Little White Lies

Directed by CLAIRE DENIS Starring ROBERT PATTINSON, JULIETTE BINOCHE, MIA GOTH Released 10 MAY Usually, when describing a film, writers have access to the vocabulary that has formed around cinema in the 100 plus years since the birth of this relative

The British stand-up comedian Stewart Lee has a bit in which he grumbles that the internet has ruined record shopping. For him, it was all about the thrill of the chase. He cherished the romantic notion of rifling through the bins in some dusty store

One of the most common adjectives used to describe the work of Claire Denis is ‘tactile.’ Denis has crafted one of the most impressionistic filmographies in cinema, where everything from camera movement to colour timing conveys the perspective of the

The use of food metaphors to discuss cinematic pleasures in films directed by women is a common but tragic affiction within film criticism. A dynamic performance is ‘spicy’; a tender sex scene ‘sweet like honey’; a comedic moment functions like a gre

Claire Denis films sound like Stuart Staples and Tindersticks. Yearning, haunting ambiguous strains are just part of the universe she has created. They all met at La Bataclan in Paris in 1995. Denis went backstage after a Tindersticks gig to seek per

The first thing you may notice about 2008’s 35 Shots of Rum, especially if you’re a Claire Denis connoisseur, is that it’s a very quiet movie: not much happens in terms of plot; there’s very little dialogue; it’s homely; and conflicts are quickly ext

Robert Pattinson has an excellent laugh. He giggles at various points during our conversation, which is disarming, because for so long now he has become associated with a cinematic sombreness that comes from watching him undergo lengthy bouts of inte

When we gaze upon something, there’s the suggestion of introspection – it’s a physical act that combines looking and thinking. We cast our eyes upon a person or object, then silently ponder any wider significance. Unlike the more uncomplicated, subje

In her first American role, Juliette Binoche embodies an image of femininity which, while largely conforming to the cliché of the sensual French actress, also strays from that notion significantly. The film is centered on characters who practically l

“Without your space helmet, Dave, you’re going to find it very difficult,” says HAL 9000, the malevolent AI in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the laws of survival go, no truer words have been spoken. As wacky and wild as science fiction

Amainstay of the US independent cinema scene, Josephine Decker first made waves with her experimental psychological twofer, Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely from 2013. She’s just finished shooting a biopic of American author Shirley

Directed by JOSEPHINE DECKER Starring HELENA HOWARD MOLLY PARKER MIRANDA JULY Released 10 MAY On a beach, a turtle is born. It erupts from its egg and crawls across the sand, desperate to reach the ocean. Via the camera’s point of view, the viewer sh

As soon as mankind harnessed the technology to make pictures move, our first orders of business were going to space and having sex. In 1902, French prestidigitator Georges Méliès brought the medium an early triumph of artifice with A Trip to the Moon

Directed by RALPH FIENNES Starring OLEG IVENKO RALPH FIENNES LOUIS HOFMANN Released 22 MARCH Following a muscular Coriolanus in 2011 and an intimate peek into the affairs of Charles Dickens with The Invisible Woman in 2013, Ralph Fiennes heads to the

Directed by JONAH HILL Starring SUNNY SULJIC KATHERINE WATERSTON LUCAS HEDGES Released 12 APRIL Jonah Hill’s sudden reinvention as a Serious Director shouldn’t really come as a shock, partly given the similar path forged – to varying degrees of succe

Directed by LUKAS DHONT Starring VICTOR POLSTER ARIEH WORTHALTER OLIVER BODART Released 15 MARCH The human body is a prison. The human body is an enabler of freedom. The human body is a terrain so vast and intricate that we’ll never fully comprehend

Directed by ALI ABBASI Starring EVA MELANDER EERO MILONOFF JÖRGEN THORSSON Released 8 MARCH It is clear from the outset that Border will be trafficking in the divisions of identity and alterity. This Swedish-Danish co-production from an Iranian direc

Directed by S CRAIG ZAHLER Starring MEL GIBSON VINCE VAUGHN JENNIFER CARPENTER Released 19 APRIL Male no mistake: S Craig Zahler knows exactly what he’s doing. The casting of Aussie erstwhile exile Mel Gibson as a racist cop accused of police brutali

