film reviews
Sarah Kent

The village of Cesinova has the largest white stork population in Macedonia; every chimney and steeple is festooned with the scruffy nests of these enormous birds. We see the flock arriving in spring to reclaim their nesting spots. Perched on a huge mound of twigs and leaves, each pair settles in by tossing back their long necks and clattering their beaks in greeting.

James Saynor

Hell has no fury like a stan scorned, as an Eminem song memorably established with respect to obsessed fanboys in the pop world, and this visually nimble not-quite-thriller shows us the further perils of celebrity disciples who get the hump.

Justine Elias

Fear of being alone with our own thoughts, as much as fear of missing out, prevents most of us from disconnecting from our electronic devices and braving even a few hours in total darkness. For a brave assortment of teenagers, though, the task of unplugging from social media – and reconnecting with their still-developing minds – is a year-long journey into the wilderness and back. 

Helen Hawkins

Fierce, unpredictable, complex, cussed, commie. Seymour Hersh would probably admit to all those descriptions of him except the last. Now at last the man who has dominated investigative journalism for 60 years has agreed to be investigated himself for a documentary made by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, 20 years after they first asked him.

Graham Fuller

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is a shattering absurdist anti-caper – a kind of minimalist take on It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World inspired by Iran’s ongoing tragedy. 

James Saynor

Given that the British Red Cross has slammed Britain’s little archipelago of lock-ups for immigrants, and given that the government seems to have upped its xenophobia of late, this fictional look inside an immigration detention centre lands at a helpful time.

Matt Wolf

It's not easy witnessing your own death. But that's the situation in which we find the lyricist Lorenz Hart at the start of Blue Moon, Richard Linklater's startling film about a creative maverick who is well aware that his own shining star is on the wane. 

Adam Sweeting

If you’re old enough to remember LPs and the lost art of reading sleeve notes (let alone writing them), this one’s for you. The titular session man is the fabled keyboard player Nicky Hopkins, whose teeming creativity and dancing digits left their indelible mark across an extraordinary swathe of records from the golden age of rock’n’roll.

Graham Fuller

Seemingly shot in a snow globe containing haunted mountains and a neo-noirish Alpine ‘burg, The Ice Tower is the most expressionistic but relatable of the French-Bosnian director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s eerie oneiric fables involving endangered motherless children.

Justine Elias

It's hard to criticise a movie that opens with a shot of an Allied G.I. spitting and urinating on a Nazi insignia, but that moment of smug satisfaction (Nazi punks must die!) is fleeting. Nuremberg, written and directed by James Vanderbilt, has more on its mind than self-congratulation.  

Drawing on Jack El-Hai's book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" and other biographies and autobiographies, Nuremberg focuses on the complex prosecution of Hitler's second in command, Herman Goering, and 21 other top Nazi officials.