Queen and Country (2014)
★★★☆☆
A sequel to his Oscar-nominated Hope And Glory, John Boorman’s semi-autobiographic Queen and Country finds all fair in love and war.
UK
The Goob (2014)
★★★☆☆
Written and directed by Guy Myhill, The Goob is a memorable British coming of age drama with an unusually strong sense of place in its rural setting.
The Impressionists and the Man Who Made Them (2015)
★★★★☆
The Impressionists and the Man Who Made Them gives art lovers the chance to learn about the stories behind some of the world’s greatest exhibitions.
Spooks – The Greater Good (2015)
★★★☆☆
Picking up the TV series’ espionage story lines, the disgraced head of MI5 goes rogue, hunting a terrorist on the loose and a traitor in ‘the firm’.
Still (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Unpicking class tension in the aftermath of the London riots, Simon Blake’s Still blends genres to create a strange yuppies-in-peril gangster-horror hybrid.
The Falling (2014)
★★☆☆☆
As a wave of falling sickness takes over an all-girls school, Carol Morley’s The Falling plucks female empowerment from a maelstrom of teenage desire.
Woman In Gold (2015)
★★★☆☆
Telling the story of Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, Simon Curtis’ Woman In Gold paints a portrait of Nazi-looted art and its journey back into the right hands.
Hackney’s Finest (2014)
★★★☆☆
Chris Bouchard’s Hackney’s Finest is a darkly comic caper with much more violence, hard drug taking and serious swearing than you’d expect.
Hinterland (2015)
★★★☆☆
Sensitive low-budget British indie Hinterland follows two childhood friends getting to know each other again on a weekend road trip to Cornwall.
Snow In Paradise (2014)
★★★☆☆
Drugs and violent crime trigger a surprising religious conversion for a small-time gangster in London’s East End, in a story that reflects a changing urban society.
Festival Review: Eisenstein In Guanajuato (2015)
★★★★☆
A visual extravaganza of the Russian director’s sexual awakening in Mexico, Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein In Guanajuato is a shameless return to form.
Festival Review: Woman In Gold (2015)
★★★☆☆
Dramatising the legal battle over Klimt’s most famous work stolen from a Jewish family by the Nazis, Woman In Gold is a moving courtroom quest for justice.
Festival Review: Mr Holmes (2015)
★★★☆☆
With a bright-eyed performance from Ian McKellen, Bill Condon’s Mr Holmes is a handsome portrait of the detective as an old man.
The Theory Of Everything (2014)
★★★★☆
Dramatisation of Stephen Hawking’s life from gifted university student and romance with the woman who became his wife, to international acclaim as a physicist and the break-up of his marriage.