This gripping documentary about North Koreans trying to flee the oppressive regime is as disturbing and harrowing as any horror film. It focuses on the fascinating South Korean Christian Pastor, Seungeun Kim, who, partly motivated by the death of his youn…

Australian director-co-writer Kitty Green’s follow-up to her deeply unsettling me-too drama ‘The Assistant’ is a well-acted and nuanced study of sexual politics, but ultimately feels less than the sum of its parts. Garner (who also starred in ‘The Assista…

The ever-daring Tilda Swinton doubles up here playing a daughter and her mother in this atmospheric chiller from collaborator writer-director Joanna Hogg. Filmmaker Julia Hart and elderly mother Rosalind (both Swinton) and Rosalind’s dog Louis (Louis) hav…

This impressive feature debut from writer-director Adura Onashile charts the experiences of a pair of refugees. The troubled Grace (French actor Lukumuena from ‘Divines’) has recently arrived in the UK from West Africa with her eleven-year-old daughter Am…

French documentarian Philibert is best known here for his celebrated documentary about a village school ‘Être et Avoir’. His latest is an equally thoughtful, humane and leisurely-paced profile of the disparate visitors who visit the L’Adamant Day Centre, …

Molly Manning-Walker’s impressively assured feature debut charts an exhaustingly hedonistic week’s holiday for a trio of sixteen-year-old Brit women and its sour comedown. Their A-levels just out of the way, Skye (Peake), Em (Lewis) and the ebullient Tara…

Following his last picture, the illuminating Polly Styrene documentary ‘Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché’, director Paul Sng profiles another pioneering female artist, once again drawing on the testimony of friends and family. Patricia ‘Tish' Murtha was born i…

Todd Haynes reunites with Julianne Moore to deliver his best film since ‘Carol’. Moore is Gracie, a middle-class housewife and part-time cake maker, who is married to the handsome and much younger Korean American Joe (Melton). They have twins who are abou…

Scorsese’s long-awaited adaption of David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book ‘Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI’ is immaculately-rendered, but unruly and overlong. A pacey opening illustrates via fake newsreel footage how…

British writer-director Emerald Fennell's follow-up to her bold debut ‘Promising Young Woman’ is a good-looking, but derivative and modish class satire meets erotic psychological thriller. Keoghan is Oliver Quick, a working class Merseyside English Litera…

The title presumably a nod to the child-themed classic ‘Spirit of the Beehive’, this impressive feature debut from Spanish writer-director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren is a lyrical and slow-burning but compelling and all-too timely exploration of gender i…

Taking its name from the Hudson-starring Douglas Sirk masterpiece ‘All That Heaven Allows’ this insightful documentary charts the secret history of the gay actor. When Hudson arrived in Hollywood he was snapped up by agent Henry Wilson, a notorious castin…

Writer-director Carol Morley’s singular picture is a fictionalised road/buddy movie inspired by the real Sunderland artist Audrey Amiss. Broadly neglected during her life, Audrey’s work, which consisted of sketches and paintings, was revaluated following …

This amusing comic drama charts the rise and rapid fall of Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company behind the titular communication device. It opens with tech nerds Mike Lazardis (Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson) pitching an early version of the…

Based on a true story, this 2014-set Britpic follows an eighty-nine-year old pensioner as he makes his way across the channel to take part in the D-Day anniversary ceremony in Normandy. Caine is Bernard Jordan, the ex-navy man, living with his wife Irene …

Scripted by long-time collaborator Paul Laverty, the final part of venerable British director Ken Loach’s North-East trilogy and indeed his last film (and we’ve checked) is a typically passionate and timely paean to solidarity set in the ‘North of England…

The Marc Bolan tribute album of the same name was released way back in 2020, so this rockumentary (if you will) which mixes making-of-the-record footage and interviews with some of the artists involved, with archive footage of the singer, feels like an at…

Playwright turned director Celine Song’s debut feature is a strikingly assured, thematically rich and lyrical romantic drama that charts over three parts the relationship between two childhood friends into adulthood. Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung …

