★★★★☆ Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s first film in six years, R.M.N. is a multi-faceted, oft-bleak, and occasionally surreal portrait of racism and toxic masculinity in Romanian society. In its depiction of a part of Europe struggling to keep up with neoliberalism, R.M.N exposes the dark mirror of liberal, globalised western European metropolitanism.
★★★★☆ An acerbic social satire, Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva’s latest reflects a cultural malaise rooted in cultural ennui. More than a casual swipe at modern social trends, Rotting in the Sun exposes a kind of cruelty, alienation, and social stratification that is only as modern as the technology through which it expresses itself.
★★★☆☆ Chilean director Pablo Larraín has made the treatment of the great, the famous and the powerful his topic of preference, eschewing the lower end of the social scale that first made him famous with films such as Tony Manero and Post Mortem. Nothing has quite gone as far as El Conde, however.
★★★★☆ Christopher Nolan directs his first biopic, depicting the scientist who developed the atomic bombs that would devastate and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and bring an end to the Second World War. The British director’s twelfth feature is a fascinating and accomplished cinematic object, but as a study of greatness, Oppenheimer’s subject is often obscured by its author’s auteurist preoccupations.
★★★★☆ Deep under the ice of the Bering Strait, a tactical exercise on a Russian submarine goes badly wrong. As the bodies of the doomed sub float to the surface, something sinister is hidden inside its hull. The first of a two-parter, Christopher McQuarrie helms the seventh episode of the era’s premier action series.
★★★★☆ The British-Moroccan director of Lynn + Lucy, Fyzal Boulifa, returns to screens with this deeply moving tale of a mother and son living on the margins of society. Sharing its name with a 1950 Joan Crawford film, The Damned Don’t Cry has thematic resonance with its namesake as a study of women’s vulnerability in a patriarchal society and the criminalising of marginalised lives.
★★★☆☆ It’s 1969 and time has finally caught up with Indiana Jones. When he’s not napping in a bourbon-induced fug, he’s boring his students to sleep, counting down the hours to retirement. It seems that the days of the once legendary archaeologist’s adventures are behind him, until the daughter of an old friend arrives to drag the old man into one final hurrah.
★★☆☆☆ Following up his 2019 directorial debut Mallesham, Hyderabad-based director Raj Rachakonda returns to screens with a romantic drama that draws heavy inspiration from Brief Encounter, Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, and the Before Trilogy. 8 A.M. Metro is a sweet but ultimately shallow film whose final act ultimately finds depth and dimension too late to redeem its prior narrative shortcomings.
★★★☆☆ One of the most unmistakable filmmakers currently working, Wes Anderson is the go-to stylist for A.I.-generated parodies. His distinctive colour palettes, flat, lateral camera moves, diorama scene design and starry deadpan performances of witticism clipped from The New Yorker mean that most can pre-visualise his films before they even buy a ticket.
★★★★★ Once again, it’s time for cinema audiences to keep their appointment with The Wicker Man following a recent 4K restoration. It’s an offbeat masterpiece that reveals the dark heart of Britain through the perennial tension between social progress and the burden of the past.
★★☆☆☆ All good things, they say, must end. Unfortunately for the DC Extended Universe, so too do the messy, mediocre and baffling. A basically entertaining, but flimsy and shallow object, The Flash may not be the final entry in this long-beleaguered franchise, but it might as well be.