Festival Review: The Witch (2015)
★★☆☆☆
An old fashioned tale of God-fearing devilry and witchcraft in New England, Robert Eggers’ The Witch sacrifices tension for gothic set pieces.
★★
Festival Review: Der Nachtmahr (2015)
★★☆☆☆
A German horror film of Berlin clubs and imaginary creatures, Akiz’s Der Nachtmahr is a pulsating delirium of colourful and haunting images.
Festival Review: Mountains May Depart (2015)
★★☆☆☆
A triptych of melancholy Chinese stories, Jia Zhangke’sMountains May Depart builds an awkward narrative of nostalgia – past, present and future.
La Famille Bélier (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Highlighting one teenage girl’s struggle to manage life as the only hearing member of her deaf family, Eric Lartigau’s La Famille Bélier is riddled with clichés.
Good People (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Armed with a stellar cast and a stylishly bleak cinematography, Henrik Ruben Genz’ Good People is let down by a run-of-the-mill script with nowhere to go.
Cub / Welp (2014)
★★☆☆☆
In Jonas Govaerts’ Cub, solid filmmaking and worthy performances fold under the excessive weight of tropes and contrivances in this full-on descent into torture porn.
Eden (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Charting the hopes and dreams of her DJ brother Sven, Mia Hansen-Løve’s celebration of French house music Eden might be leading us up the garden path.
The Choir / Boychoir (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Boasting a stellar cast of Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Izzard and Kathy Bates, François Girard’s The Choir belts out one disappointing cliché after another.
Les Combattants (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Apart from an engaging performance from Adèle Haenel, Les Combattants is a listless love story that never quite gets its feet off the ground.
The Tribe (2014)
★★☆☆☆
An unspoken history of violence, Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s The Tribe offers a challenging and controversial but ultimately unfitting parable for the Ukraine.
Still (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Unpicking class tension in the aftermath of the London riots, Simon Blake’s Still blends genres to create a strange yuppies-in-peril gangster-horror hybrid.
The Falling (2014)
★★☆☆☆
As a wave of falling sickness takes over an all-girls school, Carol Morley’s The Falling plucks female empowerment from a maelstrom of teenage desire.
The Salvation (2014)
★★☆☆☆
A Danish Western with the magnetic Mads Mikkelsen, Kristian Levring’s The Salvation is gorgeous to look at but as hollow as a Ten-gallon hat.
Altman (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Ron Mann’sAltman is a stoic by-the-numbers documentary celebrating the films of the great director, but offering little insight into the man behind the lens.