★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★★☆ Having charmed audiences at Sundance over a year ago, Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari finally makes its way to UK screens. Drawing on his own South Korean heritage, and experience of growing up in rural Arkansas, the director’s poignant, very personal fifth feature was […]
★★★★☆ “It’s the end of the line,” says a bus driver as he wakes a man who has fallen asleep on his route. Where was his stop? Does he not remember his name? Opening with an end, a journey unfinished, is the departure point […]
★★★★☆ Led by a tour de force performance as savage, unpredictable and frightening as the film’s titular ursine, Black Bear stars Aubrey Plaza in stellar form as a writer-director seeking inspiration, in this bamboozling psychological character study. Art appears to imitate and draw upon […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★☆☆☆ Expressly out of sight, with the intention of being out of mind, there were only so many monikers – Gitmo, Camp X-Ray – and so many excuses, pieces of questionable legislation, that the US government could throw at their activities in Guantánamo Bay […]
★★★★☆ “Things are not always the way they look, you know.” Behind the forced smiles and false bonhomie of replies to inane talk-show hosts, hidden truths lie. Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s Tina digs deep into the past, the resilience and the courage of […]
★★★★☆ The saying goes that in the movies you should never work with children or animals. Acclaimed documentary short filmmaker Elizabeth Lo proves the latter part of this old adage to be complete nonsense with her feature debut, Stray. Following the freewheeling day to day […]
★★★☆☆ “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 […]
★★★★☆ ‘The most famous person you’ve never heard of.’ So read the tagline for Gracie Otto’s acclaimed 2013 documentary The Last Impresario, an exploration of the life and times of renowned producer Michael White. The Australian director moves from theatre and film to the music […]
