Hiding in plain sight. Among the many films about the Holocaust, there are very few that tell the stories of the Jews who managed to survive the war by hiding…
Jason Best
Canaries | A feather in his cap: Peter Stray’s low-budget Welsh horror flick
Offbeat alien invasion horror. Small-town Wales is probably the last spot you would pick for an alien invasion. Which in itself gives a nice comic edge to writer-director Peter…
Quackerz | Bizarre Russian-American-Chinese animated adventure fails to fly
They’ll quack you up. Feathers fly when a skein of mallards mistakenly invades a remote Chinese island of Mandarin ducks. But two young members of the rival flocks manage to…
Couples Vacation | Glamping proves far from cosy for David Arquette and Amy Acker
Love the one yurt with. Washed-up author Jack (David Arquette) heads off to an eco-friendly glamping retreat in rural Texas with his long-suffering wife Amanda (Amy Acker) in a bid…
Demon | A restless spirit crashes a rural wedding in hauntingly absurd Polish horror film
Slow-burn supernatural drama. A lavish wedding reception in rural Poland descends into chaos after the bridegroom starts behaving very strangely. It appears the tormented wandering spirit of a dead girl,…
Ali and Nino | Epic romance has a touch of Doctor Zhivago – and a whiff of Europudding
Star-crossed love. In early 20th-century Azerbaijan, a star-crossed young couple – Adam Bakri’s Ali is an Azerbaijani Muslim; Maria Valverde’s Nino is an aristocratic Georgian Christian – find their passionate…
Isle of Dogs | Wes Anderson’s quirky canine stop-motion animated adventure
If you’ve a taste for quirky movies then you will certainly lap up this truly bizarre stop-motion animated adventure from Wes Anderson, maker of 2009’s similarly offbeat Roald Dahl adaptation…
Ready Player One | Ready to enjoy Steven Spielberg’s giddy thrill ride at home
Ready Player One An adventure tale whose plot revolves around the pleasures of losing yourself in fantasy worlds, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is an exuberantly entertaining thrill ride, a…
Journey to Oz | Animated Russian children’s adventure is far from wizard
We’re not in Kansas anymore. Based on one of a series of Soviet-era tales adapted (or ripped off, if you prefer) from L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,…
The Delinquent Season | Bittersweet marital drama starring Cillian Murphy and Catherine Walker
‘Our happiness is fragile.’ Think of films about middle-class couples caught in adulterous tangles and you probably imagine the setting as Paris or Hampstead. Bittersweet Irish drama The Delinquent Season…
Ingrid Goes West | Wickedly funny social media satire starring Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen
She’ll Follow You. A Single White Female for the age of Instagram, wickedly funny black comedy Ingrid Goes West stars Aubrey Plaza as a mentally unstable internet stalker and Elizabeth…
Jupiter’s Moon | Bizarre Hungarian fable takes flight
Shot down while attempting to cross the border between Serbia and Hungary, young Syrian refugee Aryan (Zsombor Jéger) miraculously survives. Even more incredibly, the episode leaves him with the ability…
The Shanghai Job | Artful dodger Orlando Bloom has a cunning plan
Get in. Get out. Get even. Sporting a blond dye-job and a Cockney accent, Orlando Bloom looks more than a little out of place in Chinese-made action thriller The Shanghai…
Same Kind of Different as Me | True-story tale of an unlikely friendship
Rooted in the true story of the unlikely friendship between a millionaire Texan art dealer and a homeless ex-con, faith-based drama Same Kind of Different as Me carries with it…
22 Chaser | A Canadian tow-truck driver enters a ruthlessly competitive world
‘Civilisation is a friggin’ highway of bones.’ Who knew tow-truck driving was such a cutthroat business? The well-meaning blue-collar protagonist (Brian J Smith) of bleak Canadian drama 22 Chaser finds…
Realive | Futuristic drama brings Tom Hughes back from the dead
Resurrection blues. Immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for Tom Hughes’s futuristic Lazarus in this smart and stylish sci-fi drama from Spanish writer-director Mateo Gil (writer of Open…
Happy Death Day | Unhappy returns for Jessica Rothe in a Groundhog Day-style slasher thriller
Get Up. Live Your Day. Get Killed. Again. Imagine Groundhog Day remade as a slasher thriller and you have the premise for the cheekily entertaining high-concept horror movie Happy Death…
Fashionista | Fashion victim Amanda Fuller teeters on the brink
Fashion victim. Amanda Fuller goes full throttle as a woman teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown in this strange psychological thriller by British-born writer-director Simon Rumley. Fuller’s April…
A Ghost Story | Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara star in an eerily memorable supernatural tale
It’s all about time. This decidedly odd art-house movie is far from a conventional tale of the supernatural. Even if it does feature that stereotypically spectral figure of a ghost…
Red Sparrow | Jennifer Lawrence’s baddass Bolshoi ballerina turns seductive spy
Seductive. Deceptive. Deadly. Jennifer Lawrence re-teams with Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence for Red Sparrow, a brutal espionage thriller that submits her character to ordeals every bit as grim and…