Showing Type: Film

Winning over 25 awards, Woman at War is a jet-black comedy about a woman fighting to save the planet and adopt a child at the same time. Treating its timely themes with a deceptively light touch, Woman at War is easy to enjoy in the moment, yet its impact lingers long after the closing credits roll.

Director Barry Jenkins has taken James Baldwin’s classic 70s novel and turned it into the closest visual representation of young love you’re likely to see. Beale Street is magical film-making which looks for, and finds, beauty in the most unlikely of places.

This film is an upbeat British comedy inspired by the true story of an all-male capella folk singing group from Port Isaac in Cornwall called the Fisherman’s Friends. Fisherman’s Friends has a great cast and good humour in abundance.

The White Crow is a sumptuous biopic about Nureyev, the volatile ballet star born in poverty who changed the very nature of dance to become a cultural icon.

The Kindergarten Teacher is a brilliantly understated study of obsession, a perfectly poised portrait of a woman on the edge. It is a haunting and sometimes uncomfortable dip into the mind and desires of a woman who feels stifled by the life she’s chosen for herself and aspires to be as creative as the poets she admires.

Downfall is the first flesh and blood account of Hitler made by a German director in 50 years and the authenticity is truly unsettling. Set mostly in the cement corridors of a bunker under Berlin, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s remarkable film reconstructs the Führer’s last days as his dreams and the city above are smashed to rubble.

This affectionate film balances humour and pathos, laughter and tears. Steve Coogan and John C Reilly give stand-out performances, the superb technique of both is matched by their obvious love for the originals. Stan & Ollie pays tribute to a pair of beloved entertainers and highlights the burdens and blessings of a creative bond.

Green Book (which won 3 Oscars including Best Motion Picture) is based on the real-life friendship between Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a blue-collar Italian American and Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), the cultured African American concert pianist. It epitomises all the things to which we aspire. It’s a handsomely made and watchable picture and there is real warmth in Ali and Mortensen’s performances.

A Foreign Field is by turns funny, poignant, and powerfully dramatic. It is also a moving tribute to the heroism of those who fight our wars, doing their best to fulfil their duty as they see it.

Colette tells the incredible true story of how ­Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley), France’s most celebrated female novelist and actress, struggled to get her voice heard in the early 1900s.