★★★★★ Following his dual Oscar wins for Parasite – unprecedented for a foreign language feature – way back in February, South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho is perhaps this year’s most important director, not least because his films – rooted as they are in class politics and manic heightened realities – Continue Reading
★★★★★ With her fourth feature, director Sarah Gavron offers up one of the year’s best British films. Developed and written organically in collaboration with its young cast, Rocks is a faultlessly authentic study of contemporary young life in the inner city. After Shola ‘Rocks’ (Bukky Bakray) mother disappears leaving only Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Building on her previous documentary short of the same name, Rubika Shah’s White Riot is an engaging and important study of Rock Against Racism, a movement formed in 1976 in response to the rising racism of the British political and social landscapes. In febrile times such as these, it’s Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ British actor Aki Omoshaybi directs his first feature Real, a tale of beleaguered young love. Crafting an intimate, impressionistic story Omoshaybi is also impressive in the lead as lovelorn Kyle, while Pippa Bennett Warner is affecting as the object of his affections, single mother and recovering alcoholic Jamie. Kyle Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In 2015, German-British composer Max Richter released his most ambitious work to date, an eight and a half hour composition designed to be listened to while sleeping. Natalie Johns’ documentary on the piece is an appropriately languorous, dreamy exploration of Richter’s music taken at its own pace and pleasurably Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ We’ve already had First Man and Apollo 11, but the renewed interest in the space race prompted by the lunar landings anniversary gets its weirdest entry yet with Elsa Kresmer and Levin Peter’s impressionistic documentary Space Dogs. There is a legend, Alexey Serebryakov’s voice tells us, a voice deep Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Premiering in competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Václav Marhoul’s adaptation of Jerzy Kosińsk’s 1965 novel The Painted Bird is a gruelling odyssey through the bloody fields of Europe in the middle of the 20th century. Sometimes there are films that you feel people must-see – and mustn’t Continue Reading
★★★★★ It’s a quarter of a century since La Haine‘s original release, its win for Best Director at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and its stunning worldwide acclaim. Mathieu Kassovitz’s account of police brutality is as ferocious a punch in the stomach as it was twenty-five years ago, and retains every spark of an explosive Continue Reading
★★★★☆ When one door closes in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, some are locked, others left ajar and one which opens memories long buried in the basement is definitely off limits. Director Charlie Kaufman leads us on a not-so-merry dance across these thresholds, literal and figurative, and into the beguiling, Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Three figures stalk through a forest – a woman with long, raven-black hair (Katarina Jakobson), a giant, bearded brute carrying a dead dog (Morad Baloo Khatchadorian), and their leader, a grinning, white-suited gent singing a children’s song (Peter Belli). Thus opens Johannes Nyholm’s second feature, its evocative imagery promising Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Multi-award-winning Brazilian drama Sócrates tells the troubled story of a bereaved gay teenager barely surviving in a São Paulo slum. Directed with quiet restraint and featuring a central performance of startling depth and candour, this movie is a slow-burning story of loss and solitude which is also resonant with Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The film that took the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes shook French President Emmanuel Macron so strongly that he was moved to (ostensibly, at least) begin reforming France’s inner-city ghettos. Ladj Ly’s feature debut takes its inspiration from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, but this tale of urban deprivation Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Veteran scribe William Nicholson returns to the screen in his first feature directorial credit since 1997’s Firelight. Now on directing duties too, Nicholson explores the perils and heartbreak of middle-aged divorce with Hope Gap. Nicholson has form with writing later-life relationships, so it’s a shame that the real hope Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In her second feature as director, American actor-producer-filmmaker Amy Seimetz explores the existential ennui of inevitable doom in this chilling, strange horror. In the age of Covid and climate change, what could possibly feel more contemporary? Having missed its premiere at the cancelled SXSW festival earlier this year, much Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Christopher Nolan’s films are so big, so hotly anticipated, that they form their own sort of gravitational pull, and cinema chains are hoping that the draw of Tenet will irresistibly compel viewers back into theatres. For all of Tenet’s innovative, ideas-led structure, however, it lacks the sort of emotional Continue Reading