Matthew Anderson

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a true delight.

Though it may not stray too far off a well-beaten track, Marley Morrison’s feature debut Sweetheart is a sure-fire crowd pleaser that showcases a young filmmaker and cast with real promise.

Herrera’s exploration of the African diaspora in Bantú Mama does ask questions about identity, family, and the meaning of home which truly resonate.

Proceeding with a linear chronology to the present day, Castro’s Spies does justice to the long trials and many tribulations of its engaging subjects without ever flying too far off the expected route.

A challenging and very well considered inspection of familial disintegration, featuring strong performances, Human Factors is a solid entry in the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

First-time writer-director Blerta Basholli’s feature is an expertly crafted, compassionate testament to the perseverance and defiance of its courageous female collective.

Gripping and sincerely moving from first to last, Mass is exceptional filmmaking all-round from Kranz and a stellar showcase for the talents of Plimpton, Isaacs, Dowd and Birney.

Told with tenderness and honesty, Cicada is a treatment of trauma that does not judge or preach or take sides, but, in building to its breathless crescendo, goes to show just how much courage it takes to confront the past in order to look to the future.

With wit, grace and a sincere affection for the town of his birth, the writer-director explores the people and stories that populated his childhood.

Rooted in the mundane, but told with an imaginative vision, flair and real composure, The Pink Cloud announces Iuli Gerbase as a new creative talent and filmmaker to watch out for.

The First Wave stands as an honest, hard-hitting and compassionate reminder of loving thy neighbour wherever and whoever they may be.

Striking visual metaphors may be as blunt as stakes in the hard ground, as brutal as rusty, bloodied blades or as free-flowing and poetic as waterways and the wind through tall blades of grass, but Campion’s direction is measured, patient and captivating.

In the cyclical, ethereal narrative of this inventive, tender story of love and loss, one of the finest filmmakers of our time spins a spellbinding magical web.

Exploring the powerlessness an exasperated Diana (Kristen Stewart) must confront when faced with Windsor tradition, expectation and hypocrisy, a single weekend in the country is the epicentre of a far broader story, the shockwaves of which ripple through space, time, mind and soul.

Corbine Jr.’s debut is a lean, disconcerting and impressively shot character study. Hovering on a glimmering knife edge, there are flashes of brilliance here.

Constructed with his trademark panache, it is bold, bracing and stylish in both its aesthetics and an outstanding retro soundtrack, but as its parallel leading ladies will discover to their peril, not all that glitters is gold.

As fuzzy and reassuring as a multi-coloured Pringle sweater-vest, The Phantom of the Open is a good, old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.

The haunting supernatural forces at work in Never Gonna Snow Again are elusive, inexplicable and yet perfectly in sync with reality.

Luzzu is a slender, rather bleak but tough, rough-cut little jewel that deserves your time and attention.

It will keep you guessing, thoroughly entertained and engaged for the best part of three hours.

A film that is chock full of insight, piercing ideas and visual metaphors that unfortunately are never fully realised.

Sharrock’s resistance to easy answers or an easy way out is in-keeping with a tale in which the arbitrary flick of a pen, a stamp on a letter, can change someone’s life irrevocably – and yet may never come.

In Abigail’s longing to see beyond the high valley walls with the kind of scope of an atlas gifted to her by Tallie, The World to Come envisages a future reality not yet visible over the horizon, but shown as the slightest glimmer of light.

Made with defiant conviction, this is a fearless, unflinching, but above all compassionate piece of documentary filmmaking that cares deeply about the people whose plight it tells. Enough is enough, it is time for change.

It doesn’t hit the heights of former collaborations, but there’s a lot to drink in and appreciate here, and Mikkelsen’s all-dancing finale is one of the most exultant, triumphant moments in recent cinema memory.

Full to the brim with sharp wit, emotional sincerity and overflowing with love, Supernova sees the star power of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci align.

