Cannes review: Okja (2017)
★★★★☆
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.
Cannes review: Jupiter’s Moon (2017)
★★★★☆
In Jupiter’s Moon Kornél Mundruczó takes an intriguing and timely magical realist premise but leaves its resolution in mid air.
Cannes review: Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
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.
Cannes review: Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★★☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.
Spaceship (2016)
★★★★☆
Spaceship is a dreamlike, semi-psychedelic, free-flowing story of teenage cyber goths and alien abductions.
Miss Sloane (2016)
★★★★☆
Jessica Chastain powers through John Madden’s political lobbyist thriller Miss Sloane.
Frantz (2016)
★★★★☆
François Ozon’s Frantz takes you on a haunting journey into the unexpected ramifications of grief, forgiveness and identity in the European aftermath of World War I.
The Levelling (2016)
★★★★☆
The Levelling is an original, haunting British first feature from writer and director Hope Dickson Leach.
Harmonium (2016)
★★★★★☆
In Koji Fukada’s Harmonium, the fragile harmony of a Japanese family is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
The Journey (2016)
★★★★☆
Director Nick Hamm has Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in the back of his car in The Journey, imagining a spellbinding road trip that might have triggered their bromance in government in Northern Ireland.
Heal the Living (2016)
★★★★☆
As a heart intended for transplant passes from teenage accident victim to middle-aged-mother recipient, humanity, compassion and medical professionalism triumph in Katell Quillévéré’s moving Heal the Living.
The Pyramid Texts (2015)
★★★★☆
An old boxer returns to the ring one last time to record a video message to his son. It’s an award-winning,moving monologue from veteran star James Cosmo in the Shammasian Brothers’ The Pyramid Texts.
Their Finest (2016)
★★★★☆
Danish director Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest is a very British romcom.
The Cannes Film Festival 2017
★★★★☆
The world’s biggest film event, the Cannes Film Festival, takes place this year from 17-28 May 2017, its 70th anniversary. The Official Selection contains over 80 films (and some TV programmes), of which 12 are directed by women. Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is the President of the Jury.