Inspirational and horrific in almost equal measure, this comprehensive documentary charts the remarkable career trajectory of Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine. Growing up in a slum in Kampala, Uganda, Wine managed to secure a place at Makerere University…

‘Easy Rider’ late 60s’ disillusionment gives way to twenty-twenties’ nihilism in the punishing two-handed take on the American road movie. Dim, blue-haired twentysomething Jacob (director Monahan) and his motor-mouthed firecracker brother John (Loesch who…

As befits his usual screen persona, the debut feature from actor-turned-director Neil Maskell is an unsettling dark comic drama. IT worker Ewan Appleby (Shah from ‘Happy Valley’) and his wife Silke (Dohnke) have relocated from the UK to the titular town i…

Spanish auteur Almodóvar famously turned down the chance to direct ‘Brokeback Mountain’. This homoerotic cowboy movie is, he claims, his ‘answer’ to the question raised by that movie. It opens with dapper horsemen Silva (the ubiquitous Pascal, sporting St…

Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s latest is a sprawling state-of-the-nation drama with an all-too timely depiction of the resurgence of nativism in the EU/globalisation era. In an ominous prologue, a six-year-old boy witnesses something awful in …

Set in Fremont, California, Iranian-British director and co-writer Jalali’s picture is a whimsical and slight but ultimately affecting comic study of a lonely young refugee. Donya (real-life Afghan refugee Zada) is a twentysomething recently arrived in th…

Japanese writer-director Kôji Fukada’s latest is a deeply humane study of loss, distance and communication. Taeko (Kiumura) and her husband Jirô (Nagayama) live in a smart, small apartment in a nondescript housing block with their six-year-old son Keita (…

Adapted from his own highly popular series of 90s manga comics, Takehiko Inoue’s directorial debut is a rousing and immaculately-crafted basketball anime. The ragtag Shohoku High School basketball team are facing the fearsome Sannoh High School in the Na…

Co-written with Mauricio Zacharias, Ira Sachs’ latest is a far more austere and uncompromising examination of relationships than previous pictures such as the bittersweet ‘Love Is Strange’. German film director Tomas (Franz) lives with his British husband…

This likeable feature debut from writer-director Charlotte Regan plays like ‘Paris Texas’ reimagined as a cheeky and irreverent council estate comedy. Georgie (Campbell) is a wily twelve-year-old who has been managing by herself since the death of her mot…

Destined to be hawked around as ‘big-hearted’, this broad small-town musical romance is big on visuals but undone by poor writing. Helen (Brealey, Molly from ‘Sherlock’) works in the titular chicken-packing factory in a small Welsh town where she spends d…

A coarse, sweary, canine-only version of ‘The Incredible Journey’ might sound like a mildly amusing idea for a short skit, but proves almost unbearably tedious over a ninety-minute stretch. Reggie (voiced by Ferrell doing his wide-eyed innocent thing) is …

Few would have expected great things of this remake of the poor 2003 picture, which was in turn adapted from a Disney theme ride, but this is truly cursed stuff. Stanfield leads the far-too-good-for-this cast as Ben Matthias, an astrophysicist who has dev…

This bittersweet overly-determined exploration of storytelling, memory and the suffocating consequences of small-town life, follows a middle-aged author returning to his hometown of Cognac for the first time in decades. Shortly after arriving, author and …

The title of this illuminating and irreverently frank documentary from trans woman music producer-turned-director D. Smith, which profiles a quartet of trans women call girls, is taken from ‘Sissy Man Blues’, a 1934 recording by obscure blues singer Kokom…

An unpleasant if inevitable whiff of commerce pervades this extended Playstation ad, based, remarkably, and alarmingly, on a true story. It begins with Nissan marketing executive Danny Moore (a charmless Bloom) pitching a competition to the company heads …

This raunchy comedy, scripted by comedy writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, is amusing enough, thanks to spirited turns from the lead quartet and jaunty direction from Lim, but it runs out of road two thirds of the way in. A prologue illus…

While it’s more likely to appeal to nostalgic adults than children, this reboot of the animated 80s cartoon, their seventh (count ‘em) big screen outing succeeds due to sprightly pacing, surprisingly heartfelt voice turns and some lovely animation. An ori…