Provocative, despicably playful, and consistently punishing, stitched into the skin of the writer-director’s latest film are a multitude of issues relating to Covid-19 and the anxieties of lockdown, the fragility of our environment, the brutality and arrogance of mankind, and our inability to recognise or truly understand the power of the natural world, or indeed ourselves.

The film isn’t without hope, but it lifts the lid of an ugly truth and asks the tough questions needed.

Sabaya does not shy away from the horrendous circumstances it finds, exhibiting bitterly raw emotion, fear and heartbreak very frankly.

After Love is a technically proficient, sincere exploration of its thorny, complicated themes and gripping realist drama of the highest order.

It is hard to fully articulate how, but Gunda is as much a damning meditation on the human condition as it is a glowing, thought-provoking portrayal of a mother’s love for her children, a sow’s love for her piglets.

Whishaw is utterly compelling and committed to this performance, and we watch the slow-motion car crash unfurl with mouths often agape, but Surge needs more depth to really leave a lasting mark.

No matter what your allegiance, or feelings of antagonism toward the man for Fergie time and defeats doled out by championship-winning sides year after year, it’s impossible not to admire his dedication to the game he loves and the town that made him who he is.

Amid the allusions and collisions, jump scares and very close calls, the thrills and spills of A Quiet Place Part II are elevated by its strong performances and a director with a keen eye for this intelligent genre piece whose broad appeal makes for another sure-fire hit. Take a deep breath, and enjoy.

The extraordinary amount of footage, which moves from monochrome, to grainy colour, to vibrant turquoises as technology and time march on, is really a wonder to behold. If, wherever you are in the world, there’s the opportunity to see Playing with Sharks on the big screen, then you should, to fully experience this eye-opening, vivid documentary.

An expertly handled plot, interweaving lives, coincidence, past trauma and circumstance, is concerned with far more than mere bloody vengeance. Five years since the delirious oddity that was Men & Chicken, Jensen gets members of the old band back together for a thrilling, poignant film which sees writer-director and cast on top form.

For all its misdirection and confusion, Apples reaches a conclusion of unexpected emotional weight. An intelligent and clear-sighted piece of filmmaking, it is a highly accomplished first directorial outing by Nikou.

Behind the closed doors of this lakeside paradise it is clear that there’s trouble afoot.

Its woozy oddity does linger and the process of falling in and out of love may well feel like drowning. But as we come up for air in closing it must be said that the best is surely yet to come from this excellent leading pair and gifted director after this latest underwater outing.

Notturno is a snapshot – in a patchwork of disparate vignettes – that captures the effects of trauma inflicted on and hardships lived by the civilian population.

Given its place and time, Ammonite’s coldness is perhaps apt, but its stiff upper lip may well not do enough to make yours quiver, either.

An affectionate labour of love, cathartic yet bitterly honest, Bell and Sng’s films paints the full, unfettered picture.

With a lot of filler and none of the killer questions that are crying out to be asked, The Lost Sons leaves a lot unsaid. Take a step back from the effect of the shocking material, and the by-the-numbers construction of the film makes it too formulaic to leave a lasting impact.

Humbling, awe-inspiring and frequently head-scratching, like a solar system mobile, Kahn’s film has a bewildering number of moving pieces.

The metaphors of colonial history, the subjugation of women and Aboriginal peoples, vicious social ills and a nation’s hidden guilty past are all alluded to. But their treatment in The Legend of Molly Johnson are not developed to the extent needed to leave the lasting gut punch, and change of consciousness, this admirable project could have achieved.

Testament to both the filmmakers and a great woman now seemingly at peace with her long and difficult past, Tina is a documentary well worthy of its star, an untamed, unparalleled force of nature.

Resolute, inquisitive and remarkably at ease on camera for a lad of such tender years, Alan S Kim is a star in the making.

The Mauritanian is not the film it could, and really should, have been.

Led by a tour de force performance as savage, unpredictable and frightening as the film’s titular ursine, Black Bear stars Aubrey Plaza in stellar form as a writer-director seeking inspiration, in this bamboozling psychological character study.

