La Famille Bélier (2014)
★★☆☆☆
Highlighting one teenage girl’s struggle to manage life as the only hearing member of her deaf family, Eric Lartigau’s La Famille Bélier is riddled with clichés.
comedy
The Second Mother / Que Horas Ela Volta? (2015)
★★★★☆
With a cracking performance from Regina Casé and a sharp script, Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother is a well polished gem of class friction in Brazil.
The Legend Of Barney Thomson (2015)
★★★☆☆
The Legend Of Barney Thomson, Robert Carlyle’s first feature as a director is a black comedy that stars him as an inept Glaswegian barber mistaken for a serial killer.
Li’l Quinquin / P’tit Quinquin (2014)
★★★★☆
A French Twin Peaks where crimes are investigated Clouseau-style, Bruno Dumont’s absurd black comedy P’tit Quinquin is both ‘policier’ and satire.
Listen Up Philip (2014)
★★★☆☆
Conceived by a writer/director influenced by Philip Roth, Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip is a darkly comic satire of the American literary world.
Results (2015)
★★★☆☆
A wry comedy on the new-age mantras of fitness training in Austin Texas, Andrew Bujalski’s Results is a sentimental education of love and dreams.
The New Girlfriend / Une Nouvelle Amie (2014)
★★★☆☆
With delicious performances from Anaïs Demoustier and Romain Duris, François Ozon’s cross-dressing caper The New Girlfriend sizzles like drops on burning rocks.
A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence (2014)
★★★☆☆
The closing film in Roy Andersson’s trilogy, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting On Existence offers a blackly humorous look at you, the living.
While We’re Young (2014)
★★★☆☆
With While We’re Young Noah Baumbach hits you with everything and the kitschen sink in this incisive, funny but often distractingly clichéd comedy about the passage of time and the illusion of youth.
The Skeleton Twins (2014)
★★★☆☆
After a decade of not talking to each other, traumatic events bring estranged twins Milo and Maggie together again – a relationship in which drama and comedy are never far apart.
Wish I Was Here (2014)
★★★☆☆
Zack Braff stars in a tear-jerking comedy which shows that trying to follow your dreams and coming to terms with real life may not be incompatible after all.
In Order Of Disappearance / Kraftidioten (2014)
★★★★☆
A Norwegian satire on mob warfare and Nordic habits, Hans Petter Moland’s In Order Of Disappearance is a hilarious comedy that takes us beyond ordinary scruples.
The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared (2013)
★★★☆☆
Forrest Gump meets Zelig in an absurd and ridiculous Swedish farce-cum-road movie about a centenarian’s accidental involvement in major events of 20th century world history and contemporary criminal adventures.
Chinese Puzzle / Casse-tête Chinois (2013)
★★★☆☆
The road stops here for the travels of young Xavier, as Cédric Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle takes on fatherhood and the mind-bending complexity of modern living.