Film

Amber (Sibylla Deen) is torn between her older lover Demi (Harvey Keitel) and her devout Muslim family in Bradford. When Demi dies, his driver Donald (Gabriel Bryne) is instructed to kick Amber out the flat she was living in for the adulterous getaways. Against his better judgement, a sympathy for Amber's plight drags Donald into an underworld totally at odds with his unassuming personality. There is an early scene of Amber flouncing around as 'See Line Woman' plays and Donald...

Makala, the new film from French documentarian Emmanuel Gras, is an elegiac, lyrical journey into the heart, soul and determined resilience of a young charcoal producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabwita is a 28 year old Congolese man who, with his wife Lydie and their three children, lives in poverty. They rent a small, ramshackle home in the bush, and although their accommodation is basic, the full weight of their situation is clearly communicated when we see Lydie...

A decade on from their first collaboration, director Paul Thomas Anderson and actor Daniel Day-Lewis reunite for another tale driven by strong personalities, power struggles, and personal obsession. Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread follows Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a fashion designer who makes clothes for high society and even royalty on occasion; a meticulous craftsman, with a precise routine and method. One day he meets Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a sea side restaurant, and is instantly...

“The things you forget,” ruminates Lois Smith’s Marjorie mournfully towards the start of Michael Almereyda’s futuristic contemplation on memory and mortality. Now in her mid-80s, Marjorie suffers from a vascular form of dementia that causes her to regularly lose touch with the memories of her past. Living with her daughter Tess (Geena Davis), and son-in-law Jon (Tim Robbins), she spends much of her time staring blankly into the distance; a vague, indefinable confusion etched into her eyes – reprising her...

Michael Fassbender’s Brandon in Steve McQueen’s Shame is a sex addict locked in a prison of his routine. He spends his days trawling through pornography. His office computer is so flooded with it, it has to be carted off for a deep clean. By night, Brandon picks up women from bars for casual, throw-away sex or screws his way through New York City’s escort listings. Any dead space he fills furiously masturbating in the shower or his office’s men’s room....

Pedro Pinho’s first feature film, The Nothing Factory, is a three hour social-realist epic that’s baggier than a pair of nineties jeans and so overly long that dullness eventually turns into despair. The film takes inspiration from the real life story of a group of factory workers who, in a unique case of experimental self-management, took charge of a lift building factory in Portugal. When the workers of said factory discover machinery being sneaked off premises late one night, panic...

For those who love film, Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s documentary, The Cinema Travellers, will find a special place in your heart. Through the lives of three men, who are bound by celluloid, the beauty of film, and its projection, we are provided an intimate, fly on the wall look at travelling cinemas in the rural parts of India’s Maharashtra state. There is the shrewd businessman, exhibiting films at many of India’s religious festivals, the charitable showman who screens films...

Richard Linklater’s latest film is a sequel, of sorts, to Hal Ashby’s 1971 great, The Last Detail, which starred a young Jack Nicholson. That film was concerned with questions around the ideas of legacy & impermanence, and Last Flag Flying continues this tradition, whilst also being shot through with a hit of pure Linklater in the form of a hangout film. Ashby’s film centres on two US sailors transporting a third to a military prison and Linklater’s film shares a...

After beginning with The Hunger Games in 2012, the tenth and (*prayers*) final film amongst the teens facing dystopian peril YA subgenre belongs to Maze Runner: The Death Cure. The Maze Runner films have always sat somewhere in the middle, never enjoying the cultural capital of The Hunger Games franchise, nor the career destroying banality of the Divergent trilogy. 20th Century Fox have also had the decency to adapt the third book in James Dashner's trilogy into one final film...