Tagged Four Stars 2015

Reasons to love The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: the cast; India looking beautiful; the warm, uplifting hug of a story; Richard Gere’s hair. That brochure alone is worth the second trip to the Best...

Suburban paranoia gets an anxious new neighbour in David Robert Mitchell's stylishly mounted teen horror It Follows, which is essentially Nightmare on Elm Street dressed as a daydream. Here, the bored yet...

How do you add tension to a story when the audience is already aware of your conclusion? Hirschbiegel wisely focuses Elser‘s attention upon the individual, exploring the why and what rather than the drama...

Chock-full of surprises and nigh-on indefinable, Nasty Baby shocks, subverts and delights in equal measure - to say much more would risk revealing too much. Sharp and sardonic, this naturalistically-acted...

It might seem peculiar that a film comprised of a series of observations and very little dialogue could be so riveting, yet it is. This is facilitated by Jem Cohen’s insightful eye. Through his perspective...

Stunning Chilean landscapes and artful abstract imagery are the name of the game in Patricio Guzmán's poetic historical/natural documentary.With an approach that leans slightly towards style over substance,...

Jafar Panahi writes, directs and stars in this charming and humorous display of the eccentric spirit of Iranian society. Ostensibly a hidden camera documentary, a large part of the film's appeal lies in...

The '60s are dead, to begin with. Yet through all the stoner fog of PI Doc Sportello's (Phoenix) meandering investigations, the elegiac beauty of Pynchon's source novel is only occasionally glimpsed. Three...

On the face of it, Trash is essentially Five Go on the Run in Rio: an adventure mystery with plucky street teenagers, priests, coded messages, murderous villains, and buried treasure. At its heart though...

There is much to recommend Selma besides the lure of Martin Luther King. It is creative and well told; never indolent and always interesting; grandiose yet intimate. DuVernay - through a wonderfully slender...

When you watch a film called Crazy Love you could be forgiven for thinking you were in for chaos, mania, and romance. Amour Fou takes a different route, resplendent with calm and measured notes to the point...

Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, Big Hero 6 sees a full continuation of Disney’s recent charm offensive, which shows little chance of stopping. Loosely based on a Marvel comic of the same name, Big...

Putting the pugnacious into Pygmalion, Kingsman arrives to save the day. Egerton is terrific throughout his “My Fair Lad” transformation from street kid to superspy through a lethal training programme....

When medical catastrophe hits star-crossed lovers, a charming Cambridge romance lurches into powerful melancholy. As the viewer eyes into the Hawkings' extraordinary life, Jones completely sells the...