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Search: Starring Michael Smiley

  • Bookworm (2024)
    Review preview for Bookworm

    Fisher and Wood achieve a great rapport, and there’s some entertaining supporting work even though much of our time is spent in the middle of nowhere.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    11 year old Mildred's world is turned upside-down when her estranged father, the washed-up magician Strawn Wise comes to look after her and agrees to take her camping to find a mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther.
  • Black Sea (2014)
    Review preview for Black Sea

    Retains a tight grip on your imagination

    Angus Wolfe Murray · 4.5 out of 5
    A skeleton crew in a decommissioned submarine launch a clandestine search for Nazi gold under Russian waters.
  • Censor (2021)
    Review preview for Censor

    Running a tight 84 minutes, the film still feels like an epic journey into both its seedy world and its heroine’s psyche.

    Jeremy Mathews · 3.5 out of 5
    When film censor Enid discovers an eerie horror that speaks directly to her sister's mysterious disappearance, she resolves to unravel the puzzle behind the film and its enigmatic director – a quest blurring the lines between fiction and reality in terrifying ways.
  • Come To Daddy (2019)
    Review preview for Come To Daddy

    This is one film that's really going to test the mettle of Wood's mainstream fanbase.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    After receiving a cryptic letter from his estranged father, Norval travels to his dad’s oceanfront home for what he hopes will be a positive experience. If only he’d known the dark truth about his old man beforehand.
  • Down Terrace (2009)
    Review preview for Down Terrace

    By mixing the situations of a crime drama with dysfunctional family dynamics, the everyday becomes accentuated, meaning that outbreaks of violence are absurdly comic but still retain a nasty edge.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    Killers consider retribution round the kitchen sink.
  • A Field In England (2013)
    Review preview for A Field In England

    A kaleidoscopic sequence explores questions of identity through some of the trippiest black and white imagery you'll have seen on the big screen for a long time.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    Four men have a strange encounter during the English Civil War.
  • Free Fire (2016)
    Review preview for Free Fire

    The director resembles a sniper who remains unseen, but whose presence can nonetheless be felt.

    Paul Risker · 3.5 out of 5
    A meeting between two gangs in a deserted warehouse turns into a shootout.
  • Glassland (2014)
    Review preview for Glassland

    Gerard Barett's low-budget drama is marked out by raw performances and a strong empathy for its characters that help buoy up its downbeat subject matter.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    A young cab driver tries to save his mum from alcoholism.
  • The Hallow (2015)
    Review preview for The Hallow

    There’s plenty of the pre-requisite tension, and the monsters are designed well and deployed with restraint.

    Luke Shaw · 3 out of 5
    When a visiting conservationist accidentally trespasses in an ancient wood, its denizens set their sights on his family.
  • Jawbone (2017)
    Review preview for Jawbone

    Harris shines in the central role.

    Jennie Kermode · 2.5 out of 5
    After hitting rock bottom, former youth boxing champion Jimmy McCabe returns to his childhood boxing club and his old team.
  • Kill List (2011)
    Review preview for Kill List

    Kill List manages to blend its study of friendship, masculinity, violence and family with a hitman road movie wrapped inside a horror mystery. This is quite some achievement.

    Owen Van Spall · 4 out of 5
    A hitman's moral compass becomes badly skewed.
  • Madame (2017)
    Review preview for Madame

    The script is cleverly done, the key relationships well and economically drawn; and while this is clearly comedy, it does not pull its punches.

    Jane Fae · 3.5 out of 5
    A wealthy American persuades her Spanish maid to pretend to be a noblewoman in order to make up the numbers at dinner, only to have an English aristocrat fall in love with her.
  • Nostalgie (2025)
    Review preview for Nostalgie

    An exceptional piece of filmmaking.

    Jennie Kermode · 5 out of 5
    A washed-up Eighties one-hit-wonder turned IT entrepreneur is stunned when a Belfast club invites him to perform at its centenary celebration.
  • The Nun (2018)
    Review preview for The Nun

    The honour of horror has been disemboweled by this film

    Angus Wolfe Murray · 1 out of 5
    A priest and a novice investigate devilish goings on in an isolated Romanian nunnery in the Fifties
  • Outpost (2008)
    Review preview for Outpost

    In short, Outpost is exactly what a horror film should be.

    Anton Bitel · 3.5 out of 5
    A group of soldiers find themselves facing an ancient and seemingly unstoppable enemy.
  • Shell (2012)
    Review preview for Shell

    Isolation rules and comfort is cold in Scott Graham's gripping and emotionally tense feature debut.

    Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
    An intense story of two people who struggle to keep their longings for freedom under control, set against a beautiful and remote landscape that reflects their isolation back at them.
  • Spoof Or Die (2012)
    Review preview for Spoof Or Die

    Stacey Gregg has crafted a script that neatly gives us characters and then exposes their flaws.

    Andrew Robertson · 3.5 out of 5
    A troubled Belfast boy befriends an English kid, with disturbing results.
  • The Toll (2021)
    Review preview for The Toll

    Much of the humour in the film depends on contrasting viewers' expectations of rural life with the paraphernalia of Sixties spy movies and Seventies cop shows.

    Jennie Kermode · 2 out of 5
    A toll booth operator's secret past comes back to haunt him.

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Taking a ride into liminal spaces Katharine Round on making documentary Ghost Town

Flying blind Michael Woloson and Scott Tinkham on improvisation, experimental writing and Littermates

In deep water Dominic Curran on internet overexposure and A Little Learning Is A Dangerous Thing

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Festival coverage

Festivals
Cannes festival coverage, 2026

We're bringing you all the latest news and reviews from the Cheltenham International Film Festival, the Leeds International Film Festival, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Tallinn Black Nights.



We're looking forward to the French Film Festival and DOC NYC.



We've recently brought you coverage of the Belfast Film Festival, Halloween Frightfest, the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, Newfest, the London Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and Grimmfest.



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