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Rebuilding

Director – Max Walker-Silverman – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 96m

****

A divorced man whose home has been destroyed by a forest fire begins to reconnect with his pre-teenage daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

This opens with an image of red hot embers rising and falling a black night sky. A couple of brief, opening, expository shots is all we are shown of the tragedy, but it’s enough: much of the remainder of the narrative takes place against a backdrop of leafless, tall, burned trees, an area of likely great former beauty now reduced to desolation. This is not the cinema of big budget disaster scenarios with no-holds barred pyrotechnic effects: it’s something altogether much lower key and quieter, an exploration of the effect of natural disasters on the lives of those people who survive them.

The fire has destroyed the 20 acres of property on the edge of the forest where Dusty (Josh O’Connor from The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus, 2025; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2017; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) lives, an area of outstanding natural beauty. He sells off his surviving livestock at an auction, then calls in on his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy from The White Lotus, TV series, 2022) who lives in the nearby town with their pre-teen daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre) and his mother-in-law Bess (Amy Madigan from Weapons, Zach Cregger, 2025; Pollock, Ed Harris, 2000; Field of Dreams, Phil Alden Robinson, 1989).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Miroirs No.3
(Miroirs No.3)

Director – Christian Petzold – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 86m

**1/2

A traumatised woman who survives a car crash moves in with a woman living near the crash site, unaware that the second woman is not what she seems – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

She stares out from a bridge, watches the water go by from underneath it. Returning home, she’s lost her bag. Her partner wants to know where she’s been. Anyway, Debbi (Victoire Laly) and Roger (Marcel Heupermann) are waiting. The four go off in the car. While her partner and Roger swap notes on the song playing on the car sound system, Laura (Paula Beer from Afire, Christian Petzold, 2023; Transit, Christian Petzold, 2019; Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018, Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is distracted, noticing a woman standing in her driveway as they pass. When they stop to check their itinerary, Laura just stands there. She wants to go home, telling partner Jakob (Philip Froissant) she isn’t feeling well.

Driving Laura to the station in the other couple’s car, so she can go home while the other three carry on as planned, Jakob nearly collides with the woman on the drive.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Broken English

Directors – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Musician and cultural icon Marianne Faithfull is interviewed at length, and her life and artistic achievements examined from several angles – compelling documentary is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 20th

Who is Marianne Faithfull? Given that, sadly, she died during the making of this documentary about her, we should ask another question. Who was Marianne Faithfull? 

Marianne appears extensively here as a real life, a 78-year-old interviewed by actor George MacKay (from The Beast, Bertrand Bonello, 2023; Femme, Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping, 2023; 1917, Sam Mendes, 2019) for The Ministry of Not Forgetting, an institution created specially for this film narrative where it is run by Tilda Swinton (from Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021; Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho, 2013; Orlando, Sally Potter, 1992) in a suit and tie who delivers all manner of fascinating pronouncements about Marianne’s life and work, and at one point even explores that territory by choreographing a dancer’s movements.

While The Ministry of Not Forgetting provides a structure within which Faithfull’s humanity and legacy can be explored, this latest film from Forsyth and Pollard (20, 000 Days on Earth, 2014; The Extraordinary Miss Flower, 2024) is characteristically kaleidoscopic.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lollipop

Director – Daisy-May Hudson – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

After four months in prison, a young woman must deal with the UK’s social services to regain custody of her kids – on BBC iPlayer from Friday, January 16th

East Londoner Molly (Posy Sterling) leaves prison following a four-month sentence to discover that her two kids Ava, 11 (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo, 5 (Luke Howitt) have been taken into care because her alcoholic mum Sylvie (TeriAnne Cousins from Silver Haze, Sasha Polak, 2023) couldn’t cope with them. This means the kids have been taken into care by social services, and in order to get them back, Molly has to have a roof over her head. Alas, while she was detained, the council have taken her home off her.

She finds herself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea – she can’t get her kids back until she has a suitable home, and she can’t get a suitable home because, until she gets her kids back, she will only be offered accommodation suitable for a single homeless woman. For the time being, she lives out of a tent.

The impulsive Molly worsens her own situation when, during a supervised visit, she abducts her kids and flees with them on the train to the wilds of the countryside.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.

