The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
★★★★☆
With a career redefining performance from Rachel Weisz, Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea is a tour de force of classic filmmaking and nostalgia.
★★★★
Oslo, August 31st (2011)
★★★★☆
Revisiting Louis Malle’s Le Feu Follet and the existential malaise, Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st casts a beautiful eye over the death of summer.
Weekend (2011)
★★★★☆
A Nottingham-set gay love story, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend is love in the real lane – tender, confusing and painful. It’s funny, but it ain’t no hom-com.
Restless (2011)
★★★★☆
Doomed love with a straight twist, Gus Van Sant’s Restless hides a Last Days morbidity in a quirky teenage romance between a terminally ill girl and a funeral mourner.
Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)
★★★★☆
Apathy and the black fight for civil rights, Göran Hugo Olsson’s Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 scours the Swedish vaults for an all-American independence.
Drive (2011)
★★★★☆
With Ryan Gosling as an übercool, unnamed getaway driver, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive mixes LA heist movie with Melvillian lonerism for a sexy, seething delight.
Perfect Sense (2010)
★★★★☆
David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense is a twist on both thriller and love story as a couple find each other while the world around them crumbles, sense by sense.
Mademoiselle Chambon (2009)
★★★★☆
A tender waltz of self-restrained romance, ex-couple Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain quietly explode in Stéphane Brizé’s autumn-hued Mademoiselle Chambon.
The Skin I Live In / La Piel Que Habito (2011)
★★★★☆
Neither really a return to form for Almodóvar nor a Banderas reinvention, The Skin I Live In is good clean, honest fun. Like Frankenstein and no monster.
R – Hit First, Hit Hardest (2010)
★★★★☆
Playing the waiting game, Noer and Lindholm’s R: Hit First, Hit Hardest reveals the bitter, cinematic truth about life behind bars in a Danish prison.
In A Better World / Haevnen (2010)
★★★★☆
Split between Kenya and Denmark, Susanne Bier’s In A Better World has war and peace in its sights as its playground bullies test the pacifists to the limit.
Poetry (2010)
★★★★☆
With geriatric sex and teen suicide, Lee Changdong’s Poetry is no sensationalist exploitation drama, but a dark, tender coming of (old) age.
Bal / Honey (2010)
★★★★☆
The first and final part in Semih Kaplanoglu’s Yusuf trilogy, Honey is a tender portrait of childhood.
The Tree Of Life (2011)
★★★★☆
Set alight by a family tragedy, Terrence Malick’s beautiful The Tree Of Life spirals out from a son’s death into a divine celebration of life.