Battle of the Sexes (2017)
★★★★☆
Serving well-rounded feminist statements while expertly juggling three intertwining stories, Battle of the Sexes is an outwardly reaching argument encapsulated in a tennis match.
London Film Festival
Manifesto (2015)
★★★★☆
Blanchett and Rosefeldt have teamed up to produce a series of manifesto-based vignettes that not only ponder the subject of art, but revel in its being.
Strangled (2016)
★★★★☆
A gruesome serial killer thriller based on a disturbing true story, Árpád Sopsits’ Strangled reflects its post-revolution Hungarian setting.
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.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017)
★★★★☆
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool by Paul McGuigan is a beautifully made adaptation of a true story that’s stranger than fiction
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.
Breathe (2017)
★★★☆☆
Opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis’s debut as a director is the inspiring drama Breathe, a very moving true story.
Thelma (2017)
★★★★☆
In Thelma, both the main protagonist and director Joachim Trier realise the potential of her psychic powers, culminating in a taut and shocking narrative that refuses to bow down to one particular genre.
French Film Festival UK: Wùlu (2016)
★★★★☆
Daouda Coulibaly’s Wùlu is a must-see, tense, contemporary West African thriller.
BFI LFF: Pickups (2017)
★★★☆☆
Jamie Thraves’ collaboration with Aidan Gillen in Pickups is an intriguing, self-mocking look at fame and an actor’s life.
BFI LFF: Dark River (2017)
★★★☆☆
Her native rugged Yorkshire is the setting for Dark River, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to The Selfish Giant, a grim drama of a dysfunctional family and their failing farm.
BFI LFF: Journeyman (2017)
★★★★☆
Paddy Considine directs and stars in melodrama about the hidden toll of boxing Journeyman.