★★★★☆ “How much do you get paid, just to wear these shoes?” David Letterman’s question to Michael Jordan is met with shrieks of delight from his studio audience. The soon-to-be global superstar bashfully responds, “A lot,” grinning from ear to ear. It’s 1986, Ronald Reagan is President and capitalism is alive Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ “Last year at this time we had snow, and now it’s nice.” An earth-shattering, potentially life-altering sea change occurs behind closed doors for two women living under the constraints of Victorian conservatism in Francis Lee‘s Ammonite. Encompassing the cold, muted tone of the entire script – and indeed the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Lovers Rock is loud, proud and joyous. It’s an invigorating, pound-the-walls-and-floorboards ode to its titular style of reggae. At just sixty-eight minutes, the second instalment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe five-parter may seem more episodic in length, but as the series’ name suggests, great things can come in small Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Deadpan, absurdist comedy may not seem like an obvious genre choice for a story about the cruel, grinding bureaucracy of the UK’s asylum process. But five years since the playful oddness of his debut feature, Pikadero, Ben Sharrock returns in style with Limbo. The Scottish director again demonstrates a Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “You’d never know what’s underneath, unless someone told you.” History books, lectures and internet searches cannot possibly substitute hearing first-hand the effects of Europe’s colonialist past on one of the most impoverished countries in the world. In Rob Lemkin’s African Apocalypse, Oxford University student Femi Nylander’s voyage of discovery Continue Reading
★★★★☆ All the world’s a stage for veteran documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi. Notturno, his latest piece of deeply humanist cinematic theatre, concerns itself with the aftermath of the military coups, authoritarianism and foreign imperialism that have plagued the Middle East since World War One and the fall of the Ottoman Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ “Your cock and your words fill me with joy.” Crass to the point of being offensive, these lyrics – from one song of the soundtrack to Gold for Dogs – effectively sum up this deplorable coming-of-age debut feature. Nonsensical and tonally misguided, we travel from France’s Atlantic coast to Continue Reading
★★★★★ Secrets, lies, love and sacrifices spanning a lifetime resonate across the English Channel and far beyond in writer-director Aleem Khan’s staggering debut, After Love. Blending the traditions of a British-Pakastani household with the complications, and deceptions, of modern life, this simmering, low-key feature is at once as big as Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Eight years after The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg gets the old band back together for a rollicking good time in Another Round. Necking half-a-bottle of Smirnoff before starting a day of work would generally be considered grounds for a pretty serious intervention. But Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) will soon be having Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Set in a small village on the Czech-Austrian border, and spanning fifteen years pre, during and post-Second World War, Bohdan Sláma’s Shadow Country is a monumental piece of filmmaking. Simultaneously an historical allegory of tremendous scope and a claustrophobic, cautionary tale of collaboration and bloody revenge, it is both Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Floating somewhere between drama and fantasy, myth and reality, Christian Petzold’s Undine is a beguiling, other-worldly love story between a diver and a tour guide – or is she a mermaid? Brought to modern-day Berlin from the depths of German Renaissance philosophy, this supernatural allegory benefits from two strong Continue Reading
★★★★★ “They actually have the ability to…to kill. And they’re not sanctioned for it, in any way.” When police officers commit murder with impunity, what possible course of action can be taken by devastated families? When the CPS and IPCC conduct sham investigations, more to save face and keep the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Background noise cannot be ignored in Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare’s exceptional debut, Cicada. Aural triggers that recall repressed traumas are as vivid and immediate as smells or visual memories for Ben (Fifer) and Sam (Sheldon D. Brown). As they battle their individual pasts and the difficulties of a collective present, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Full to the brim with sharp wit, emotional sincerity and overflowing with love, Supernova sees the star power of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci align. Harry Macqueen’s sophomore feature is a slender, pitch-perfect human drama, whose script, direction and arguably career-best performances combine to heart-rending effect. By no means Continue Reading
★★★★☆ It’s hard to imagine Cassius Clay ever taking a back seat in a discussion or standing down from a fight, but his is by no means the loudest voice in the room in One Night in Miami. Or, at least, not all the time. For it is togetherness, solidarity and Continue Reading