Before The Winter Chill / Avant l’Hiver (2013)
★★★☆☆
As a thirty-year marriage crumbles in Luxembourg, Philippe Claudel’s Before The Winter Chill goes beyond family drama to find a black heart of darkness.
★★★
American Interior (2014)
★★★☆☆
Gruff Rhys’ musical journey to retrace the footsteps of relative John Evans is a weird and mostly wonderful romantic odyssey.
A Thousand Times Good Night / Tusen Ganger God Natt (2013)
★★★☆☆
Compelling in its gut-wrenching portrayal of conflict, A Thousand Times Good Night is a solid film buoyed by an assured and powerful central performance
Blue Ruin (2013)
★★★☆☆
A big hit at Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival in the US and previewed at Sundance London, this suspenseful, original and darkly comic revenge thriller set in America’s South is hugely enjoyable.
Cupcakes / Bananot (2013)
★★★☆☆
Baking up Israel’s lighter side in this goofy Eurovision parody, Eytan Fox’s Cupcakes is a sweet celebration of the power of camp.
After The Night / Até Ver a Luz (2013)
★★★☆☆
Of loneliness and low-lives in the slums of Lisbon, Basil da Cunha’s intimate community portrait After The Night brings neo-realism into the 21st century.
We Are The Best/Vi är bäst! (2013)
★★★☆☆
As three schoolgirls form a punk band in Stockholm in 1982, Lukas Moodysson’s We Are The Best smells like early-teen punk spirit.
Reaching For The Moon / Flores Raras (2013)
★★★☆☆
Bringing to light the sexual blossoming of American poet Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil, Bruno Barreto’s Reaching For The Moon loses its way in an overload of story.
Calvary (2013)
★★★☆☆
With its story of a good priest getting ready to meet his maker, John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary puts the Catholic Church on trial.
Half Of A Yellow Sun (2013)
★★★☆☆
The personal and political intersect in an epic drama from the heady days of Nigeria’s independence to the failed attempt to set up the breakaway independent republic of Biafra, and the start of a civil war.
Visitors (2013)
★★★☆☆
By the director of Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors is a visually stunning, black-and-white wordless portrait of modern life with music by Philip Glass.
The Fold (2014)
★★★☆☆
A meditation on maternity and mourning, John Jenck’s The Fold finds a strange kind of love in this muddled would-be thriller.
Yves Saint Laurent (2014)
★★★☆☆
Undressing the high life of the fashion designer, his label, loves and lows, Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent cuts a fine figure.
Salvo (2013)
★★★☆☆
A moody thriller of a cool hitman on the wrong side of the mob in sizzling Sicily, Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s Salvo is seeking out a new vision.