It Must Be Heaven (2019)
★★★★☆
It Must Be Heaven continues Elia Suleiman’s deadpan global quest for recognition of Palestinian identity and homeland.
★★★
Rare Beasts (2019)
★★★★☆
Written by, directed by and starring Billie Piper, Rare Beasts, a self-styled ‘anti-romcom’, is a manic Munch-like scream about what it’s like to be a modern, thirty-something woman trying to have it all while there’s a crisis all around.
Frankie (2019)
★★★☆☆
In Frankie, written and directed by Ira Sachs, Isabelle Huppert stars in an ensemble piece that illuminates a terminally ill actress’s final attempts to control the tangled relationships of her extended family.
Undergods (2020)
★★★☆☆
Undergods, Chino Moya’s disturbing first feature set in a dystopian future, has its world premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival and is released now.
Black Bear (2020) – ON DEMAND
★★★ώ☆
A creatively frustrated film director’s tumultuous visit to a young couple’s lake house may reignite her creative vision in writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear.
Undine (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Undine by Christian Petzold is a strange, otherworldly, watery romance with unsettling depths.
BFI Flare: Jump, Darling (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
Following a break-up, a struggling drag queen visits his ailing grandmother in the country and finds himself staying as the pair support each other in various ways in writer/director Phil Connell’s Jump, Darling.
Ammonite (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Francis Lee’s second feature after his stunning, award-winning debut God’s Own Country is another queer love story, this time between two women in 1840s Lyme Regis, starring Kate Winslet and Saorse Ronan.
BFI Flare: Cowboys (2020) – on demand on Curzon Home Cinema on 7 May
★★★☆☆
In writer/director Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys a father and his transgender son journey through the Montana mountain ranges escaping the boy’s mother, who is unable to accept his gender dysphoria.
BFI Flare: Sublet (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
In Eytan Fox’s Sublet a middle-aged American travel writer visiting Tel Aviv forms an unexpected connection with his young Israeli landlord and in the process learns new things about himself.
BFI Flare: Boy Meets Boy (2021) – on demand
★★★☆☆
After meeting high in a Berlin nightclub, Johannes and Harry casually drift around the city coming down and getting to know each other in Daniel Sanchez Lopez’s Boy Meets Boy
The Climb (2019)
★★★☆☆
In original, smart buddy comedy movie The Climb co-writer/directors Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino play two losers also called Kyle and Mike.
Carmilla (2020)
★★★☆☆
Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 novella, Emily Harris’ film tells a coming-of-age story within a suspenseful, atmospheric gothic chamber piece.
Rebecca (2020)
★★★☆☆
Ben Wheatley’s lavish take on Rebecca, though truer to Daphne du Maurier’s novel, can’t help but be overshadowed by the iconic Hitchcock version.