The trademark Spielberg visual flair is there from the outset and keeps this film interesting at times when the narrative is moving slowly, or when it lapses into melodrama.
Growing up in post-World War Two era Arizona, a young man named Sammy Fabelman discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
The film unravels its protagonist's tale whilst taking us on a tour of hidden Brazil, of the small places that don't appear in tourist brochures or in feature films.
A documentary about a trans woman who has spent decades as a trucker, travelling across Brazil.
The two basic tenets of documentary - find something interesting, tell its story in an interesting way. Faceless absolutely achieves the former, to the point that it starts to highlight its difficulties in the latter.
Hong Kong pro-democracy protestors forge political community through anonymity.
It’s rare to find a character this well developed in a slasher film, but Goldhaber pays equal attention to the smaller roles.
A moderator at a social media platform gets thrown face-first into a macabre mystery when she uncovers a series of visceral snuff videos bearing resemblance to a mythical 1978 cult film.
Whether she is probing at the ideas of the ties that bind us to a home or considering the morality of goat horns, she constantly nudges us to move around and, perhaps, get a better view.
The director and photgrapher travel through France as their friendship blossoms.
It’s a gem of a role for Raimi, who delivers the smooth talk and captures the high flying businessman look perfectly but shows us the human being behind them.
Due to a massive debt with his bank, James is given one hour to choose between financial ruin or murder to protect his family. Shot in one single take with no cuts.
In an age where punk aesthetics are sufficiently mainstream that corporate monoliths like McDonalds seek to leverage them to sell chicken wraps, its modesty, modernity, magic work to its advantage.
A young punk couple's one-night stand develops into something more meaningful.
The detailing, including the flamboyant naming of dresses and the rush to be finished, feels as right as a perfect necklace, so that it sets off the wider fabric of the story without detracting from it.
A fashion designer woos his best friend's fiancee and finds himself in too deep.
This kind of scenario is a treat for a good writer and death for a bad one. Jonathan Frank, working together with Mann, has done a decent job, and the actors have sufficient skill to make it work.
Best friends Becky and Hunter find themselves at the top of a 2,000-foot radio tower - with no safe way down.
An amuse-bouche of a film, Aki Kaurismäki’s latest comedy romance may leave you wanting more but it’s also a fully rounded, good looking experience packed with all the flavours we’ve come to expect from the master of deadpan down the years.
The course of potential love does not run smooth for a shelf-stacker and a metal worker.
Mortensen seems to draw particular focus to the aggression, fear and pejoratives associated with neurological disorders - a side only ever faintly explored in cinema.
A man invites his conservative father to live with him and his husband in Los Angeles, but his progressing dementia becomes problematic for them both.
What’s missing in most folk horror tales –and indeed in many otherwise diligent historical films – is an understanding of the different perspectives of people with pre-enlightenment beliefs. It’s here that writer Karpala truly triumphs.
On the night of first harvest, three brothers in the American West set out to see a dead witch buried by their friend and find themselves in a race to stop a curse.
Director Jaclyn Bethany oscillates between the poetic and the mundane, denting viewers the luxury of romanticising either the curious disappearance or Lark’s own situation.
October 1992. A group of law students head to a remote home upstate where a girl disappeared two years earlier.
Ortega gives herself over completely to her role, delivering a mesmerising performance.
High schooler Vada navigates the emotional fallout she experiences in the wake of a school tragedy. Relationships with her family, friends and view of the world are forever altered.
The strongest scene in this film involves video of the interrogation of a 14-year-old with an expert explaining how psychological traps are being set as they appear.
A documentary looking at why and how people confess to crimes they didn't commit.
The writer/director also zeroes in on the importance of physical contact for Ruth - something concrete in a world that is now full of things that she can’t always grasp.
Follows an octogenarian woman’s transition to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires.
There is a careful balance here between the big drama of the premise and the personal dramas experienced by the characters, most of whom pay no particular heed to the wider tragedy unfolding.
When it becomes impossible to keep repairing the sea barriers in low-lying Denmark, the country is evacuated and once affluent Danes become refugees, with families torn apart in the process.
A lonely man seeks emotional refuge in the organising and documenting of family moments using low-grade impersonators. When his fake sister becomes inspired to follow his method, their relationship struggles between the forged and genuine.
We watch the characters scampering around, going through the motions in a familiar way, but the laughs are few and far between, the tension that one would expect of a farce curiously absent.
A man tries to help his in-laws celebrate their wedding anniversary at his country hotel while fending off foreclosure.
The situations highlight a sense of existential loneliness in the modern world that might come with specifically Japanese trappings but which many elsewhere will recognise the emotional truth of.
Docudrama about a company which hires out people to pretend to be family members.
This is a powerful example of the phenomenon because it has affected so many different individuals, lending itself to a deeper analysis than is often possible.
The story of how indie rock star Tegan's identity was stolen and weaponised in a complex catfishing scheme.
Fando y Lis is a genuine curiosity piece - but one that drags more than it grips.
A wayward young man pushes his paralysed lover along in a cart in search of a mythical land. Out now to own as part of the six-disc Jodorowsky Collection.
These are lashings of gore, some deliberately feeble jokes, some good character-based comedy and predictable but nonetheless entertaining twists towards the end.
After a man is wrongfully arrested and sent to a high security prison he discovers the guards are vampires and the inmates their victims.
With formal narration which captures the style of the period and similarly distinctive dialogue, the film quickly immerses viewers in its small but volatile world.
The story of a woman living with her puritanical husband in 17th Century Shropshire and the two strangers who cause upheaval in her world.