Although this is his fifth directorial feature, actor Louis Garrel’s comedy drama feels like a debut picture with its freewheeling energy and stylistic promiscuity. As well as co-writing, Garrel also stars as Abel, a moody thirtysomething man mourning his…

Writer-director Crialese’s family drama is ultra-stylish and undoubtedly heartfelt, but feels underdeveloped. It’s Rome in the 70s and gender dysphoric twelve-year-old Andriana (Giuliani) is struggling with their identity, choosing to identify as Andri (a…

This German-produced English language thriller does not quite maintain momentum after a very strong opening, but it’s zippy enough over its ninety-minute running time. American twentysomething Drew (Lowe) has persuaded her older sister May (Krause) to joi…

Partly inspired by the experiences of her brother who was present at the Bataclan in 2015 on the night of the Paris terrorist attacks, writer-director Winocour’s picture is a moving, if slightly contrived, study of loss and recovery. Belgian actor Efira, …

German-writer director Petzold continues to work through the elements with this more grounded and tartly enjoyable follow-up to aquatic fable ‘Undine’. Leon (Schubert) is an author who has left Berlin to stay in a small woodland cottage on the Baltic Sea …

As 2023 marks 40 years of iconic pop duo Wham! the celebrations have been nothing but brilliant. With the celebrations comes the release of Wham! on Netflix, a documentary highlighting the fame and friendship of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. As a Wh…

After months of hype, a tsunami of memes and an admittedly impressive publicity campaign Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of the popular Mattel toy finally arrives. And it’s okay-ish. Co-scripted by Gerwig with fellow indie darling Noah Baumbach, it gets off a s…

Christopher Nolan’s dense biopic of father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, based on the 2005 biography ‘American Prometheus’ by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, features some impressively muscular analogue filmmaking, along with more questionabl…

The seventh and penultimate instalment of the big screen is as unwieldy as its title. The opening scene sets out the picture’s modish theme as a high-tech Russian submarine is tricked into firing on itself by a sinister AI device. It is revealed that the …

The latest from singular oddball French writer-director Quentin ‘Deerskin’ Dupieux is a slight at 77 minutes, but consistently droll take on the superhero genre. We first encounter the spandex-clad Tobacco Force - dashing leader Benzène (Lellouche), osten…

The concluding episode of the Indiana Jones saga undoes some of the damage of the dispiriting previous outing for the archaeologist adventurer, 2008’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, but the zip of fizz of Steven Spielberg’s origina…

Based on true events, this French feminist drama charts the experiences of Maureen Kearney, a dogged and well-respected union representative working for nuclear energy company Ariva. When the company’s boss (Foïs), with whom Kearney (Huppert) enjoys a goo…

This lyrical documentary explores the life of a deaf Iraqi immigrant. Lawand was only five-years-old when he and his family, older brother Rawa and parents, fled the country, undergoing an arduous journey from Iraq to Derby. In his native country, there w…

Tastefully rendered in black and white, photographer/director Anton Corbijn’s documentary is an entertaining whistle-stop tour of the freewheeling career of legendary Prog-era design company Hipgnosis, featuring entertaining yarns from the major players. …

Shades of ‘Zootropolis’ in Pixar’s latest, a romantic comedy meets immigrant tale set in a teeming city where different anthropomorphic elements must muck along. Husband and wife fire elements Bernie (del Carmen) and Cinder (Omni) are immigrants to Elemen…

Graduating from YouTube shorts, Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut feature is an occasionally genuinely scary, but flawed horror tale. After a disconcerting prologue in which an Adelaide house party takes a very bad turn, we are introduc…

British-Moroccan director-screenwriter Fyzal Boulifa’s follow-up to the Essex housing estate drama ‘Lynn + Lucy’ is an empathetic slow-burning study of a mother and son in contemporary Morocco that nods to Sirkian melodrama and Fassbinder-style depictions…

Initially, this immigrant tale feels like a departure from Serraille’s debut, the sparkling comedy drama ‘Jeune Femme’, but it shares the earlier film’s feel for character detail and telling moments. Spanning twenty years and told in three chapters, each …