Director Steve McQueen has distinguished himself with confronting and intelligent films that, while not highly experimental, avoid many of current cinema’s clichés. He impresses once again with a contemporary US adaptation – co-written by Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn – of Lynda la Plante’s 1980’s British crime drama Widows. Leading a superb cast, Viola Davis plays Veronica, the wife of
Read moreRestrained true crime drama The Old Man and The Gun is purportedly Robert Redford’s last film as an actor. It seems appropriate that it’s a meditation on ageing and the forces that defined a person’s life. This is apparently a true story based on the life of bank robber Forrest Tucker who, in 1981, led a trio of elderly crooks
Read moreA film that focuses on the period in which Mary Shelly wrote her sci-fi horror classic Frankenstein should be a thrilling prospect for anyone with a literary bent but director and co-writer Haifaa al-Mansour has transformed the biopic, Mary Shelley, into a slightly steamy, mildly gothic romance between two Derek Zoolander-approved really really good-looking people. Elle Fanning plays Mary Wollstonecraft
Read moreFor those like Liz Lemon in 30 Rock who are wondering what happened to the Mentalist, Simon Baker, he’s now directing films. His debut feature is an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel Breath. This slow-burn teen rites-of-passage story, partial biopic and surfing film has some impressive moments but never quite jells as a coherent or compelling drama. Samson Coulter, in
Read moreBritish film, The Party from director Sally Potter has nothing to do with the 1968 Peter Sellers movie. Instead this oddly brief, extremely erudite, stagey and occasionally pretentious film recalls the sort of politically-infused dinner party films we often see coming out of European arthouse cinema. The Party features a superb cast – including Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson
Read moreThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of those quirky film titles that suggests a twee lightweight rom com. While this charming film, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, has a touch of romance and is set amid some idiosyncratic country folk, it rides a dark undercurrent
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