A young black woman in search of her white biological mother gives Leigh’s heartwrenching if occasionally amusing film the kind of narrative and thematic gravitas rarely experienced in such stories about families in crisis, featuring an all-timer performance by Brenda Blethyn.
There is nothing quite like Greenaway’s perverse ‘zoological’ treatise on human and animal mortality, decomposition and disability, as a car accident leaves a despairing woman without a leg and two grieving twin brothers without their wives.
A textbook example of how to produce a handsome adaptation of an iconic novel, Polanski fashions a naturalistic if elegiac tale featuring an excellent Nastassja Kinski in a breakthrough performance.
Wright’s over-the-top, parodic, buddy cop action-comedy is ‘pop’ confetti cinema in pleasing, anything-goes mode, as a police sergeant reassigned to a sleepy countryside town must contend with a spate of gruesome murders.
The iconic duo return in another rollickingly amusing adventure as they must clear their name after being framed for crimes they didn’t commit, rendered in the tactile, almost corporeal stop-motion quality that Aardman has been reliably producing for decades.
Ralph Fiennes is exceptional as a cardinal who must oversee the selection of a new Pope as skeletons in the closet threaten to derail the voting process, in Berger’s taut ‘mystery-thriller’ that some might feel too highly calibrated in its storytelling.
Blending concert scenes, comedy and thriller modes, this is a largely rapturous dramatisation of the rise of the Belfast-based hip-hop group as they seek to reclaim the Irish language from the oppressive British authorities.
While sometimes too overreliant on its non-linear storytelling, this serviceable rehabilitation drama boasts stunning scenes of the Orkney Islands, as Saoirse Ronan captures all of the fury and sensitivity of her character trying to liberate herself from alcoholism.
Lanthimos’ weakest work since ‘Alps’ is an uneven if morbid triptych of stories that operate as playful, nihilistic exercises at best, led by Cannes Best Actor winner Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone.
Glass’ sophomore feature is tense, stylish, violent, sexy and takes some artistic risks, headlined by an excellent Kristen Stewart playing a gym manager who falls in love with a female bodybuilder in a drugs-and-guns-infested small town.
Eternality Tan 