Rebecca (2020)
★★★☆☆
Ben Wheatley’s lavish take on Rebecca, though truer to Daphne du Maurier’s novel, can’t help but be overshadowed by the iconic Hitchcock version.
Americas
BFI LFF 2020: One Night in Miami (2020)
★★★★☆
One Night in Miami, directed by Regina King, is a fictionalised account of an extraordinary meeting that really took place in 1964 between black icons the-then Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke.
BFI LFF 2020: Kajillionaire (2020)
★★★★☆
Kajillionaire by visionary filmmaker Miranda July is an absurd, dead-pan coming-of-age satire on the American dream.
BFF LFF 2020: Cicada (2020)
★★★☆☆
In Cicada by Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare, a twenty-something in New York finds love but his life is clouded by the memories of childhood abuse and the pain of not knowing how to deal with it.
The Roads Not Taken (2020)
★★★☆☆
The Roads Not Taken has the best of motives – it’s acclaimed director Sally Potter’s way of conveying how her brother’s dementia fractured his personality. It’s very personal, maybe too personal.
Waiting for the Barbarians (2019) – Digital download
★★★☆☆
Waiting for the Barbarians by acclaimed director Ciro Guerra is a beautiful, well-acted, slow-moving allegory of imperialism.
The Brink (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Alison Klayman’s The Brink is a must-see documentary following dangerous eminence grise Steve Bannon over the crucial period of the US midterms and the EU elections.
Ava (2017)
★★★★☆
Ava is an unforgiving, unforgettable coming-of-age film about a teenage girl’s loss of freedom in Iran from a compelling new filmmaker, Sadaf Foroughi.
Andy Warhol Exhibition 2020
★★★★☆
Major retrospective at Tate Modern with a new look at the extraordinary life and work of Andy Warhol, the pop art superstar.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
★★★★☆
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is an award-winning, realistic, forceful film about the difficulty of obtaining an abortion in the US, directed by Eliza Hittman.
Ema (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Sometimes enigmatic and confusing, sometimes fiery with emotion, Pablo Larrain’s intriguing Ema peels the layers off a dance with death.
Bacurau (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Bacurau by Kleber Mendonça Filho is an exhilarating mixture of genres – political satire, western, science fiction – underpinned by savage political and social comment. It’s a blast.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019) – On demand
★★★★★
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ spellbinding tribute to a literary treasure that makes you feel as if you have lost a friend.
Dark Waters (2019)
★★★★☆
Dark Waters, caringly directed by Todd Haynes and starring Mark Ruffalo, is the true story of one brave man’s exposure of the cover-up of a far-reaching environmental catastrophe.