Filmworker (2017)
★★★★☆
Tony Zierra’s intriguing Filmworker tells Stanley Kubrick’s assistant Leon Vitali’s story and casts a hitherto-hidden light on the great director and his working methods.
Genre
Redoubtable (2017)
★★★☆☆
In a timely release for the anniversary of the May 1968 almost-revolution in Paris, Michel Hazanavicius wickedly funny re-invention of Jean-Luc Godard in Redoubtable, as seen though the eyes of Anne Wiazemsky, his second wife.
How To Talk To Girls At Parties (2017)
★★★★☆
John Cameron Mitchell’s How To Talk To Girls At Parties is an unlikely mash-up of punk and aliens in the British suburbs.
Beast
★★★★☆
Michael Pearce’s assured feature debut Beast is a clever, feral psychological horror that constantly surprises.
Let the Sunshine In (2017)
★★★★☆
Juliette Binoche stars in a rom-com departure for Claire Denis in Let the Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Interior).
120 BPM
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a moving, tender and compassionate film.
The Islands and the Whales (2016)
★★★★☆
The Islands and the Whales is a stunningly beautiful, unobtrusively shot documentary by Mike Day with a narrative that takes us into the lives of real people caught between tradition and global environmental change in the remote Faroe Islands.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
★★★☆☆
Ruff cut – Wes Anderson’s surprise venture into animation in Isle of Dogs.
The Magic Flute (1975)
★★★☆☆
Ingmar Bergman’s version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute is a magical fairy tale of a production.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
★★★★☆
You Were Never Really Here by Lynne Ramsay is a dark, disturbing odyssey into the mind of a brutal yet tender hitman.
The Nile Hilton Incident (2017)
★★★☆☆
Tarik Saleh’s The Nile Hilton Incident unravels a noir thriller against the political background of Egypt’s revolution in 2011.
Berlinale: Transit (2018)
★★★★☆
Christian Petzold’s fascinating present-day World War II film Transit is thematically and narratively dense, but there’s nothing dense in the way it goes about handling it.
Berlinale: Dovlatov (2018)
★★★☆☆
Alexey German Jr’s character study of a great Russian writer in Dovlatovencapsulates its time period superbly, but fails to go beyond that.
The Shape of Water (2017)
★★★★★
Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a fairy tale, a story of love, loss and friendship, and a magical cinematic joy.