There are just too many jumps to make and spaces to fill to fully believe this fantastical obsession.

Trouble lurks around every corner, and the narrative does keep us guessing, but this limits any sincere indictment of the apparently irresolvable us-and-them conflict. An arresting, often edge-of-your-seat action film, then, but not the enduring La Haine-inspired inspection of societal ills that it could have been.

The pacing and lack of incident may detract from the overall emotional investment we have for Horvát’s latest, but in its construction of a murky intrigue, composed visual style and Stork’s exceptional performance, there’s enough to make the journey home to Budapest a worthwhile visit.

Though physically confined to a single, overcrowded communal space inside La Maca, Night of the Kings travels well beyond its bars and high walls, soaring far and wide with spirit, invention and imagination.

Chief in CODA’s achievements are the dynamics of the very close unit at its core. Coming away from the film, there is the sense that this could very well be a real family.

Overshadowed at the time and since, Summer of Soul brings the Harlem Cultural Festival and a pivotal point in American history into the light.

An impressive, lingering debut from Hall, Passing exists as a fragile, precious, impossible reverie within a snow globe that could shatter at any moment.

Blurring traditional boundaries of documentary with rich, beautiful animation in many shades and colours, the Danish director has a great deal invested in telling this story.

A galling, distressing but enthralling documentary.

A lacklustre, clichéd and at times wholly unbelievable film.

American filmmaker Ryan White, director of the acclaimed Netflix mini-series The Keepers, spins a web of riveting, murderous intrigue in his latest documentary Assassins.

MLK/FBI is an insightful, adroitly constructed documentary which seeks to mine new truths from a recent, tangible past. Filmmaker Sam Pollard pits the aspirations, endeavours and character of a great, but flawed humanitarian against the racially-driven, underhand tactics of a tyrannical government organisation.

No doubt thanks to her own wealth of acting experience, King elicits outstanding performances from her cast, proving that big boys do cry when the stakes are high enough and love, respect and hope triumph over hate.

Following the freewheeling day to day life of dogs living on the streets of Istanbul, the initial novelty and intrigue of this extraordinary documentary broadens further to a profound meditation on how mankind treats our so-called best friends, and one another.

There’s much more to Oeke Hoogendijk’s My Rembrandt than initially meets the eye. Taking a close, curatorial look, not at the life, times and oeuvre of the great painter himself, but of contemporary relationships with his work, her latest documentary explores, to great effect, the motives for possession, obsession and ongoing fascination with the Dutch Old Master.

Phyllida Lloyd’s strong third feature, Herself, is as much an indictment of the grinding bureaucracy failing to house and protect women abused at the hands of their partners, as it is the men who inflict such despicable physical and psychological trauma.

It is the physical, dogged determination of both mind and body that defines Il Mio Corpo.

Visually striking and audibly arresting from its opening number until the curtain comes down, Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan is an affectionate paean to its irascible, impudent frontman.

With his first big screen endeavour, Patrick, Peaky Blinders director Tim Mielants has crafted as unusual an exploration of grief and loss as you are ever likely to see.

It’s all over in the blink of an eye, but Lovers Rock is a party you won’t ever forget.

Taking a sledgehammer to institutionalised racism with the clarity of purpose and skill of a master craftsman, Steve McQueen is once again at the very top of his game, and indeed his profession, with Mangrove.

Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief is an art heist film like no other and an arresting documentary of startling, often brutal, emotional honesty.

Re-framing more traditional genre choices for representing dementia, the Japanese-Australian filmmaker has crafted a chilling, mysterious horror to communicate the confusion and terror caused by diminishing intellectual acuity.

Though the slow, blurry-edged stupor of Shirley will not be to everyone’s tastes, it cannot be denied that it examines its subject, and a rather tired genre, with feverish, dreamlike fluidity rather than rigid biography. That, and Moss’ enthralling lead performance, are Shirley’s chief accomplishments.

