Serena (2014)
★★★☆☆
Caught between whip-cracking lioness and jealous femme fatale, Susanne Bier’s Serena offers a muddled portrait of the fairer sex.
London Film Festival 2014: The New Girlfriend / Une Nouvelle Amie
The New Girlfriend by Mark Wilshin Positively frothing with all the Ozon hallmarks of female sexuality, haute couture fetishism and earth-tethering babies, The New…
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Salomé (2013)
★★★★☆
Converting a reading of Oscar Wilde’s banned play into a film, Al Pacino’s Salomé might share the credit, but brings his passion for the theatre vividly to the screen.
Before I Go To Sleep (2014)
★★☆☆☆
An unsympathetic protagonist is the most damning aspect of Rowan Joffé’s formulaic and sedate adaptation of the best-selling novel.
The Congress (2013)
★★★★☆
A moving meditation on corporate commerciality in a dystopian future, The Congress is a remarkable film bursting with ambition, imagination and emotion.
The German Doctor / Wakolda (2013)
★★★☆☆
Uncovering Josef Mengele’s hideout in Argentina, LucÃa Puenzo’s The German Doctor struggles to make a monster of the Angel of Death.
A Promise (2013)
★★★☆☆
A love letter to the unknown woman, veteran director’s Patrice Leconte’s English language debut A Promise reaches a pinnacle of mushy romanticism.
Norte, The End Of History (2013)
★★★★☆
Reimagining Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment in the north of the Philippines, Lav Diaz’s Norte, The End Of History is a stunning slowburner of epic proportions.
Cycling With Molière / Alceste à Bicyclette (2013)
★★★☆☆
Sparks fly as two old friends rehearse Moliere’s Le Misanthrope, as Philippe Le Guay’s Cycling With Molière searches for honesty beneath the truth inside.
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.
Half Of A Yellow Sun (2013)
★★★☆☆
The personal and political intersect in an epic drama from the heady days of Nigeria’s independence to the failed attempt to set up the breakaway independent republic of Biafra, and the start of a civil war.
The Invisible Woman (2013)
★★★☆☆
Unpicking Dickens’ illicit affair with a girl half his age, Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman brings a strong woman out from behind the novelist’s shadow
The Patience Stone (2012)
★★★★☆
A war movie like no other, Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone leaves no woe unturned as a woman rails against man and the theatre of war.
Saving Mr Banks (2013)
★★★★☆
A clash of cultures with a war zone in the writers room, John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr Banks puts adaptation and that special relationship on trial