Vox Lux (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Vox Lux, Brady Corbet’s second film, is the imagined biography of a fictional pop star played uncomfortably by Natalie Portman.
Americas
Eighth Grade (2018)
★★★★★
The pressures and anxieties of a 14-year-old girl navigating eighth grade in the social media age are put under the microscope in writer/director Bo Burnham’s achingly observant little gem Eighth Grade.
Mid90s (2018)
★★★☆☆
Jonah Hill’s Mid90s is an affectionate, coming-of-age time capsule of skateboards, street life, hip-hop, pop culture moments and stoners.
Dragged Across Concrete (2018)
★★★☆☆
Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughan are cops going brutally rogue in Dragged Across Concrete, S. Craig Zahler’s third film after Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99.
Greta (2018)
★★★☆☆
Neil Jordan’s Greta, starring Isabelle Huppert and Chloê Grace Moretz, is a well-acted, bonkers roller-coaster of horror and laughs.
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
★★★★☆
The Sisters Brothers is a darkly funny, revisionist Western directed by Jacques Audiard.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
★★★★☆
Stanley Kubrick’s must-see cult classic A Clockwork Orange is finally released in the UK.
Ben is Back (2018)
★★★☆☆
Julia Roberts plays a mother fighting to hold onto her relationship with her son in the face of his drug problems in writer/director Peter Hedges’ drama Ben is Back.
Out of Blue (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Out of Blue by Carol Morley, the director of Dreams of a Life, is a metaphysical neo-noir, a Schrödinger’s cat of a film.
At Eternity’s Gate (2018)
★★★★☆
Willem Dafoe stunningly inhabits the outer shell of tormented artist Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s disturbing, arty biopic At Eternity’s Gate.
The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)
★★★★☆
The pursuit of artistic desire goes too far in writer/director Sara Colangelo’s slow burning drama The Kindergarten Teacher based on the 2014 Israeli film and showcasing a tremendous performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Us (2019)
Review to follow.
★★★★☆
Us is Jordan Peele’s truly scary, more-than horror, state-of-the-nation follow-up to his acclaimed Get Out.
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
★★★☆☆
Under the Silver Lake is David Robert Mitchell’s dreamlike, rationality-transcending contemporary noir, starring Andrew Garfield.
What They Had (2018)
★★★☆☆
Writer and director Elizabeth Chomko’s drama What They Had centres around that familiar concept of a crisis bringing a family together and drawing them closer to each other.