Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 79 i 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 relatively young medium. Clichés exist within storytelling and genres, meaning that there is a sense of familiarity as you sit back and sometimes strain to see originality, scanning the screen and peering between the lines for hits of freshness. In most cases, we bear witness to standard-issue machinery clanking its gears. High Life is the opposite of this, existing at such a cosmic remove from established cinematic grammar that one is almost aligned with the film’s baby character, Willow; confronted with a world of infinite strangeness, horror and beauty without recourse to a…

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 extinguished. It’s unlike some of the more visceral or exotic experiences offered up by the rest of her filmography. Denis has said that 35 Shots of Rum, about a widowed father and his twenty something daughter, was an homage to the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s 1949 family drama Late Spring, also about a widowed father and his twenty-something daughter. The Ozu-ness of the film is unfamiliar territory for Denis, thus the placidity is something of note. The film has been read between the already sparse lines, analysed…

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 success – by fellow Apatowians Seth Rogen, James Franco and Evan Goldberg in recent years, but primarily because he has long expressed a desire to shed his comedy bro persona and build a reputation for his work behind the camera. The surprising thing about Mid90s, then, is that it leaves you questioning Hill’s career choices up to now: namely, why the hell has he been wasting his time with this acting malarky instead of going out and making movies? Were this the debut feature of a previously unknown filmmaker, we would be hailing the…

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 brutality in Dragged Across Concrete is no coincidence, as calculated as the casting of Don Johnson as his boss, who says, straight faced and world-weary, early on in the film, “The entertainment industry needs villains”. Gibson may have been welcomed back into the Hollywood fold by virtue of his celebrated 2016 anti-war drama Hacksaw Ridge, but his turn in Zahler’s bleak new thriller makes Gibson’s past indiscretions rightfully hard to ignore. Brett Ridgeman (Gibson) has failed to move with the times. He’s pushing 60 and has been pounding the pavement as a…

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 like thunder, a hungry, static energy proving beyond doubt that she belongs on the screen as much as her character, Rose-Lynn, an abrasive, aspiring Glaswegian country singer, belongs on the stage. “Why country?” asks Susannah, her well-meaning middle class employer (played with warmth by Sophie Okonedo). “Because it’s three chords and the truth” Rose-Lynn replies readily, gesturing to a tattoo on her arm that reiterates the sentiment. This answer from probably anyone else would cause eyes to roll to the heavens, but there’s an unshakeable sincerity in Buckley that is instantly agreeable,…

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 director Carol Morley, her follow-up to 2014’s intriguing but ineffective exploration of mass hysteria, The Falling. This one is a laconic, self-consciously moody southern policier with designs on the celestial infinite. It beckons, perhaps unwisely, the swaddling comfort blanket of genre with one hand while violently repelling it with the other. Bravo to the director for doubling down on light experimentation and once more embracing an unconventional storytelling mode, but it’s hard to sugar coat the fact that the resulting film is an ugly, perplexing catastrophe. The usually…

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 Happy as Lazzaro. He is willing to do anything asked of him – make coffee, carry heavy bales of hay – without question. His family of docile farmhands also work endlessly on an estate for no pay and are told they are always in debt. In the midst of celebrations, he agrees to go outside to make sure no chickens have escaped and, in doing so, bumps into a groundskeeper. To the question of whether he is willing to take over the man’s shift to watch out for wolves, Lazzaro says agreeably and with…

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 fourth feature he’s turned out under legal restrictions imposed when he was found guilty of ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’. Still, it’s clear from the films themselves that he’s now on a slightly longer leash: where 2011’s This Is Not a Film and 2013’s Closed Curtain were personal reflections on living under house arrest, shooting 2015’s Taxi Tehran in and around a cab negotiating the bustling capital showed a certain freedom of movement, and 3 Faces now takes the form of an extended road trip to the far north west. With its broader geographical canvas,…

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 FA Cup Final earned him the title of ‘Man City legend’. Seventeen minutes before the end of the game, a violent collision sent Trautmann down in searing pain, but he got back up and carried on playing. Four days later, doctors confirmed he had broken his neck. The story of his life is illustrated in Marcus H Rosenmüller’s The Keeper, a romantic biopic about the goalkeeper’s journey from German paratrooper to national treasure. The film expands on more than just the moment he made sporting history, leaning on his relationship with his first wife,…

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 than seven films inspired by his life exist, and Julian Schnabel’s wispy new biopic makes number eight. Regardless of how you feel about van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Starry Night, his cinematic appeal is easy to understand: a figure plagued by mental illness and poverty, he took his own life at the age of 37, and did not achieve success until after his death. There are few things that filmmakers like more than a solid tragedy. Schnabel has form for directing biopics about artists, having made his directorial debut back with Basquiat, and…

