The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
★★★★☆
With a cast list as long as your livery-sleeved arm, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is a colourful romp through the bright lights of Old Europe.
Americas
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
★★★★☆
A stylish Jim Jarmusch movie, Only Lovers Left Alive is a contemporary tale of centuries-old world-weary vampires, their lives sustained by love and blood.
Her (2013)
★★★★☆
In a near future dominated by computers, Spike Jonze’s Her sees a lonely man fall in love with his operating system, which understands him better than he does himself.
The Armstrong Lie (2013)
★★★☆☆
Through comeback, doping and scandal, Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie charts the Tour de France winner’s rise to the podium and the lies that kept him there.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
★★★★★
A simple tale of a folk singer’s struggle for recognition belies the myriad of metaphors behind this wonderfully humorous, miserable and melancholic story.
Teenage (2013)
★★★★☆
A teenage dream’s so hard to beat, Matt Wolf gets his Teenage kicks from all over the globe, charting the rise and fall of youth in the twentieth century.
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
★★★☆☆
Kinetic, hypnotic and hilarious, The Wolf Of Wall Street is an unrelenting rollercoaster of moral depravity – it’s a lot of fun, if you have the stomach for it.
12 Years A Slave (2013)
★★★★★
A searing story of slavery in 19th century America, based on the 1853 memoir of a free black man from New York, who is abducted and sold into slavery in the South.
All Is Lost (2013)
★★★★☆
All is Lost is a one-man tour de force that will either crown Robert Redford’s acting career so far or signal his return to it after concentrating on his Sundance Festival.
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (2013)
★★★☆☆
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a charming, relatable and flawed film romanticising the virtues of escaping the tedium of reality with a hop, skip and a jump.
Kill Your Darlings (2013)
★★★★☆
Will the circle be unbroken? John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings uncovers Allen Ginsberg’s dance with death as the Beat generation stage a writers’ revolution.
Nebraska (2013)
★★★★★
Determined to pick up a nonexistent million-dollar mailshot prize, an elderly father on the edge of dementia is driven across America by his long-suffering son.
Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s (2013)
★★★☆☆
Matthew Miele’s Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s is a suitably sleek star-studded behind-the-scenes documentary looking at New York’s über department store.
Saving Mr Banks (2013)
★★★★☆
A clash of cultures with a war zone in the writers room, John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr Banks puts adaptation and that special relationship on trial