Birds of Passage (2018)
★★★★☆
In Birds of Passage, directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, the violent birth of Colombia’s drug trade destroys a unique traditional culture.
2018
Amazing Grace (2018)
★★★★★
The late, great Aretha Franklin raises the roof singing gospel in Sidney Pollack’s unmissable Amazing Grace 1972 documentary.
Madeline’s Madeline (2018)
★★★★☆
Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline is a fragmented collage in image and sound of impressions – a disorientating, passionate welter of dreams, fantasy and reality – that tries to get inside the conflicted head of a 16-year-old aspiring actress.
Vox Lux (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Vox Lux, Brady Corbet’s second film, is the imagined biography of a fictional pop star played uncomfortably by Natalie Portman.
Woman at War (2018)
★★★★☆
Woman at War ((Kona fer í stríð) by Benedikt Erlingsson is an environmental drama and a whimsical mid-life-crisis comedy.
Ash is Purest White (2018)
★★★★★
The exquisite Ash Is Purest White by Jia Zhang Ke, starring Tao Zhao in an extraordinary performance, follows the lives of its characters against the background of a rapidly transforming China.
Eighth Grade (2018)
★★★★★
The pressures and anxieties of a 14-year-old girl navigating eighth grade in the social media age are put under the microscope in writer/director Bo Burnham’s achingly observant little gem Eighth Grade.
Wild Rose (2018)
★★★★☆
Jessie Buckley is superb as an aspiring country singer determined to break from her past and get to Nashville in director Tom Harper’s Glasgow-set Wild Rose.
Mid90s (2018)
★★★☆☆
Jonah Hill’s Mid90s is an affectionate, coming-of-age time capsule of skateboards, street life, hip-hop, pop culture moments and stoners.
Pond Life (2018)
★★★★☆
It’s impossible not to be charmed and touched by Pond Life, directed by Bill Buckhurst.
Donbass (2018)
★★★★★
In Donbass Sergei Loznitsa’s anger at the war in eastern Ukraine pours out like red-hot lava in 13 episodes of a vicious cycle of dark comedy, absurdity, brutality and horror.
STYX (2018)
★★★★☆
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Loro (2018)
★★★★☆
Paolo Sorrentino’s Loro is an excoriating comment on the tacky corruption that surrounded the notorious former prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi.
Happy as Lazzaro (2018) (Lazzaro felice)
★★★★☆
Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher is a magical-realist fable that features types of exploitation.