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 post-millennials tend to approach the subject with a condescending Seinfeld-esque “What’s the deal with social media?” slant. YouTube star and comedian-turned-filmmaker Bo Burnham’s debut feature Eighth Grade thankfully takes a more thoughtful approach when it comes to capturing the reality of growing up in the 21st century. The film’s protagonist is Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) who is in her final week of middle school. Amid endless scrolling on social media, she records video blogs with titles like ‘How to be confident’ and ‘Putting yourself out there’. She’s unsure of herself and her…

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 acknowledgement of superstition – onto a pallet of richly appointed realism. His patient mastery is evident from the first frames (a soberly composed nightmare vision that may be some kind of hell), and the ensuing story, about a fond face from the distant past who insinuates himself into the lives of a Los Angeles family, takes place mostly in looks and tones. To Sleep with Anger, brimming with confident mystery, is the kind of film that’s often too hastily tagged “novelistic”. But it’s less the film’s utility of words to sketch characters and histories that calls…

Illustrators 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 wonder of the cosmos (her uncle is a renowned astronomer) and the visual energy of classic small creature b-movies. Essy hand drew this cover with a fine technical pencil and used digital colours to complete the look. essymays.tumblr.com Jamie Eke is an illustrator and designer born and raised in Brighton. Since graduating from Brighton University with a degree in graphic design he has lived and worked between London and Brighton. His work often combines typography and illustration, and he is constantly exploring the relationship between the two. Tavo Montañez is…

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 run by a cantankerous old git in the hope that a long yearned-for gem would suddenly present itself, like happening across buried treasure. Technology has made this journey feel less magical, as it’s now possible to tap the title of a record into a search engine and have it mailed to you overnight. It’s practical, yes, but you lose the feeling of having grappled for this art – of proffering some basic physical exertion that, in some miniscule way, might mirror the exertions the artist…

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 great ‘palate cleanser’. Besides the undeniably sexist overtones of a vocabulary that forces women back into the kitchen, this tendency is also plainly, and ironically, gross. I have never been tempted to watch a film that had ‘an unctuous core’ or was made ‘for the sweet-toothed.’ The films of Claire Denis resist such reductive language – not because taste isn’t a key element in her oeuvre but rather, because it is central to it. The French director’s filmmaking is so deeply haptic, so devoted to transmitting bodily sensation, that…

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, subjective process of looking at an object, a gaze is often so deep, so intense, so loaded with nuance, that it is very possible to see the gaze of others. Claire Denis was born in Paris but grew up in various French colonies on the African continent. Many of her films are inspired by first hand experiences of this crumbling empire. In 1990’s ultra-squalid cockfighting movie, No Fear, No Die, Jean-Claude Brialy’s seedy huckster calls on his old pals from the Caribbean colony of Martinique, Jocelyn (Alex Descas) and Dah (Isaach…

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 shares in the creature’s exciting and daunting adventure. Already in these first images, the visual style of Josephine Decker’s third feature, Madeline’s Madeline, is personal and vivacious, easily matching the relentlessly curious spirit of its heroine. Madeline (the astonishing Helena Howard) is a 16-year-old actress who immerses herself fully in her reptilian character. From the safety and warmth of the small theatre stage used by her class, she can reach the sea and feel the turtle’s survival instinct in her bones. Acting is too often described simply as the…

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 it, even after spending decades in its company. The human body is malleable and can evolve in tandem with our desires. The human body is a conduit for tenderness and pain. The human body is other things we have yet to define. It is personal and possesses secret meanings to the individual. Lukas Dhont’s debut feature, Girl, explores all of these concepts, but is also interested in looking at the tensions and traumas that arise when the body becomes a portal for artistic and biological expression. Lara (Victor Polster) wants…

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 have to admit that it feels good to live in a world where an artwork of such couldn'tgiveafuckkery could be funded, produced, premiered at a film festival and then released into the world, like an over-talkative parakeet. It’s like when an architect has sensibly plowed their furrow as a builder of office blocks and schools, and then as a reward for their toil, finally gets to produce a folly that is a pure expression of a personal vision and which sits outside the bounds of conventional application. Under the Silver Lake is…

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 renegade by night, Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) takes up this vital mantle on her quest to rid the Icelandic highlands of a Rio Tinto aluminium plant. When her long-forgotten application to adopt a child is suddenly approved, the down-to-earth insurgent must reconsider her notions of motherhood, civic duty and herodom. Woman at War spins gold from several contemporary fixations. One thread explores the modern woman’s quest to Have It All™ (in this instance: a choir, a crossbow and a Ukrainian orphan). Another strand examines the commercial chokehold on Earth’s diminishing natural resources; how big business disrupts farming families who’ve…