The US-born, Kenyan-raised director’s feature-length debut is told with honesty, determination and grace.

Exciting, thought-provoking and visually striking, it is everything an animation can and should be for viewers young and old.

Positing the question of whether the principal objective of incarceration is punishment, rehabilitation or undue persecution, Garrett Bradley’s Time is another vital addition to a growing canon of films to pointedly critique the US legal and prison systems’ unjust treatment of people of colour.

Having penned the script herself, July trusts her four actors to provide the goods, which they do. The director is left to concentrate on the construction of this haphazard, seat of their pants, wing and a prayer lottery of a film. And though it feels like it shouldn’t work, it really, really does.

Kaufman’s latest work, a creeping, deeply unsettling, cerebral horror of sorts, is a further addition to his challenging, thought-provoking brand of filmmaking which gets under your skin, and stays there.

The moral ambiguities and questions of legacy, friendship, family and integrity in Marco Bellochio’s The Traitor are the strongest points of an ambitious, punishing addition to a long line of films to explore the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra.

It’s a valiant call to arms, a beacon of defiance, but one that could have burned more violently than it ultimately does.

It is told with characteristic precision, compassion and determination by its prolific director.

The pacing of Meyers' film sometimes drags a little but like a slow-moving training heading for the end of the line we can see the danger ahead and are powerless to prevent it. This frustration, and a gripping central performance, make My Friend Dahmer a film you can't pull your eyes away from.

Delighting in the ancient tradition of storytelling as a means of education and understanding as well as entertainment, Nora Twomey's The Breadwinner is a richly animated jewel.

Though Day may remain silent behind his camera, an omnipotent narrative voice lends The Islands and the Whales a folkloric, ethereal quality that alludes to the importance of legend and tradition for the Faroese people who for 1000 years, since the time of the Vikings, have "relied on the seas for its livelihood."

The Work is a rousing, arresting and ultimately cathartic call-to-arms for the power and value of rehabilitation.

Taking place over the course of a little less than 24 hours, it is day-in-the-life cinema at its most pertinent.

Benefiting from the matter-of-fact, unerring defiance exhibited by the group, Heineman is unflinching in representing the brutality perpetrated by ISIS as well as their own very savvy use of the media as a tool for recruitment and influence.

Its spontaneity and uncertain evolution are both gripping and slightly terrifying given that what becomes a quest for truth could just as likely see its subjects killed or imprisoned as set free.

It's a gem of a film to be cherished by one and all.

As well as ruminating on grief and the impalpable, incomprehensible sense of loss in the wake of a lifelong love, A Man Called Ove gives credence to the notion that there is much more to any individual than merely a name, that outer appearance and behaviour belie an unknown past.

A dry and surprisingly dull film, it is a comedy which doesn't induce a single laugh and a drama that doesn't engage emotionally or pull on the heartstrings at all.

From its first moments, The Red Turtle is a captivating ultra-sensory experience; sounds are crisp and images are hand-drawn perfection.

The pint-sized simplicity of this acutely well told and acted tale should not be underestimated.

The superb editing of news footage, the home video recording of the King beating and a dizzying amount of imagery from the heart of darkness during the riots throws us into the unfolding disturbances with minute-by-minute immediacy.

Their Finest by no means reinvents the wheel but in the hands of Scherfig - who previously directed An Education - it looks wonderful, has enough substance to back up its gleaming charm and is a very enjoyable period piece that wears its heart and intentions firmly on its well starched sleeve.

Though it may tell of one family's story in the late nineteenth century, and the superb costume and period attention to detail are firmly rooted in its time and place, the case that Tommy's Honour makes for breaking tradition, being true to oneself and challenging authority establishes thematic ties that are timeless.

A far darker side of London is painted in bleakly realistic tones in City of Tiny Lights but, like its protagonist, Travis' film shoots from the hip, has a glint in its eye and packs a mean punch.

Urging us to grin in the face of impending death, Truman handles grim material with grace, humour and the honesty of two old friends who tell it like it is.