Fruitvale Station (2013)
★★★★☆
The powerfully dramatised true story that recreates the last day of a 22-year-old black man, Oscar Grant, shot by railway police in the San Francisco Bay area on New Year’s Day 2009.
USA
Cheap Thrills (2013)
★★★☆☆
Fast-moving, gruesome, twisted, about-to-be cult thriller that underneath the horror may pack a violent satirical punch. If ever a film did what it says on the tin, it’s this.
Fading Gigolo (2013)
★★☆☆☆
A Jewish caper in New York, John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo finds its gentle comedy in a star-studded Manhattan romance.
The Two Faces Of January (2014)
★★★★☆
Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces Of January is a stylish adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith thriller as a married couple and a stranger get drawn deeper into a dangerous relationship of mutual dependence.
Blue Ruin (2013)
★★★☆☆
A big hit at Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival in the US and previewed at Sundance London, this suspenseful, original and darkly comic revenge thriller set in America’s South is hugely enjoyable.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
★★★★☆
With a cast list as long as your livery-sleeved arm, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is a colourful romp through the bright lights of Old Europe.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
★★★★☆
A stylish Jim Jarmusch movie, Only Lovers Left Alive is a contemporary tale of centuries-old world-weary vampires, their lives sustained by love and blood.
Her (2013)
★★★★☆
In a near future dominated by computers, Spike Jonze’s Her sees a lonely man fall in love with his operating system, which understands him better than he does himself.
The Armstrong Lie (2013)
★★★☆☆
Through comeback, doping and scandal, Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie charts the Tour de France winner’s rise to the podium and the lies that kept him there.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
★★★★★
A simple tale of a folk singer’s struggle for recognition belies the myriad of metaphors behind this wonderfully humorous, miserable and melancholic story.
Teenage (2013)
★★★★☆
A teenage dream’s so hard to beat, Matt Wolf gets his Teenage kicks from all over the globe, charting the rise and fall of youth in the twentieth century.
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
★★★☆☆
Kinetic, hypnotic and hilarious, The Wolf Of Wall Street is an unrelenting rollercoaster of moral depravity – it’s a lot of fun, if you have the stomach for it.
12 Years A Slave (2013)
★★★★★
A searing story of slavery in 19th century America, based on the 1853 memoir of a free black man from New York, who is abducted and sold into slavery in the South.
All Is Lost (2013)
★★★★☆
All is Lost is a one-man tour de force that will either crown Robert Redford’s acting career so far or signal his return to it after concentrating on his Sundance Festival.