Festival Review: A Guy From Fenyang (2014)
★★★☆☆
Uncovering the life and works of Jia Zhangke in his home city, Walter Salles’ A Guy From Fenyang reveals the metropolis behind the man.
Reviews
Festival Review: 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: Mountains May Depart (2015)
★★☆☆☆
A triptych of melancholy Chinese stories, Jia Zhangke’sMountains May Depart builds an awkward narrative of nostalgia – past, present and future.
Macbeth (2015)
★★★★☆
Bringing a fearsome pace and inescapable style to Shakespeare’s tragedy of murderous ambition, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is a luscious, bloody triumph.
Life (2015)
★★★☆☆
Recreating a brief episode in James Dean’s life, Anton Corbijn’s Life sees the icon on the cusp of fame thanks to a series of photographs for Life magazine.
Mia Madre (2015)
★★★★☆
A very personal film, Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre sees a film director cope with the death of her mother whilst shooting a film with an uncontrollable star.
Just Jim (2015)
★★★☆☆
Just Jim by Welsh actor, writer and director Craig Roberts, is a dark, offbeat coming-of-age story set in South Wales.
Tangerines / Mandariinid (2013)
★★★★★
Depicting the Abkhazia conflict through the lens of an outsider, Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines is an emotional and haunting study of the senselessness of war.
A Girl At My Door (2014)
★★★☆☆
Combining gay rights with all the tropes of a horror movie, July Jung’s A Girl At My Door is strangely haunting, but struggles with a split personality.
La Famille Bélier (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Highlighting one teenage girl’s struggle to manage life as the only hearing member of her deaf family, Eric Lartigau’s La Famille Bélier is riddled with clichés.
Pasolini (2014)
★★★★☆
Evoking the last days of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini lets the controversial Italian filmmaker’s thoughts and ideas do the scandalising.
How To Change The World (2015)
★★★★★
Jerry Rothwell’s inspirational documentary How To Change The World explores the birth of Greenpeace and the tumultuous sea-change it sparked in environmentalism.
The Second Mother / Que Horas Ela Volta? (2015)
★★★★☆
With a cracking performance from Regina Casé and a sharp script, Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother is a well polished gem of class friction in Brazil.
Miss Julie (2014)
★★★☆☆
Transporting August Strindberg’s play to colonial Ireland, Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julie imbues her underwhelming tale of forbidden love with Swedish style.