Directed by DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL Starring ANDREW GARFIELD RILEY KEOUGH TOPHER GRACE Released 15 MARCH Whatever your thoughts on this film – and thoughts so far have ranged from the adoring to the eternally perplexed via the stoically outraged – you

There’s been an exponential expansion between each new film from genre-inspired iconoclast David Robert Mitchell. His first, 2010’s The Myth of the American Sleepover, is a sweet-natured riff on teen love. 2014’s It Follows revisits a similar teen mi

Directed by TOM HARPER Starring JULIE WALTERS JESSIE BUCKLEY SOPHIE OKONEDO Released 12 APRIL There is a sort of mythical strength that Jessie Buckley brings to her starring role in Wild Rose which transcends her physical frame. It rolls through her

Directed by BENEDIKT ERLINGSSON Starring HALLDÓRA GEIRHARÐSDÓTTIR JÓHANN SIGURÐARSON JÖRUNDUR RAGNARSSON Released 3 MAY The pop cultural landscape has pined for an eco-warrior since Captain Planet was cancelled in 1996. Choir teacher by day, green re

Directed by RICHARD BILLINGHAM Starring JUSTIN SALINGER ELLA SMITH TONY WAY Released 8 MARCH Death-trap gas heaters, ceramic harlequins, mouldering jigsaw puzzles and a milk crate full of cut-price spirits. These are the cherished mementos that filte

Directed by SHIREEN SENO Starring JANA AGONCILLO, ANGGE SANTOS, SID LUCERO Released 5 APRIL Many films adopt a child’s perspective, yet few truly see the world as a child would. Shireen Seno’s striking, scintillating second feature Nervous Translatio

Directed by CAROL MORLEY Starring PATRICIA CLARKSON, JAMES CAAN, JACKI WEAVER Released 29 MARCH Genre – you either take it at face value and play by the rules, or get the hell out of the kitchen. Out of Blue is the latest feature from British directo

Directed by ALICE ROHRWACHER Starring ADRIANO TARDIOLO TOMMASO RAGNO ALBA ROHRWACHER Released 5 APRIL There is magic in Lazzaro, the precious looking farmhand on a tobacco estate far removed from Italian society. He is the focus of Alice Rohrwacher’s

Alice Rohrwacher has been a festival darling since her first feature in 2011, Corpo Celeste, looked at catholicism in contemporary Italy through the prism of a young girl’s coming-of-age. 2014’s The Wonders, again, represents the confusion of female

Directed by JONAS ÅKERLUND Starring RORY CULKIN EMORY COHEN JACK KILMER Released 29 MARCH ‘Based on truth, lies… and what actually happened’ declares the playful title card at the start of director Jonas Åkerlund’s genre-hybrid music biopic Lords of

Directed by STEVE SULLIVAN Starring JOHNNY VEGAS ROSS NOBLE FRANK SIDEBOTTOM Released 29 MARCH The industrial action taken by BBC staff in 1980 might have been an unexpected Sliding Doors moment in British pop culture. Their strike led to a number of

Directed by JAFAR PANAHI Starring BEHNAZ JAFARI JAFAR PANAHI MARZIYEH REZAEI Released 29 MARCH Iranian writer/director Jafar Panahi obviously isn’t a man to let a 20-year state sanctioned film-making ban cramp his style. This latest offering is the f

Directed by CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ Starring VINCENT LACOSTE PIERRE DELADONCHAMPS DENIS PODALYDÈS Released 22 MARCH There was a point in the mid-2000s where Christophe Honoré was poised to become annointed as a household name among a beloved phalanx of urb

Directed by JACQUES AUDIARD Starring JOHN C. REILLY JOAQUIN PHOENIX JAKE GYLLENHAAL Released 5 APRIL Something is rotten in the state of Oregon, though it’s difficult to tell if the putrefaction of human flesh or various puddles of vomit left across

