochrome, Fernando Trueba’s thoughtful 2012 film The Artist and The Model – starring French character actor Jean Rochefort – adds to the director’s already eclectic oeuvre, making for satisfying viewing. Set in the rural south of France in the middle of the Second World War, we meet ageing, semi-retired sculptor Marc…

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★★★★☆ Hollywood director Ron Howard loves a true story, but has also previously shown a penchant for the sentimental. Fortunately, in his thrilling new F1 drama Rush (2013), he abandons the saccharine motifs of his past works, creating one of this year’s most sensory cinematic experiences. Howard and British screenwriter Peter Morgan unite once more…

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★★★☆☆ Borrowed Time (2012), the debut feature from Jules Bishop, is a warm-hearted micro-indie that cleanses the palate of all those overdone, dank and dull British kitchen sink dramas. It’s topped off with a gleeful performance from Phil Davis as an agoraphobic curmudgeon, and Theo Barklem-Biggs (of The Inbetweeners Movie fame) as a down-on-his-luck hoodie…

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★★★☆☆ Long before Matt Damon and Jude Law drenched their golden locks in the sun of southern Italy in the late Anthony Minghella’s superb The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), René Clément – who can be placed at the forefront of the French New Wave – tackled Patricia Highsmith’s famous novel with the elegant Plein Soleil…

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★★★☆☆ Spanish horror The Body (2012) is the entertaining directorial debut from Oriol Paulo, the scribe behind 2010’s Julia’s Eyes. Opening on a stormy night, we see the white-eyed security guard of a morgue fleeing for his life, only to be hit by a car and end up in hospital, comatose. So the mystery begins.…

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★★★☆☆ John Akomfrah’s documentary about leading cultural theorist Stuart Hall offers a vivid portrait of the Jamaican-born academic, who was at the centre of the New Left movement. Exploring this integral figure, The Stuart Hall Project (2013) dexterously employs the use of archive footage, reminding us of the man’s contribution to the shaping of modern…

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★★★★☆ Jem Cohen paints an arresting and mesmeric drama in his first narrative feature, Museum Hours (2012). Comparable to the literature of Italo Calvino in the way Cohen has managed to produce a potent portrait of both the physical and the emotional, it effortlessly glides through art history, wrapped in the warm drama of a…

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★☆☆☆☆ Vin Diesel’s belated and unwelcome return as Riddick’s (2013) titular anti-hero proves to be not just a pitiful example of ‘churn ’em out’ genre cinema, but is also perhaps set to be the most chauvinistic, sexist movie of the year. David Twohy returns to direct for the third time, abandoning the eye-brow-raising aesthetic of…

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