Reviews

As much as American cinema is based in LA, it’s New York that has always been the country’s most iconic on-screen destination. How well they use this manic city can be a real test for a filmmaker. For a...

With a rollout soured by director Michael Winterbottom being pressured by Sony to make its end credits less political, Greed arrives with little question when it comes to its anti-corporatist credentials....

A film like The Painted Bird does not want to be ‘liked’. It wants to shock, to disgust, to viscerally move, to make you reconsider just how civilised mankind really is. Seeking such reactions is a gamble...

If, at the start of the year, you were asked which Steven Soderbergh project sounded more exciting between ‘the one shot entirely on an iPhone’ and ‘the one starring Meryl Streep’, then it would have...

Despite its flippant title, For the Birds is a difficult watch. The documentary centres on Kathy Murphy, a rural New Yorker whose decades-long, all-consuming hobby of raising barnyard fowl has raised...

Nelly Ben Hayoun has a Hannah Arendt fixation. The stated point of the charismatic designer/director’s new documentary is to use Arendt’s philosophy as a springboard to find “the origin of knowledge”....

The fictionalised cinematic memoir is an inherently self-indulgent genre, yet actor-turned-writer Shia LaBeouf and director Alma Har’el use this intense introspection to capture the interpersonal and...

Nick Rowland’s feature debut, based on a short story, starts with explosive, explicit violence that immediately and effectively establishes the world: unforgiving, honour-bound, and never without the threat...

The summary of Lingua Franca below could mislead you into expecting some sort of topical melodrama, featuring the big issues of today blown up to cinema scale. Instead, the film is a slow-paced, slice-of-life...

Who do you send to kill the best killer in the world? Pioneering director Ang Lee’s 14th feature sees an ageing hitman seeking retirement. But learning the truth about his final hit puts the sensationally...

County Lines is an impressive feature debut for director Henry Blake, who based the story on real incidents from his time as a youth worker. The film is simultaneously a gritty and unpleasant crime drama about...

Billie Piper’s audacious directorial debut follows imperfect – sometimes downright unpleasant – people. Mandy (Piper) makes do in an office full of not-so-passive aggressions, and her seven-year-old...

It’s hard to think of a better recent example of dad-approved lazy-afternoon viewing than James Mangold’s Le Mans ‘66. Its combination of old-fashioned motorsports, tough-guy heroes, and loving...

Anthony McCarten has, in recent years, made his name as one of the premier screenwriters of mass appeal but mediocre historical films like Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody. His latest, The Two Popes, teams...

Like this autumn’s Marriage Story, Premature follows a relationship between two artists whose personal lives blend into their creative endeavours – but in this film the beginning, end, and a possible path...