Reviews

There are touches of Sofia Coppola, David Lynch and Assassination Nation in the decayed suburbia that defines Jennifer Reeder’s quasi-surrealist exploration of communal trauma. Knives and Skins paints a...

Bing Liu’s Oscar-nominated documentary, Minding the Gap, begins by following the lives of group of skateboarders who find solace in being able to get out and skate when life gets too much. But the film is...

There are several anecdotes, lines, and dramatic turning points in Norwegian-Swedish drama Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester) that seem to be the emotional crux of the picture. Until the closing...

If Wind River were crossed with Love With the Proper Stranger, the result would be something akin to Öndög, Wang Quan’an’s gorgeous, meditative police drama turned romantic comedy based on real events....

Were it not for the closing credits, it would be easy to mistake La Arrancada for fiction instead of fact. Set in modern day Cuba, it follows Jenniffer – an aspiring professional athlete – as an injury...

People rarely wish to be defined by their teenage years; in his fourth feature film Fourteen, Dan Sallitt continues his exploration of tight-knit relationships with a friendship anchored in a middle-school...

NBA agency drama High Flying Bird is talky – fast-talky. It was written by a man trained as a playwright, and it details the back-end business side of a major corporatised sport. Even if you already know...

If anyone had any doubt still that Kenneth Branagh loved Shakespeare, All Is True thoroughly dismisses it. An obvious passion project, it’s a joy to behold Branagh’s affection for Shakespeare – both man...

Early in Renaud Barret’s documentary, one of his profiled artists observes that the act of living in Kinshasa is creating art in itself. Système K provides a fearless platform through which the street...

If looking for compelling explorations of authorship and the merits of varying artistic mediums, The Plagiarists is not the place to come. Any redeeming qualities are lost under a heavily contrived plot...

In her multi award-winning script, Nora Fingscheidt deals with the unromantic realities of finding foster children a home, creating a film that does not flinch from emotional or physical violence and the...

Ali Abbasi’s Border is a strange breed of film, much like its protagonist, Tina (Eva Melander) – a border control officer with a bizarre ability to smell illegal activity. Abbasi reimagines a short...

This review was originally published as part of our London Film Festival coverage on 21/10/2018. New York in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk is pulsating, alive and wholly authentic – populated...

As befitting its title, the characters with which Lone Scherfig populates The Kindness of Strangers prove the shining emotional heart of the drama. Getting them all together takes some contrivance, not to...

A slasher satire of art criticism, Velvet Buzzsaw promises bite, blood, and a true element of danger – even if the pretentious victims are less than sympathetic. However, after an explosive trailer drop and...