★★★★☆ The first of a two-parter, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is bigger, bolder and grander than its predecessor, and with little serious competition from Marvel or DC’s live-action factories, looks set to be the best superhero film of the year.
★★★☆☆ A man sits alone in a room with a notepad and begins to scribble down his own voiceover. He only writes on one page and seems to always be starting at the top. His thoughts will be meticulous and he will show a certain expertise. When he’s finished writing he will place the pen on the table, neatly aligned with the pad.
★★☆☆☆ Bereavement, mental health, the threadbare US social welfare system and homelessness are the heavy topics that British-born director Deborah Richards tackles in her debut feature. Unfortunately, their worthy but superficial and somewhat incoherent presentation means that Move Me No Mountain is an emotionally and thematically inert experience.
★★★☆☆ Sometimes, it’s tough being really skilled at one thing in particular. Having flown out the blocks with two supremely good, bonafide hit horror films (Hereditary, Midsommar), writer and director Ari Aster had to make a departure to avoid being pigeon-holed as a genre specialist.
★★★★☆ Nam June Paik is commonly referred to as the “father of video art”. In her debut feature, director Amanda Kim chronicles Paik’s work from his early development in Berlin up to his eventual return to Korea in the 1980s.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ During a summer break to a remote village in the Italian Alps, Pietro forges a lifelong friendship with the only other boy among the settlement’s dwindling population. Husband-wife team Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains is a gorgeously-told fable of platonic love.
★★★★☆ Amidst the most rapidly-ageing population in the world and following a string of violent attacks against the elderly, the Japanese legislature passes a bill to legalise assisted suicide over the age of 75. Hayakawa Chie’s debut feature is an emotionally nuanced human drama as well as an accomplished study of the banality of evil.
★★★★★ Returning to South Korea after being adopted in France as a baby, Freddie (Park Ji-min) embarks on an epic journey of self discovery and reinvention. His third feature, Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is a visceral, astonishingly assured work, compelling, rarely predictable, and vital.
★★☆☆☆ Korean-American director Christina Yr. Lim’s latest is a sweet family drama headed by two charismatic leads and nicely drawn, criss-crossing relationships. Sadly, dangling narrative threads, a few overcooked performances and undeveloped themes keep For Taylor firmly on the b-side.
★★★☆☆ Lola Quivoron’s debut fiction feature is an affecting and vital hybrid picture, part crime drama, part character study. Rodeo follows the exploits of Julia (Julie Ledru), a somewhat delinquent youth who boosts dirt bikes for the thrill of it, before falling in with a gang of bikers who help her hone her skills as both a thief and a rider.
★★★★☆ In French Polynesia, High Commissioner De Roller (Benoît Magimel) manages the delicate tensions between islanders and the establishment, moving through society’s strata. Writer-director Albert Serra’s latest is a hazy fever dream of post-colonialist politics and ambition that, in its final minutes, lurches into apocalyptic mania.
★★★★☆ A sense of powerlessness is often described as a root cause of climate-anxiety, and it seems inevitable that such negative energy would have an equal and opposite: dreams of drastic action. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a ‘what if’ film about targeting carbon infrastructure, dressed with the contours of a heist movie and delivered with the imaginative punch of gelignite.
★★★★☆ Can love sustain in a relationship if it is not reciprocal; indeed is such a thing even love? With One Fine Morning, celebrated French director Mia Hansen-Løve presents complementary accounts of infatuation, love, and loss in a nuanced, moving study of the ways that love can sustain and consume us.
★★★★★ Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy stars Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy and Irene Jacob in three of the most revered pieces of European cinema ever made. Named after the colours of the French flag (Blue, White and Red), the films are loosely based on the three political ideals of the French Republic; Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.