We’re so used to the flotsam and jetsum of angst, bad blood and rancour in the ocean of pop history, that the positive energy of the Wham! documentary feels as welcome as a summer breeze.
A consideration of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s friendship and career.
Maucere is incredibly expressive, with both suits the silent style and makes the point that much of the communication everyone uses day to day doesn’t require sound.
A struggling Deaf actor, sick of agreeing to increasingly humiliating tasks just to get a role, decides to take matters into his own hands.
Mylod doles out cliche after cliche - drinks and debauchery in clubs, waking up with Mr Wrong - but never injects enough warmth or humor into proceedings to keep them fresh.
A woman revisits her past 20 boyfriends to see if she's lost Mr Right.
In his modern world of apartment blocks and estranged family members, even comfort is cold.
Kasia earns her living by breaking into other people's homes. One day on the job she finds a dead body of a man and decides to move into his apartment and find out who he was. As she starts to piece together his memories, relationships and secrets, it awakens in her a dream of another life and gives her strength to make changes in her own.
Digression builds upon detour, which piles charmingly onto excursion, sometimes lifted, sometimes pushed and always shaped by a score that also roams freely in its influences.
A couple who fall in love at first sight, wake the next day with different appearances and struggle to find one another.
Towering performances from two of the twentieth century's greatest stars, a mercilessly witty script and direction which pulls no punches - quite simply the greatest melodrama of its era.
Two sisters, a former child star and a now disabled Hollywood actress, are bound together by co-dependency and mutual resentment.
Simon confidently marries the investigative and horrific aspects of the story, and very effectively combines sudden scares with the gruelling horror of a problem that won’t go away.
In 1974 LA suburbs, a single mother faces violent attacks by an invisible entity. When no one believes her, she seeks help from paranormal investigators, sparking a notorious documented supernatural case.
There's an alertness here to the dynamics of domestic abuse that gives the film depth.
A couple's wedding anniversary celebrations take an unexpected turn when one tries to kill the other. Far from help, can the fleeing woman figure out what's going on in time to ensure her survival?
Directed with wit and panache by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, written by Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne, Maisie stays true to Henry James's two-part essence.
A divorce and custody battle from the perspective of a young girl.
The intriguing concept plays out from initial parental disbelief and denial to unexpected changes in behaviour and attitudes.
Julia and Tobias discover that their daughter Marielle has suddenly developed telepathic abilities and can see and hear everything they do. This leads to situations ranging from the awkward to the absurd as uncomfortable truths are revealed.
Its slow, observational style allows us to get much closer to the key figures and explore aspects of motive which are commonly lost.
During the 1990s, at a Scandinavian psychiatric hospital, a man known as Mads Lake confessed to multiple murders and was convicted. However, the uneasy triumvirate of Mads, therapist Anna Rudebeck and policeman Soren Rank all have a vested interest in unearthing the truth, while a deepening co-dependency threatens to consume them all.
Not a great deal happens in this story of survivalism and primitive conflicts that we haven't seen dozens of times before, but by sticking with Anna's perspective, writer/director Josh Mendoza makes it all feel very different.
A young woman tries to survive in a post-Apocalyptic world.
Danner...does an excellent job with the material she is given and makes very clear the fact that her character is losing her memory, not her mind.
Bridget returns home to Chicago at her brother’s urging to deal with her mother’s Alzheimer’s and her father’s reluctance to let go of their life together.
The trouble is that all of this has been done on a very low budget and the special effects which director Satoshi Miki has been able to muster don’t match up to his ambitions.
A large monster attacks Japan, but dies suddenly. While the people rejoice and bask in relief, the giant corpse left behind begins to slowly rot and bloat. If it explodes, the nation will be destroyed.
Though it never quite achieves the magic it's aiming for, this is a solid little thriller with a lot to recommend it.
