Youth (2015)
★★★☆☆
A cornucopia of secrets, betrayal, friendship and regret, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth is the old sod to The Great Beauty‘s bright young things.
★★★☆☆
A cornucopia of secrets, betrayal, friendship and regret, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth is the old sod to The Great Beauty‘s bright young things.
★★★☆☆
Set in a fictitious former Soviet-bloc republic, Ben Hopkins’ Lost in Karastan is a very British satire about a very British film director adrift in a totalitarian dictatorship
★★★★☆
Reuniting Alan Bennett with Maggie Smith on screen, Nicholas Hytner’s The Lady In The Van deals a hilarious, thoughtprovoking play between life and fiction.
★★★☆☆
God is alive and living in Brussels, Jaco Van Dormael’s The Brand New Testament takes on the Jealous One with quirk and fancy. And an enormous gorilla.
★★★★☆
The funny and poignant tale of Bennett’s live-in codger, Nicholas Hytner’s The Lady In The Van is entertainment at its most prestigious.
★★★☆☆
Shining a light on German denazification, Lars Kraume’s The People Versus Fritz Bauer is an important story of a forgotten hero.
★★☆☆☆
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.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★☆☆
The Legend Of Barney Thomson, Robert Carlyle’s first feature as a director is a black comedy that stars him as an inept Glaswegian barber mistaken for a serial killer.
★★★★☆
A French Twin Peaks where crimes are investigated Clouseau-style, Bruno Dumont’s absurd black comedy P’tit Quinquin is both ‘policier’ and satire.
★★★☆☆
Conceived by a writer/director influenced by Philip Roth, Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip is a darkly comic satire of the American literary world.
★★★☆☆
A wry comedy on the new-age mantras of fitness training in Austin Texas, Andrew Bujalski’s Results is a sentimental education of love and dreams.
★★★☆☆
With delicious performances from Anaïs Demoustier and Romain Duris, François Ozon’s cross-dressing caper The New Girlfriend sizzles like drops on burning rocks.
★★★☆☆
The closing film in Roy Andersson’s trilogy, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting On Existence offers a blackly humorous look at you, the living.