Eddie The Eagle (2016)
★★★★☆
A gentle portrait of the British ski jumper determined to win, Dexter Fletcher’s Eddie The Eagle is a funny, feel-good and well-made British film.
Alexa Dalby
Iona (2015)
★★★☆☆
Charting the undercurrents of a remote island, Scott Graham’s tale of return Iona is a dazzling portrait of the wilds of the Scottish isle.
High-Rise (2015)
★★★☆☆
A visually brilliant adaptation of JG Ballard’s satire, Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s High-Rise seems strangely dated with its Seventies’ dystopian future.
Anomalisa (2015)
★★★★☆
A story of depression, alienation and looking for love where the human characters are played by puppets, Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa is unsettling and haunting.
The Survivalist (2015)
★★★★☆
A stunning feature debut for director Stephen Fingleton, The Survivalist is a tense post-apocalyptic thriller with a strangely rural setting.
Deadpool (2016)
★★★★☆
Nimble, witty and downright rib-tickling, Tim Miller’s Deadpool takes on the superhero genre with postmodern sharpness.
Trumbo (2015)
★★★★☆
Hollywood eats itself in Jay Roach’s comprehensively entertaining biopic of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, earning Bryan Cranston an Oscar nomination.
Rams (2015)
★★★★☆
A humanistic Icelandic tragi-comedy, Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams sees two estranged brothers forced to unite to save their prized rams.
The Big Short (2015)
★★★★☆
Fast-paced comedy-drama about the global financial crash, Adam McKay’s The Big Short makes brilliant entertainment out of a true story of men behaving madly.
Lost In Karastan (2015)
★★★☆☆
Set in a fictitious former Soviet-bloc republic, Ben Hopkins’ Lost in Karastan is a very British satire about a very British film director adrift in a totalitarian dictatorship
The Forbiddden Room (2015)
★★★★☆
Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room is a bizarre yet affectionate pastiche of all those films from his favourite filmmaking eras that never got made.
Grandma (2015)
★★★★☆
A lot of fun with an emotional punch, Paul Weitz’s Grandma is an Oscar-worthy tour de force for Lily Tomlin as a rambunctious lesbian feminist grandmother.
He Named Me Malala (2015)
★★★☆☆
A fascinating though soft-focus documentary, Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala reveals the inspirational teenager fighting for girls’ right to education.
Festival Review: They Will Have To Kill Us First (2015)
★★★☆☆
Malian music in exile, Johanna Schwartz’s documentary They Will Have To Kill Us First is a celebration of music and its invincible power.