With The Laundromat Steven Soderbergh is trying to do for the Panama Papers what The Big Short did for the 2008 financial crash, namely offer an entertaining mix of explanation, exposé, black comedy and righteous anger. Sadly, it doesn’t come close.
Proxima is a very special, very beautiful space movie, one of those that are more concerned with the bread-and-butter reality of getting people into space – practically, emotionally, psychologically – than with the starry shenanigans themselves.
The cancer weepie is knocked off its tear-jerking axis by Lulu Wang’s sly and heartfelt autobiographical tale.
There have been a number of excellent science fiction films of late – Gravity, The Martian, Annihilation among them. But Ad Astra may be the most complete and profound addition to the genre since 2001: A Space Odyssey.
People who idly use the phrase “it’s like living in a war zone” when considering their domestic mess should see Waad al-Kateab’s documentary For Sama.
“You’re so meticulous,” says Astrid (Maria Bonnevie) to her teenage daughter Jill (impressive newcomer Yvla Bjørkaas Thedin) as they create a batik artwork together at the kitchen table. Little son Bo (Casper Falck-Løvås) looks on as he munches a jam sandwich. A happy domestic scene? Anything but. “Meticulous” isn’t even really a compliment, coming from this chaotic, mentally fragile mother.
The Shock of the Future is for anyone who's watched a music biopic and thought "that's not how it works!" Directed and co-written by Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague fame, it's perhaps the most realisitic film about recording music ever made. But as anyone who's ever been in the studio will tell you, the legends are much more exciting than the reality.
Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s new documentary, Honeyland, is a lament for a vanishing world. Captured with the delicacy of honeycomb, it focuses on the last wild beekeeper in Europe. Hatidze Muratova lives in rural Macedonia on a craggy farm without running water or electricity. Her ailing, aged mother, Nazife, is her only company.