★★★★☆ 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. […]
★★★☆☆ Schoharie County, the upstate New York setting of Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, takes its name from a Mohawk word meaning ‘floating driftwood’. It’s an apt starting point from which to view the Norwegian director’s sophomore feature, the term keys into the […]
★★★★☆ The old saying goes that a problem shared is a problem halved. The maths of this is not an exact science in Anders Thomas Jensen’s Riders of Justice, but an unlikely band of misfit brothers in arms – a soldier, hacker, statistician and […]
★★★★☆ A fusion of storytelling, dance, song and mythology, Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings forms a rich, beguiling narrative web. Channelling the gifts of a traditional West African griot, the Ivory Coast filmmaker uses oral histories passed down by the generations to draw […]
★★★★★ Recalling the moment she walked out on stage and looked upon the assembled crowd of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, Mavis Staples remembers being “overcome with joy.” The experience of watching Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the […]
★★☆☆☆ Close encounters of an unusual kind shake Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) to her core in Zoé Wittock’s debut feature Jumbo. With the ground literally trembling beneath her feet, strange sounds and sensations take hold at an amusement park where the sparks of sexual awakening […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ “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 […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ “No politics. No government. No nothing!” Remove these elements from any American film set or produced amid the anger, disenchantment and paranoia of the mid-1970s, and what remains? The answer is either a large great white shark or a tongue-in-cheek ode to the […]
★★★★☆ A bruising, beguiling return to the big screen, In the Earth finds Ben Wheatley once again on top form. Provocative, despicably playful, and consistently punishing, stitched into the skin of the writer-director’s latest film are a multitude of issues relating to Covid-19 and the anxieties […]
★★☆☆☆ Mid-way through Land, Robin Wright’s Edee is being taught to hunt by kindly woodsman Miguel (Demián Bichir). Spying a deer, a good distance away on the other side of a broad river, she shuts her eyes, pauses for breath, and fires. Lo and […]
★★★★★ There’s a joyous moment just after the hour mark of Gunda where two piglets experience rain for the first time. Sneaking to the threshold of their warm abode, full of curiosity, they look to the sky, and instinctively, playfully try to catch the […]
★★★★★ 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-Pakistani household with the complications, and deceptions, of modern life, this simmering, low-key feature […]
★★★☆☆ Bolder, more bombastic and action-driven, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place Part II pushes the boundaries laid down by its nail-biting, claustrophobic forebear, building upon the solid – though deeply shaken – foundations of the 2018 surprise smash hit. All that was out of sight was very […]
Anchored by one of the finest lead performances of any British film in recent memory, Aleem Khan’s feature debut, After Love, sees Joanna Scanlan as a woman whose very identity is crumbling around her, after a bombshell revelation causes her to reassess her whole life […]
★★★★☆ “Football, bloody hell!” Taciturn, but never a man to mince his words, only occasionally did the inscrutable exterior of Sir Alex Ferguson – one of football’s most fearsome managers – ever crack a smile. Directed by his son Jason, documentary memoir Sir Alex […]
★★★☆☆ Finding Ben Whishaw at his most electric and engrossing best, Surge sees an airport security official a long way past the end of his rope and on a collision course with disaster. Aneil Karia’s debut feature is (intentionally) uncomfortable viewing from first to […]