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 Translation burrows deep inside the head of its main character, eight-year-old Yael (Jana Agoncillo), showing what a strained, senseless place it is to be. Yael lives in Manila with her mother Val (Angge Santos). Her father works abroad, and is present in the film only as a voice on tape recordings. They are played mostly by Yael, who rewinds and replays them like puzzle loops, searching for something inside the words. To Yael, her mother seems frigid and remote, drilling her daughter with maths problems or demanding silence. Displays of affection are rare and abstract. Solace…

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 urbane, crowd-pleasing French auteurs. He had a stockpile of great ideas, an ironic sense of humour, an encyclopaedic knowledge of art and pop culture, and a one-film-a-year work ethic. And then, at the moment of his inauguration, he just didn’t turn up. Well, as you can probably guess from this somewhat hackneyed (re)introduction, Honoré’s back, baby, and his new film, Sorry Angel, sees him newly invigorated and mobilising all of his qualities as a maker of droll, quietly affecting and perceptive human dramas. What’s initially striking about this expansive new feature is its rich, almost…

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’s latest project was released in his home country as two separate features, with a truncated mash-up version making its way to the UK. About an hour of material is lost in this combined cut, and while this review comes from a place of having only experienced the shorter edit, it is very evident after a certain point that many storylines and arcs established early in Loro will receive next to no pay off. Saying that, since this version still clocks in at nearly two and a half hours, it feels safe to say that the weak bite…

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 in a South Yorkshire ex-mining community while away their summer holiday in 1994. Trevor (Tom Varey) is the eldest of the group, the neighbourhood big brother with a talent for fishing and an eagerness to catch the enormous mystery carp that seems to be lurking in his favourite secluded pond. The youngest pair, Shane and Dave (Gianlucca Galluci and Ethan Wilkie), are the comedy highlight, pre-pubescent lads obsessing over the female form while trying on their mothers’ hosiery. There’s also Malcolm (Angus Imrie), forlorn and desperate to know when his heartache for…

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 felt like a watershed moment for serious cinematic depictions of sex, carnality and desire. Director Catherine Breillat was no stranger to controversy, having courted the censors ever since the release of her debut feature, whose title says it all: A Real Young Girl. Yet Romance marks a tonal evolution for the pathfinding director, as her dispassionate dissection of sex and its inelegant place in contemporary life is a more clinical and philosophical (albeit no less provocative) affair. Caroline Ducey plays Marie, a white-smocked school teacher who is stepping out with an…

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 internet-inspired film programming. The highest profile film in the programme was Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s Diamantino, which, while being one of the most entertaining features on offer, was also the least relevant to the broader theme. Besides its subject – a much suffering character who resembles a certain international footballing icon who finds himself on the receiving end of the meme treatment – the film’s attachment to the digital world is mostly aesthetic only. Much more deeply embedded in online communities is Dan Schoenbrun’s A Self-Induced Hallucination, a dense and…

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 permission to use one track, ‘Tiny Tears’, on Nenette and Boni. Per Staples, the band “always had soundtrack pretensions” so he suggested that instead of giving her one song that they make an original score. Fast-forward 23 years and either as solo artist or with Tindersticks, Staples has composed music for eight of her films. We spoke with the Nottingham-expat now living in France. On the different articulation processes needed for musicians and filmmakers. Staples: “It’s hard for musicians to talk about music because you can walk up to…

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 loft to dust off the director’s chair for his third outing on both sides of the lens. An opening title card describes a white crow as, “Unusual, extraordinary [and] not like others.” It’s the childhood nickname given to ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev, the most celebrated dancer since Vaslav Nijinsky, famed for his defection to the West from the Soviet Union in 1961. Said defection at Le Bourget airport in Paris marks the dramatic terminus of David Hare’s screenplay, a thrilling sprint to the finish following an extended preamble through all the familiar…

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 director (Ali Abbasi, whose 2016 feature debut was the Danish horror Shelley) is adapted from a short story by Swedish author John Avjide Lindqvist (who penned the 2004 novel ‘Let The Right One In’ and then adapted it for Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 film version). It chooses to focus on the sort of character whom one might only ever notice in passing, if at all, but who embodies many of the conflicts and contradictions of our globalised, multicultural lives. “Ugly bitch!” says a teenaged boy. “I can’t stand that kind.” He is referring to Tina (Eva…