Directed by MARCUS H ROSENMÜLLER Starring DAVID KROSS FREYA MAVOR JOHN HENSHAW Released 5 APRIL Wherever Bert Trautmann went, everyone asked about his injury. Before the death of the German goalkeeper in 2013, his triumphant performance in the 1956 F

Directed by PAOLO SORRENTINO Starring TONI SERVILLO, ELENA SOFIA RICCI, RICCARDO SCAMARCIO Released 19 APRIL A partially fictionalised portrait of Silvio Berlusconi in the years leading into his final stint as Italy’s Prime Minister, Paolo Sorrentino

Directed by SIMON AMSTELL Starring COLIN MORGAN, ANNA CHANCELLOR, PHÉNIX BROSSARD Released 15 MARCH “We’re all going to die, we’re all going to die,” soothes Tessa (Anna Chancellor) to Benjamin (Colin Morgan), the titular character in the debut featu

Directed by JULIAN SCHNABEL Starring WILLEM DAFOE, RUPERT FRIEND, OSCAR ISAAC Released 29 MARCH As one of the most famous painters in the history of Western art, it’s no surprise that Vincent van Gogh has fascinated filmmakers for decades. No less th

Directed by BILL BUCKHURST Starring TOM VAREY, ESME CREED-MILES, ANGUS IMRIE Released 26 APRIL Childhood in all its gentle and brutal glory is dissected with a fond touch in director Bill Buckhurst’s debut feature Pond Life, as a brigade of teenagers

Directed by BING LIU Starring KIERE JOHNSON ZACK MULLIGAN BING LIU Released 22 MARCH It begins, as films about skateboarding so often do, with a group of friends slowly carving their way through seemingly abandoned streets – the long, hazy summer of

Directed by BO BURNHAM Starring ELSIE FISHER JOSH HAMILTON EMILY ROBINSON Released 26 APRIL To be a 14-year-old girl is to exist in a strange state of limbo, caught between childhood and the beckoning adult world. Films made about millennials and pos

Nowhere does Jean-Paul Sartre’s old adage “Hell is other people” feel more appropriate than when you’re a teenager. Terminal embarrassment, parental friction – chaos reigns when you’re at ‘that age’. In his directorial debut Eighth Grade, comedian Bo

Directed by CATHERINE BREILLAT Starring CAROLINE DUCEY ROCCO SIFFREDI SAGAMORE STÉVENIN 1999 Released 29 APRIL Blu-ray When Romance came out in cinemas – in various cuts and lengths depending on the territory – at the tail end of the 20th century, it

One of the presiding geniuses of Hong Kong cinema, Sammo Hung has spent a lifetime acting the fool, accepting with scant complaint the heaped on-screen insults that have made him the most fat-shamed man in all of film history. Built like a corpulent

Directed by CHARLES BURNETT Starring DANNY GLOVER PAUL BUTLER DEVAUGHN NIXON 1990 Released 25 MARCH Blu-ray Charles Burnett’s extraordinary 1990 feature rests a carefully composed array of the unreal – intimations of fable, invocations of lore, plain

Directed by ALAIN RESNAIS Starring SABINE AZÉMA FANNY ARDANT PIERRE ARDITI 1986 Released 8 APRIL Blu-ray Alain Resnais made movies for most of his 91 years, across multiple disciplines that included candy-coloured romantic fantasy, musical, melodrama

I never truly appreciate how much I absolutely adore the movies until I’m at a film festival. Most of the year my fascination with cinema is just a fact of life, which enables me to have a full-time job I adore and close-knit circle of like-minded fr

Berlin largely wears its scars on its sleeve: the Holocaust Memorial sits a block away from business hotels; scraps of the Wall serve as tourist monoliths; graffiti is everywhere. It’s a city whose hipper neighbourhoods are up all night, where you ca

For an operation of such scale and seriousness, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is good at mixing things up. This year’s edition included a thematic programme titled ‘Rabbit Hole’, focused entirely on web cultures, which offered a slew of i

Essy May (cover) is a science fantasy artist and director from London, England. Her digitally coloured graphite drawings are steeped in nostalgia and dreaminess, harking back to the classic sci-fi aesthetics of the 1970s & ’80s. Influenced by the won