Cannes review: The Meyerowitz Stories (new and selected) (2017)
★★★★☆
Noah Baumbach’s verbose comedy-drama The Meyerowitz Stories for Netflix is solid mainstream entertainment with a wry taste.
Cannes review: 120 BPM (120 beats per minute) (2017)
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a sober, moving, tender and compassionate film.
Cannes review: Okja (2017)
★★★★☆
Netflix’s Okja is Bong Joon-ho’s and Jon Ronson’s satire-cum-expose of the genetically modified food industry through the adventures of a delightful Korean girl and an outsize giant pig.
Cannes review: Jupiter’s Moon (2017)
★★★★☆
In Jupiter’s Moon Kornél Mundruczó takes an intriguing and timely magical realist premise but leaves its resolution in mid air.
Cannes review: Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
In Wonderstruck Todd Haynes opens a cabinet of cinematic wonders as two deaf children’s stories interlink 50 years apart in the magic of New York.
Cannes review: Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★★☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.
Spaceship (2016)
★★★★☆
Spaceship is a dreamlike, semi-psychedelic, free-flowing story of teenage cyber goths and alien abductions.
Miss Sloane (2016)
★★★★☆
Jessica Chastain powers through John Madden’s political lobbyist thriller Miss Sloane.
Frantz (2016)
★★★★☆
François Ozon’s Frantz takes you on a haunting journey into the unexpected ramifications of grief, forgiveness and identity in the European aftermath of World War I.
The Levelling (2016)
★★★★☆
The Levelling is an original, haunting British first feature from writer and director Hope Dickson Leach.
Harmonium (2016)
★★★★★☆
In Koji Fukada’s Harmonium, the fragile harmony of a Japanese family is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
The Journey (2016)
★★★★☆
Director Nick Hamm has Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in the back of his car in The Journey, imagining a spellbinding road trip that might have triggered their bromance in government in Northern Ireland.
Heal the Living (2016)
★★★★☆
As a heart intended for transplant passes from teenage accident victim to middle-aged-mother recipient, humanity, compassion and medical professionalism triumph in Katell Quillévéré’s moving Heal the Living.
The Pyramid Texts (2015)
★★★★☆
An old boxer returns to the ring one last time to record a video message to his son. It’s an award-winning,moving monologue from veteran star James Cosmo in the Shammasian Brothers’ The Pyramid Texts.