A Gentle Creature (2017)
★★★★☆
Savage satire by Sergei Loznitsa in A Gentle Creature eviscerates contemporary Russia.
Cannes Film Festival
Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
In Wonderstruck Todd Haynes opens a cabinet of cinematic wonders as two deaf children’s stories interlink 50 years apart in the magic of New York.
120 BPM
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a moving, tender and compassionate film.
The Square (2017)
★★★★☆
Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning The Square is a chilling satire on the pretensions of art and Sweden’s comfortable society.
Loveless (2017)
★★★★★
Shown through a couple’s reactions to the disappearance of their son, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless (Nelyubov) is a crushing comment on a loveless society and its people.
Jupiter’s moon (2017)
★★★★☆
In Jupiter’s Moon Kornél Mundruczó takes an intriguing and timely magical realist premise but leaves its resolution in mid air.
Ava (2017)
★★★★☆
In Ava, the increasing darkness of Léa Mysius’ direction echoes the encroaching blindness of its young heroine in a strikingly original coming-of-age story.
Happy End (2017)
★★★★☆
Michael Haneke’s Happy End deconstructs the internal dynamics of a wealthy bourgeois family living a life oblivious to the human beings around them, with chilling results.
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Good Time (2017)
★★★★☆
A manic night of nonstop motion ensues as a small-time bank robber tries to free his brother in the Safdie brothers’ ironically titled thriller Good Time.
Félicité (2017)
★★★★☆
The (African) portrait of a lady, Alain Gomis’ Félicité is a dazzling, vibrant depiction of Africa, womanhood and dreams of a life.
The Florida Project (2017)
★★★ύ☆
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a gorgeous sugar-rush adventure and a sobering study of poverty, though it leans too much on the former for the latter to leave its sting.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
★★★★☆
In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos creates a disturbingly strange and brutal dilemma.
French Film Festival UK: The Death of Louis XIV (La Mort de Louis XIV) (2016)
★★★★☆
Albert Serra’s compelling film about the slow death of the Sun King features an extraordinary performance by the legendary Jean-Pierre Léaud.
London East Asia Film Festival: Before We Vanish (2017)
★★★★☆
Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a genre-bending Japanese bodysnatchers movie that provokes an alien apocalypse on Earth.