Thelma (2017)
★★★★☆
In Thelma, both the main protagonist and director Joachim Trier realise the potential of her psychic powers, culminating in a taut and shocking narrative that refuses to bow down to one particular genre.
Country
French Film Festival UK: Slack Bay (Ma Loute) (2016)
★★★★☆
Divided into stalwarts of French cinema and non-professional actors, Bruno Dumont’s crime caper Slack Bay exposes the grotesque in everyone.
French Film Festival UK: Wùlu (2016)
★★★★☆
Daouda Coulibaly’s Wùlu is a must-see, tense, contemporary West African thriller.
FILM AFRICA 2017
★★★★☆
Film Africa, London’s annual celebration of the best African cinema, returns for its 7th edition from Friday 27 October – Sunday 5 November.
25th French Film Festival UK 2017
★★★★☆
Over six weeks from 2 November – 17 December, the 25th UK French Film Festival presents 46 films in 300 screenings in 30 cities and 34 cinemas.
London East Asia Film Festival: Before We Vanish (2017)
★★★★☆
Before We Vanish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a genre-bending Japanese bodysnatchers movie that provokes an alien apocalypse on Earth.
BFI LFF: Pickups (2017)
★★★☆☆
Jamie Thraves’ collaboration with Aidan Gillen in Pickups is an intriguing, self-mocking look at fame and an actor’s life.
BFI LFF: Dark River (2017)
★★★☆☆
Her native rugged Yorkshire is the setting for Dark River, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to The Selfish Giant, a grim drama of a dysfunctional family and their failing farm.
BFI LFF: Journeyman (2017)
★★★★☆
Paddy Considine directs and stars in melodrama about the hidden toll of boxing Journeyman.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)
★★★☆☆
Brawl in Cell Block 99 is S. Craig Zahler’s grindhousefest and a new departure for Vince Vaughn.
BFI LFF: The Florida Project (2017)
★★★☆☆
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a gorgeous sugar-rush adventure and a sobering study of poverty, though it leans too much on the former for the latter to leave its sting.
BFI LFF: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
★★★★☆
You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay’s latest film is a dark, disturbing odyssey into the mind of a brutal yet tender hitman.
BFI LFF: Downsizing (2017)
★★★☆☆
Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is a fantasy satire in microcosm on life, the universe and everything.
BFI LFF: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
★★★★★
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is Michael McDonagh’s five-star drama laced with humour featuring a gloriously Oscar-worthy performance by Frances McDormand.