BAIT (2019) – LIVE Q&A and ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Curzon’s Live Q&A series continues with Mark Jenkin, director of Bait hosted by Mark Kermode on Tuesday 31 March.
festivals
The Perfect Candidate (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
The Perfect Candidate by Haifaa Al-Mansour is a fascinating glimpse of women’s changing status in the patriarchal kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (2019) – on demand
★★★★☆
Despite its silly title, black comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants by J.-P. Valkeapää is a touching – if harrowing – study of an extreme way of overcoming corrosive grief.
The Truth (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Hirokazu Koreeda turns to Europe for a French-language family drama with comic undertones that spans the generations in The Truth.
Fire Will Come (O Que Arde) (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Fire Will Come is a prophetic, arresting and mesmerising love letter to nature by Oliver Laxe.
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.
And Then We Danced (2019)
★★★★☆
A deeply physical coming-of-age gay romance in the dance world, And Then We Danced directed by Levan Akin is an uplifting and inspiring feature about the path to queer liberation.
Berlinale 2020: The Winners
★★★★☆
The Berlin Film Festival awards presented on 1 March 2020…
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.
RUN (2019) – ON DVD AND DOWNLOAD FROM 25 MAY 2020
★★★☆☆
Scottish nouveau dreich, downbeat Run, expanded from a short by director Scott Graham, still has a way to go.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – ON DEMAND
★★★★☆
Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a sumptuously sensual lesbian love story set in 1770 that comments fiercely on the role of women in society – then and now.
Greed (2019)
★★★★☆
Nothing exceeds like excess in Michael Winterbottom’s broad satire Greed, starring Steve Coogan as a super-rich high-street-fashion mogul.
First Love (Hatsukoi) (2019)
★★★★☆
Deceptively titled First Love is Takeshi Miike’s irresistibly anarchic yakuza noir, stuffed with gratuitous violence, comedy, romance and severed heads.
