Queen and Country (2014)
★★★☆☆
A sequel to his Oscar-nominated Hope And Glory, John Boorman’s semi-autobiographic Queen and Country finds all fair in love and war.
war
Phoenix (2014)
★★★★☆
In war-damaged Berlin a disfigured concentration camp survivor strives to rediscover her identity as she searches for the husband who may have betrayed her.
Woman In Gold (2015)
★★★☆☆
Telling the story of Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, Simon Curtis’ Woman In Gold paints a portrait of Nazi-looted art and its journey back into the right hands.
Suite Française (2014)
★★★☆☆
Turning Irène Némirovsky’s novel of French occupation into a love story across enemy lines, Saul Dibb’s Suite Française is a powerful, arrogant adaptation.
Maidan (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Uncompromising in its running time, Sergei Loznitsa’s sedate shooting style renders this potentially remarkable account of civil unrest quite the opposite.
Greenery Will Bloom Again / Torneranno i prati (2014)
★★★★☆
A stunning portrait of life in the trenches during the Great War, Ermanno Olmi’s Torneranno i prati is a handsome tribute to loneliness and fear.
Festival Review: Elser / 13 Minutes (2015)
★★★☆☆
What can change a man from pacifist to freedom fighter? Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes pays tribute to the German resistant Georg Elser.
Testament Of Youth (2014)
★★★★☆
A beautiful adaptation of Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir, James Kent’s Testament Of Youth is a bitter tale of love in wartime for the 21st century.
The Last Of The Unjust / Le Dernier Des Injustes (2013)
★★★★☆
If this is a man. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last Of The Unjust recuts unused Shoah interviews to reveal the controversial figure of Benjamin Murmelstein – Europe’s last Jewish Elder.
Unbroken (2014)
★★★☆☆
A well-deserved and accomplished tribute to a survivor’s trials of war, Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is nevertheless a shallow experience of suffering.
The Imitation Game (2014)
★★★★☆
Galvanising intense performances from a stellar cast, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game is a war movie to stir the blood, but trips up over its queer hero.
Fury (2014)
★★★☆☆
Brad Pitt stars as a war-weary tank commander in a gruesome Second World War movie that is unflinching in its visceral battle scenes.
’71 (2014)
★★★★☆
With an explosive performance from Jack O’Connell, Yann Demange’s ’71 leads us through the backstreets of the Troubles, quite literally.
The Patrol (2013)
★★☆☆☆
Focusing on the minutiae of military life in conflict, The Patrol eschews the crash, bang and wallop of the genre, but in doing so lacks any impact at all.