Author Rachel Brook

For a film named Heartland, Maureen Anderson’s debut can be pretty critical of the American Midwest. Beth Grant is saddled with the thankless negative stereotype of a traditionalist, homophobic mother, and...

Where countless films have collapsed inheritance between second-wave feminists and subsequent generations of women into platonic or familial intergenerational conflict, After Louie revitalises the motif in the...

Jordan Peele’s Get Out has quite accurately been described as a horror movie where the villain is racism. In this accomplished first feature, Peele intelligently intertwines historical contexts of racially...

If Alice Munro made films, you’d pray they’d look like this. Kelly Reichardt’s adaptation of short stories by Montana native Maile Meloy has a staggeringly subtle touch, and is an experience more...

Denial is bold in crafting a fictionalised Deborah Lipstadt who isn’t always easy to like; Weisz is fierce and prickly and at times almost unrecognisable. It’s a far cry from the tedious tear-jerking of...

Though The White King’s striking animated opening credits and boy hero Djata (Allchurch) suggest it’s an adventure aimed at children, the film as a whole is utterly confused about who its audience is....

It’s a surprise with this subject matter, but Antonio Campos’ Christine is deliciously witty. The Florida TV station where Christine works is expertly decked out in period ephemera showed off with dynamic...

Passengers opens with a genuinely cinematic sequence, free of dialogue and even human characters. We’re introduced to the Avalon – a hyper-futuristic spaceship which nevertheless still echoes 2001 with its...

The Pass is a dramatic tour de force. Its simple conceit – a triptych of pairs of people talking in hotel rooms at five-year intervals – is masterfully executed thanks to clever ellipsis, cast chemistry,...

United States of Love is a deeply uncomfortable and troubling film. Arguably it’s deliberately designed to be so through apt framing that emphasises the voyeuristic nature of cinema; female characters are...

The release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks J.K. Rowling’s first screenwriting credit. Yet authors adapting their own work for the screen is neither a new nor a particularly rare practice....

Spoiler warning: This article features spoilers to the 2011 film Take This Waltz and 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Following Friday morning’s sad news of the death of genius singer-songwriter, poet...

100 Streets seems to aim for Crash in London, but lands in overwrought soapy territory, with respected big-name actors such as Idris Elba, Gemma Arterton and Ken Stott surrounded by unexpectedly low production...

Girls Lost melds elements of genres including thriller and coming-of-age tale to create an elegant magic realist consideration of gender and sexuality, and how they interact with long-term...

Porto opens with the unmistakable sound of Anton Yelchin’s gravelly voice in monologue. In light of the actor’s recent death this has an amplified power and is instantly attention-grabbing and emotive....