The Holdovers (2023)
★★★★☆
December 1970, a grumpy teacher forced to stay on campus over the holidays gradually bonds with a volatile teenager in Alexander Payne’s latest comedy drama The Holdovers.
★★★★☆
December 1970, a grumpy teacher forced to stay on campus over the holidays gradually bonds with a volatile teenager in Alexander Payne’s latest comedy drama The Holdovers.
★★★★☆
Raging Grace is an unusual contemporary social-comment-psychological-horror feature debut by British/Filipino Paris Zarcilla, an exciting new filmmaking voice.
★★★☆☆
Two teenage boys in a juvenile detention centre develop a passionate bond which is tested when one of them approaches his release in director and co-writer Zeno Graton’s The Lost Boys.
★★★☆☆
Traces (Tragovi) is a sensitive portrayal by first-time feature director Dubravka Turic of a Zagreb academic’s journey through grief to identity. It is Croatia’s entry for the 2024 Oscars.
★★★★☆
Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s drily touching film of a kind of love story amid the grinding reality of life.
★★★☆☆
A Stitch in Time, a heart-warming Australian film directed by Sasha Hadden, stars Maggie Blinco.
★★★★☆
Driving Madeleine is an endearing, very human French film starring Line Renaud and Dany Boon, directed by Christian Carion, with a dark undercurrent.
★★★★☆
Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s Palme d’or winner, stars Sandra Hüller in a gripping, ambiguous puzzle of a courtroom drama.
★★★☆☆
The ironically titled Good Boy, a semi-comic short written and directed by Tom Stuart, demonstrates once again what a good actor Ben Whishaw is.
★★★★☆
In Camera, written and directed by Naqqash Khalid, is a debut satirical drama full of pain about the racism experienced by second-generation Asians in Britain.
★★★★☆
Universally acclaimed romantic Past Lives is an extraordinary feature debut by US/Korean Celine Song.
★★★★☆
Passages is Ira Sachs’ toxic European love triangle set in Paris, starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos.
★★★★☆
Scrapper, an inventive, award-winning first feature written and directed by Charlotte Regan, was the crowd-pleasing opening film of the Sundance London Film Festival.
★★★☆☆
Smoking Causes Coughing, the brainchild of über-absurdist Quentin Dupieux, is bizarre, very, very silly, strangely disquieting and rather flimsy.