Cannes review: Happy End (2017)
★★★★☆
Michael Haneke’s Happy End deconstructs a wealthy bourgeois family living a life oblivious to the human beings around them with chilling results.
★★★★
Cannes review: The Beguiled (2017)
★★★★☆
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is compelling Southern Gothic, richly textured and deeply feminine.
Cannes review: The Square (2017)
★★★★☆
Ruben Östlund’s The Square is a chilly satire on the pretensions of art and Sweden’s comfortable society.
Cannes review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
★★★★☆
In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos creates a disturbingly strange and brutal dilemma.
Cannes review: Okja (2017)
★★★★☆
Netflix’s Okja is Bong Joon-ho’s and Jon Ronson’s satire-cum-expose of the genetically modified food industry through the adventures of a delightful Korean girl and an outsize giant pig.
Cannes review: Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
In Wonderstruck Todd Haynes opens a cabinet of cinematic wonders as two deaf children’s stories interlink 50 years apart in the magic of New York.
Frantz (2016)
★★★★☆
François Ozon’s Frantz takes you on a haunting journey into the unexpected ramifications of grief, forgiveness and identity in the European aftermath of World War I.
Heal the Living (2016)
★★★★☆
As a heart intended for transplant passes from teenage accident victim to middle-aged-mother recipient, humanity, compassion and medical professionalism triumph in Katell Quillévéré’s moving Heal the Living.
The Pyramid Texts (2015)
★★★★☆
An old boxer returns to the ring one last time to record a video message to his son. It’s an award-winning,moving monologue from veteran star James Cosmo in the Shammasian Brothers’ The Pyramid Texts.
The Handmaiden (2016)
★★★★☆
A sumptuous new adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a dazzling tale of duplicity and deception.
The Sense of an Ending (2017)
★★★★☆
The Lunchbox director Ritesh Batra’s adaption of Julian Barness’ The Sense of an Ending is a sensitive, unflinching reflection the deceptiveness of emotions.
A Quiet Passion (2016)
★★★★☆
A portrait of the poet as a young revolutionary, Terence Davies’ Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion sees a fiercely independent woman martyred.
Neruda (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius is Kleber Mendonça Filho’s unhurried portrait of a fascinatingly complicated woman, meticulously characterised in a career-best performance by Sonia Braga.