While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

On Swift Horses

Director – Daniel Minahan – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A husband’s dreams are undermined in 1950s America by the separate lives and desires of his secretly racetrack-gambling wife and his reappearing, disappearing drifter-gambler brother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 5th

Lee Walker (Will Poulter from Warfare, Alex Garland, 2025; Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow, 2017; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Michael Apted, 2010; Son of Rambow, Garth Jennings, 2007) returns home to the US from the Korean War to his adored wife Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones from Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung, 2024; Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) who lives in the isolated house she inherited from her mother in the calm prairie lands up North. Their relationship is deeply carnal. And yet, something changes in that relationship dynamic the night Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi from Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro, 2025; Priscilla, Sofia Coppola, 2023; Saltburn, Emerald Fennell, 2023) turns up, and she is instantly attracted to him. Of course, that can’t be, because she is with Lee.

Part of the attraction is that Julius, a drifter who turns up unannounced, is also an inveterate card sharp and gambler.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Weapons

Director – Zach Cregger – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m

****

One night, all but one of the children in one class in the town school disappear into the dark, leaving the townsfolk baffled as to what happened to them… – Fortean-sounding mystery is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 8th

One night at 2.17am, the 17 other kids in Alex’s class got up out of their beds, went downstairs, opened their front doors, and ran out into the night. As a child relates the incident, we observe it in flashback. The kids run with arms half outstretched at an angle, as if playing at being aeroplanes in the school playground. If you’ve seen the film’s poster, this strange angle of the arms is also apparent. As it also is in the film’s trailer, which starts with this flashback. But what is in the mind of these kids? Where are they going? To what purpose?

For that matter, why the title Weapons? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that you’ll know the answer once you’ve seen the film.

Thus begins one of the most intriguing cinematic mysteries of recent years. To unpack his prologue, writer-director Cregger opts for an astute, six-part, character-based structure.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Sister Midnight

Director – Karan Kandhari – 2024 – UK, Sweden, India – Cert. 15 – 110m

***1/2

A young woman in an arranged marriage discovers herself to be a creature of the night… and one of the undead – genre-bender is out on UK digital from Wednesday, June 18th

A young woman travels cross-country by train, face veiled by beaded hangings, to join the arranged marriage husband she has (presumably) never met in their new, urban home. Uma (Radikha Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak best known here from The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, John Madden, 2015) don’t seem to know what to do with each other. Certainly not any sort of sexual congress as they unveil sitting beside one another for the first time. As the tale proceeds, sleeping with him comes to consist of curling up on her own on the other side of the bed from him. Later, her sleeping patterns will start to shift…

Theirs is a pretty basic home – a room with a mattress and a door out onto the bustling, main street outside. Her husband has a job, so goes out in the morning and comes back in the evening, although sometimes he goes out drinking after work and comes back later.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

Director – Mohammad Rasoulof – 2024 – Iran, Germany, France – Cert. 15 – 167m

*****

An Iranian state functionary, married with two teenage daughters, is promoted to the position of judge at the same time as the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt… And then, his gun goes missing at home… – out on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 9th 2025

A film so extraordinarily brilliant that it is almost impossible to conceive.

An opening intertitle explains the remarkable life cycle of a tree which grows on one of the southern Iranian islands. Its seeds fall onto the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds then germinate, and their roots move towards the ground. When the roots reach the ground, the sacred fig tree stands on its own feet and its branches strangle the host tree.

2022. The tireless and diligent work of state functionary Iman (Missagh Zareh) has finally been rewarded; he is to be appointed a judge. In a repressive regime like Iran, that’s not a job looked upon favourably by most of the population, so his work gives him a pistol just in case he should need to defend himself or his family. At home, in the Tehran apartment where he lives with his family, he keeps the weapon in a drawer.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Brief History of a Family
(Jiating Jianshi,
家庭简史)

Director – Jianjie Lin – 2024 – China – Cert. 15 – 99m

****

A boy from a broken home starts spending more and more time with the family of a schoolmate, where the family isn’t quite as perfect as it initially appears… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

A boy is doing pull-ups in the school gym. A basketball hits him on the head. He falls. (All in one highly striking shot looking from behind at the back of his head.) He’s on the floor. A nurse patches him up in the san. Going home, he has a minor altercation with a boy who surprises him. But, actually, the boy just wants to know if he’s okay.

Next day, the same boy – driven by guilt, perhaps? – gives him a ride over to his own house on his bicycle. It’s a nicer place than the first boy is used to: the calming sound of bubbles through water can be heard from the fish tank; the whole place seems light, airy, pleasant. The other boy’s choice of music stands in sharp contrast to this – he listens to rap. The pair play videogames until his parents, Mr.… Read the rest