Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) (Fumer Fait Tousser)
★★★☆☆
Smoking Causes Coughing, the brainchild of über-absurdist Quentin Dupieux, is bizarre, very, very silly, strangely disquieting and rather flimsy.
★★★
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Day 1: Opening Film: Jeanne du Barry (2023)
★★★☆☆
Cannes Film Festival 2023: Opening film: Jeanne du Barry (2023)
Love According to Dalva (2022)
★★★☆☆
Love According to Dalva, directed by Emmanuelle Nicot, features some extraordinarily intense performances in a paedophilia drama where the victim refuses to accept she is a child who has been abused.
Cairo Conspiracy (2022) previously Boy from Heaven (Walad min al-Janna)
★★★☆☆
Adam arrives in Cairo to study at the renowned Al-Azhar University and unexpectedly finds himself drawn into the centre of a dangerous world of religious and political power in writer/director Tarik Saleh’s compelling thriller.
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) (2021)
★★★★☆
US festival favourite I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is a touching, positive indie movie, female written and directed, made during Los Angeles’ lockdown (see the mask use) focusing on the struggles to be independent of a widowed mother who happens to be homeless, black and female – and beautiful.
Berlinale 2023 Review: El Castillo (2023) (The Castle)
★★★☆☆
Berlinale presents San Sebastián award winner El Castillo (The Castle) a strangely moving mixture of documentary and fiction by Martin Benchimol.
Peter von Kant (2022)
★★★☆☆
Peter von Kant is a gender-flipped re-imagining by François Ozon of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 classic power play of sexual obsession The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.
Neptune Frost (2021)
★★★☆☆
Neptune Frost, a visionary collaboration between poet/artist Saul Williams and actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, is a unique Afro-futurist political musical filmed in Rwanda.
The Lost King (2022)
★★★☆☆
Sally Hawkins stars as an amateur historian in search of the grave of King Richard III in director Stephen Frears’ uplifting true-story drama The Lost King.
Juniper (2021)
★★★☆☆
Screen legend Charlotte Rampling is magnificently ferocious as a reluctant invalid, estranged bad grandma Ruth in Matthew J Saville’s debut Juniper.
In From The Side (2022)
★★★☆☆
Sparks fly when Mark meets Warren at the rugby club and soon the pair are embroiled in an illicit affair facing consequences on and off pitch in director Matt Carter’s In From The Side.
The Forgiven (2021)
★★★☆☆
The unexpected consequences and repercussions of a terrible accident in the Moroccan desert are explored in The Forgiven, John Michael McDonagh’s adaptation of Lawrence Osbourne’s 2012 novel, starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain.
Listen (2020)
★★★☆☆
Listen, Ana Rocha de Sousa’s powerful first film about forced adoption, is heart-rending and almost unbearable to watch at times.
Atabai (2020)
★★★☆☆
Atabai by Iranian director Niki Karimi makes the most of stupendous landscapes and reveals its stories gradually.