Memory Box (2021)
★★★★☆
A Memory Box triggers delayed reconciliation between past and present in Joana Hadjithomas’s deeply personal, emotional intergenerational drama.
Writers
Herself (2020)
★★★★☆
After escaping an abusive marriage, a young Irish mother’s plan to self-build a home is fraught with complications in director Phyllida Lloyd’s empowering Herself.
Shorta (2020)
★★★★☆
During a time of high police tension, two officers find themselves trapped in a notorious estate as riots break out in writer/directors Frederick Louis Hviid and Anders Ølholm’s gripping and timely Danish drama Shorta.
The Man with the Answers (2020)
★★★☆☆
A burgeoning connection with a stranger may deeply affect the life of an ex-diving champion in writer/director Stelios Kammitsis’s charming but slight The Man with the Answers.
Supernova (2020)
★★★★☆
Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci are superb in Harry MCQueen’s Supernova, this intimate portrayal of a couple facing a challenging future with one of them suffering from early onset dementia.
Cannes Film Festival 2021: the 74th
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2021: Official Selection
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.
The Mauritanian (2021) – on digital
★★★★☆
The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin MacDonald, brings a legal drama to devastating life on screen from the New York Times acclaimed best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was tortured and detained without charge in Guantánamo for 14 years.
Apples (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Apples, Christos Nikou’s assured debut as a director, is a disturbing, opaque fable about the relationship between memory, identity, grief and the selfie culture, set in Athens during an allegorical pandemic.
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation is a fascinating documentary by Lisa Immordino Vreeland about two groundbreaking giants of contemporary literature and the creative process.
Oscar Winners 2021
★★★★★
Oscar Winners 2021 – 93rd Academy Awards.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s all-star cast enlivens and sharpens the points of Aaron Sorkin‘s docudrama of a historic court case intended to destroy the ’60s counterculture.
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) – on demand – Oscar winner
★★★★☆
Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah directed by Shaka King, a tragic true story of a brutal state assassination in the US starring LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, is gripping, heart-wrenching and sadly still topical.