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 milieu, only this time bringing a stalker/horror element to the table. His expansive new film, Under the Silver Lake, sends Andrew Garfield on a wacky and wild goose chase around Los Angeles, and here the director tells us of his love/hate relationship with the land of cinema. LWLies: What was your original motivaton for moving to LA? Mitchell: I left Michigan for Talahassee to go to Florida State for grad school. I made a lot of really great friendships there. And the idea was that, well, we need to work, so let’s…

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 filter through the wilting memory of bedsit derelict Ray (Patrick Romer), as he flops about his room, sustained by three pop bottles of max strength home brew which are left on his dresser, daily, by a bearded visitor. His drunken reveries transport us back to the crumbling Birmingham abode of a more youthful Ray (Justin Salinger) and his tattooed, chain-smoking spouse, Liz (Ella Smith), a slovenly twosome of disarming inertness who are somehow allowed to have numerous children running around their ankles. Liz sits with her needlework and a fag dangling from her bottom lip, while the…

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 Chaos, a film ‘inspired by’ the doorstop text of the same name that documented the Norwegian black metal scene’s rise to international infamy. In the late 1980s, a small but influential wave of black metal groups carved an aesthetic out of being abrasive, unpalatable and ‘evil’. At the heart of this foundation myth lies Mayhem, the band that helped set in stone the nascent style’s look (faces daubed in black and white ‘corpse’ paint), sound (louder, darker, faster, stronger) and attitude (anti everything). Mayhem also, actively and inadvertently, dragged the whole dark brotherhood screaming…

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 episodes of Top of the Pops being cancelled that summer, including the one that Chris Sievey’s band The Freshies were scheduled to appear on. They had just released their most accomplished single, the catchily-titled ‘I’m In Love With The Girl On The Manchester Virgin Megastore Check-out Desk’, and an appearance on primetime telly was seen as a breakthrough after years of toil. Instead, they slid back into obscurity, and a few years later Frank Sidebottom was born. It was a gimmick that somehow stuck. Originally conceived as a Freshies super fan,…

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 the virgin landscape are the main culprit. In Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers – which marks a departure from his formative seriousness in Dheepan and A Prophet – the visceral imposition of aggressive civilisation on the pastoral idyll takes center stage. As the land burns up, so do men – and Audiard, meditative as ever – has much to tell us about the nature of personal trauma. It’s 1851, with the California Gold Rush in full swing, and two bounty-hunting siblings are on the trail of an elusive target. Based on Patrick…

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 feature from writer and comedian Simon Amstell. Based on Amstell’s own angst-ridden years in the public eye, Benjamin is a director suffering his own brand of Second Album Syndrome ahead of the premiere of his new film, No Self, having received great acclaim for his first feature years prior. At least, as his producer’s practical and despondent mantra suggests, in the event of total catastrophe, one day no one will remember him or his work. Benjamin is a film comprised of quiet and tender moments balanced by Amstell’s blend of comedic tragedy and self-deprecation. Joel…

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 their youth at its blissful midday peak. They perform tricks, goof around and generally hang out at all the usual spots: local skateparks; friends’ houses; fast food joints; school yards; everyday urban spaces where smooth concrete lines and ledges provide an opportunity for expression and to stake a claim to greatness. It’s a familiar picture of teenage reverie and a thrillingly unfiltered evocation of what it means to be young and free. But this is no ordinary skate video, even though it may have started out as one. When Bing Liu…

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 panda but fleet as a fox, wearing a guileless pop-eyed expression and a scar on his upper lip acquired from the jagged edge of a broken cola bottle outside a Kowloon night club, the rotund action star became a fan favorite with his brand of comic martial arts, heavy on the tumbling, belly flops and capering (see, for example, his “monkey style” kung fu, complete with skittering, simian chirps, and nervous paw-kneading gestures, on display in 1979’s Knockabout and 1980’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind, both Hung-directed).…

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, and the closest that many paying cinema audiences will get to experiencing the genuinely avant-garde. But somehow, thanks to the yoke of festival and arthouse markets, a thumbnail sketch of “Alain Resnais” can be reduced to the elegant, chilled opacity of Last Year at Marienbad, perhaps with Hiroshima, Mon Amour in tow, repping his only appearance in the movie history encyclopedia. Yet confirmed fans, who are aware of his roots in non-fiction, and have also tracked his feature output through the final years of his life, can still find the breadth and depth of his total output…

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 can still largely smoke in bars, where Angela Merkel’s economic miracle sits alongside thriving anarchist and punk scenes; it feels like a bulwark of culture and freedom, and that’s one of the reasons we love visiting it. Now in its 69th year, the Berlinale offers over 400 movies, but its place in the calendar year means it no longer highlights Oscar hopefuls or headline-grabbers. This year – the final one for festival director Dieter Kosslick – did have its genuine stumbles. The opening night pick, The Kindness of Strangers,…