The Handmaiden (2016)
★★★★☆
A sumptuous new adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a dazzling tale of duplicity and deception.
2016
Letters from Baghdad (2016)
★★★★☆
Clever use of previously unseen archive footage and original letters brings to life the extraordinary story of a forgotten female Lawrence of Arabia in fascinating biopic Letters from Baghdad.
A Quiet Passion (2016)
★★★★☆
A portrait of the poet as a young revolutionary, Terence Davies’ Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion sees a fiercely independent woman martyred.
City of Tiny Lights (2016)
★★★☆☆
Multicultural London gets the film noir treatment from director Pete Travis in Patrick Neate’s City of Tiny Lights.
Neruda (2016)
★★★★☆
Free Fire (2016)
★★★★☆
Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire is a Tarantino-esque splatterfest of bullets and bad jokes.
Another Mother’s Son (2017)
★★★★☆
Another Mother’s Son is a true story of wartime courage and a mother’s love starring Jenny Seagrove and a cast of well-known British actors, directed by Christopher Menaul.
The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
★★★★☆
Nicolas Pesce’s black and white feature debut The Eyes of My Mother is a stylishly shot American Gothic horror with nightmarish scenes that stay imprinted on the mind’s eye.
Personal Shopper (2016)
★★★★☆
A charismatic, nuanced turn by Kristen Stewart holds together an improbable yet strangely compelling mixture of fashion and supernatural horror in Oliver Assayas’s Personal Shopper.
The Salesman (2016)
★★★★☆
Asghar Farhardi’s The Salesman illuminates universal moral arguments about masculinity by presenting them in parallel with a production of Arthur Miller’s stage play in contemporary Iran.
The Olive Tree (2016)
★★★☆☆
The Olive Tree is a heartwarming film scripted by Ken Loach’s collaborator Paul Laverty, directed by Icíar Bollaín, demonstrating the power of personal conviction and positive action.
Elle (2016)
★★★★☆
Isabelle Huppert is elegantly transgressive in Paul Verhoeven’s disturbing Elle.
The Student (2016)
★★★★☆
Bringing Christian fundamentalism to the playground, Kirill Serebrennikov’s The Student satirises the conservatism of Russian institutions.
Certain Women (2016)
★★★★☆
Kelly Reichardt takes an appraising look at four women’s lives in Certain Women‘s intriguingly overlapping stories.