A trio of friends are starting high school when their friend vanishes. With the police unable, or unwilling to find her, they take it upon themselves to find out what happened her, undertaking a harrowing journey that will change them all.
The pace is slow, in keeping with the rhythms of Julián’s life. Often the camera simply waits, taking in the changing light or the animals going to and fro.
After a lifetime of bus rides to the US to visit his children, Julián quietly starts building a house in rural Mexico. In filming his work, his granddaughter crafts a personal and poetic love letter to him and his homeland.
It does not explain trans pain from the outside. It sits with it, listens to it, and tries to make room for it without exploiting it.
Kyler Prescott and Blake Brockington were just two high-profile examples of approximately 50% of trans boys in the US who did not survive a suicide attempt. This film highlights the importance of combating prejudice and prioritising prevention among trans youth.
While content is important, it is context that is king in a documentary, and this film could do with a lot more of it to orient viewers, especially those who don't have a full working knowledge of the American South.
The story of a community of black people in the American South during the summer 2017, when a string of brutal killings of black men sent shockwaves throughout the country.
Midthunder is absolutely committed to her role and her ability to show us the turmoil beneath the surface, to make us care about the sort of person we might ordinarily go out of our way to avoid, is remarkable.
A couple go to stay in a mountain cabin to have one last go at saving their marriage.
The Japanese filmmaker guides his actors as if they were just learning emotions, creating an impression of awkwardness.
An unexpected love triangle, a failed honey trap and an encounter that results from a misunderstanding are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.
The delight of the drama stems from the well crafted characters, while its heft hinges on toxicity that may not be immediately obvious.
Michelle, a model grandmother, is enjoying peaceful retirement in a Burgundy village, close to her best friend Marie-Claude. On All Saints' Day, her daughter Valérie arrives to drop off her grandson Lucas for the school holiday week. But nothing will go to plan.
The film carries us from a carefree existence made possible by not paying attention, to a crushing tragedy.
In a remote village, two brothers find a demon-infected man just about to give birth to evil itself. They decide to get rid of the man but merely succeed in helping him to deliver the inferno.
Dag makes interesting use of animation to take us into Fehmi's head space when he's high, showing that the 'escape' he is looking for is in fact as much of a nightmare as any sort of release.
Set in a rough neighbourhood of Istanbul, the story follows Fehmi, a talented 19-year-old rapper who is addicted to bonzai, a cheap synthetic and deadly drug, jeopardizing any success for his music career.
Blackshear pulls off quite a trick by giving us the impression that things are as bad as they can get and then delivering something still more devastating.
A woman and her brother seek revenge against a mysterious stalker.
Offering a clear-sighted view of the situation that calls to mind executive producer Matthew Heinemann’s approach to the drug trade in Cartel Land, Kasbe digs at the complexity of the poaching problem.
In the Kenyan bush, a crackdown on ivory poaching forces a silver-tongued second-generation poacher to seek out an unlikely ally in this fly-on-the-wall look at both sides of the conservation divide.
The real horror of Diaz’s film lies in its recognition of how meaningless all these conflicts are.
Lt. Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines, is in a deep moral crossroad, being a witness to his institution's being a party to a murderous anti-drug campaign, which is spearheaded by no less than the president of the country, Rodrigo Duterte.
This isn't a how to guide for coping with illness, and it's pleasingly free of tragic sentiment - it is much more a story about fatherhood.
The challenges faced by filmmaker DaSilva, who was diagnosed with a rapidly progressing form of multiple sclerosis and who finds himself 'trapped' by the US medicaid system.
The history of the monument, which is accompanied by a wealth of archive photos and footage is educational and entertaining but although Bayoumi raises some interesting questions regarding authority, these feel under-explored
A personal essay film about the moving of the landmark Ramses II statue in Cairo.
Continuous experiments with different camera movements and blending the past and the present perfectly capture an intricate mind of someone who had lost their loved one.
A mother and her three children attempt to rebuild their lives after the father’s sudden death.
