Sundance London: The Big Sick (2017)
★★★★☆
The Big Sick by director and comedian Michael Showalter is a culture-clash rom-com set in Chicago that’s genuinely moving and funny – what’s more, it’s based on a real-life love story.
★★★★☆
The Big Sick by director and comedian Michael Showalter is a culture-clash rom-com set in Chicago that’s genuinely moving and funny – what’s more, it’s based on a real-life love story.
★★★★☆
Taylor Sheridan’s heart is on his sleeve in his directorial debut in gripping, atmospheric Native American thriller Wind River.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is compelling Southern Gothic, richly textured and deeply feminine.
★★★★☆
John Cameron Mitchell’s How To Talk To Girls At Parties is a weird mixture of punk and aliens in the British suburbs – and it works.
★★★★☆
Noah Baumbach’s verbose comedy-drama The Meyerowitz Stories for Netflix is solid mainstream entertainment with a wry taste.
★★★★☆
Netflix’s Okja is Bong Joon-ho’s and Jon Ronson’s satire-cum-expose of the genetically modified food industry through the adventures of a delightful Korean girl and an outsize giant pig.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Jessica Chastain powers through John Madden’s political lobbyist thriller Miss Sloane.
★★★★☆
A portrait of the poet as a young revolutionary, Terence Davies’ Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion sees a fiercely independent woman martyred.
★★★★☆
Nicolas Pesce’s black and white feature debut The Eyes of My Mother is a stylishly shot American Gothic horror with nightmarish scenes that stay imprinted on the mind’s eye.
★★★★☆
Get Out is actor and comedian Jordan Peele’s original horror-satire take on white liberal racism in the US.
★★★★☆
A charismatic, nuanced turn by Kristen Stewart holds together an improbable yet strangely compelling mixture of fashion and supernatural horror in Oliver Assayas’s Personal Shopper.
– ★★★★☆
Subtle, beautifully shot documentary about the residents of a small town in the middle of nowhere, so remote that it barely exists.