BFI LFF: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
★★★★☆
Noah Baumbach’s verbose comedy-drama The Meyerowitz Stories for Netflix is solid mainstream entertainment with a wry taste.
★★★★☆
Noah Baumbach’s verbose comedy-drama The Meyerowitz Stories for Netflix is solid mainstream entertainment with a wry taste.
★★★☆☆
Facing the humiliation of social exclusion after losing a loved one, Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman is a heartbreaking portrait of loneliness.
★★★★☆
Ofir Raul Graizer’s The Cakemaker is a sweetly moving mixture that stirs together love and grief.
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
★★★★☆
Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green, stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a gruelling but inspirational portrait of a man rebuilding his life after the Boston Marathon bombing.
★★★☆☆
In Birds Are Singing in Kigali two women return to Rwanda to find out if healing is possible after the genocide.
★★★☆☆
Opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis’s debut as a director is the inspiring drama Breathe, a very moving true story.
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians Les Guardiennes is a beautiful period recreation of a time of change for women and society in rural France during the First World War.
★★★★☆
In Ava, the increasing darkness of Léa Mysius’ direction echoes the encroaching blindness of its young heroine in a strikingly original coming-of-age story.
★★★☆☆
Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete is an appealing coming-of-age road movie grounded in the all-American setting of quarter-horse racing.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Xavier Beauvois’ The Racer and the Jailbird stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts in an intense, high-speed love affair.
★★★★☆
Santiago Mitre’s political thriller The Summit is a prescient tale of high-level corruption.
★★★★☆
Russian director Ivan Tverdovsky’s black comedy Zoology is a dark satire on the invisibility of older women with a stunning central performance by Natalia Pavlenkova.