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.
Alexa Dalby
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.
Festival Review: Green Room (2015)
★★★☆☆
Carving out his own genre of trapped men fighting for survival, Jeremy Saulnier’s taut, gruesome and suspenseful Green Room pulls no punches.
Festival Review: The Lady In The Van (2015)
★★★★☆
The funny and poignant tale of Bennett’s live-in codger, Nicholas Hytner’s The Lady In The Van is entertainment at its most prestigious.
Suffragette (2015)
★★★☆☆
Celebrating nearly a century of women’s right to vote, Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette is an important and inspirational film on democracy in action.
Festival Review: Room (2015)
★★★★☆
A sensitive study of imprisonment and the painfulness of freedom, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room is an emotional, cinematic tour-de-force.
Festival Review: High-Rise (2015)
★★★☆☆
Adapting JG Ballard’s dystopian novel for the silver screen, Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise is a glamorous reproduction of the Seventies high life.
Festival Review: Trumbo (2015)
★★★★☆
Winning Oscars for his Roman Holiday and The Brave One scripts, Hollywood blacklister Dalton Trumbo becomes an unlikely hero in Jay Roach’s Trumbo.
Festival Review: Madame Courage (2015)
★★★☆☆
Staging a battle of the sexes in Algiers, Merzak Allouache’s Madame Courage reveals a desperate injustice pervading male and female relationships.
Festival Review: He Named Me Malala (2015)
★★★☆☆
After An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala brings Malala Yousafzai’s story to the masses. Just a little too easily.
Festival Review: Beasts Of No Nation (2015)
★★★☆☆
A violent exploration of civil war in West Africa, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts Of No Nation is a powerful portrait of a continent thrown into darkness.
Festival Review: Grandma (2015)
★★★★☆
A female road-trip with a devastating performance from Lily Tomlin, Paul Weitz’s Grandma delves into feminism past, present and future.