Bolan's Shoes review - good-natured film about the healing power of a pop idol

★★★ BOLAN'S SHOES Good-natured film about the healing power of a pop idol

Leanne Best and Timothy Spall excel as troubled ageing glam-rockers

Older fans of T Rex will get pleasure from hearing the band’s tracks and reliving some of the buzz of being a dino-rocker, but, despite the title, this isn’t strictly a fan film. Describing what kind of film it is, though, would involve a serious spoiler, which points to its wonky narrative ambitions. It expends a lot of screen time building up to an unsurprising reveal (more on that below).

Blu-ray: Three Ages

Buster Keaton's feature debut is daft but delightful

The Saphead gave Buster Keaton his first starring role in a full-length comedy, but 1923’s Three Ages is the first feature film which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in. Two-reelers were a form where he could go, in his words, “wild and crazy”, the more outlandish the visual humour the better.

Fremont review - lovely wry portrait of an Afghan refugee looking for love

★★★★ FREMONT Stunning debut from Anaita Wali Zada gives Babak Jalali's film an inner glow

Stunning debut from refugee Anaita Wali Zada gives Babak Jalali's film an inner glow

A cameo by Jeremy Allen White wouldn’t usually excite interest, but the star of Disney+’s The Bear is big box-office now, so his presence in Fremont, however brief, will probably guarantee it an audience. There the curious will also find a gem from the Iranian-born director Babak Jalali and a serenely powerful debut performance by Anaita Wali Zada, who gives this simple-seeming project an inner glow.

A Life on the Farm review - a fabulous eccentric gets neatly packaged

★★★★ A LIFE ON THE FARM A fabulous eccentric gets neatly packaged

Put in context, the Spike Milligan of farming footage

“There’s nowt so queer as folk”, they say, and Life on the Farm amply proves the point. A cassette slides into the slot; “play” is pressed and a middle-aged man appears on screen at the gate of Combe End Farm. “Follow me down”, he says to camera,”I’ve got something to show you.”

Past Lives review - poignant story of a long-maturing love

★★★★ PAST LIVES Celine Song's quietly powerful debut asks big questions of cultural difference

Celine Song's quietly powerful debut asks big questions about cultural difference

In the mood for love? It’s over 23 years since Wong Kar-Wai’s swoony, bittersweet film of that name reset the bar for the art-house love story. Now comes Celine Song's Past LIves, an entirely different kind of bar-setter but with a similar tough-but-tender core. It’s an unshowy, slim film, but it takes on hefty topics: can love survive for decades, can it cut through cultural barriers? What does a relationship need to survive?

Mercy Falls review - horror in the Highlands

★★★ MERCY FALLS A superb sense of atmosphere buoys this Scottish slasher flick

A superb sense of atmosphere buoys this Scottish slasher flick

Mercy Falls isn’t the only Scottish film of the past year in which a young woman is haunted by childhood memories of a last summer holiday with her troubled father. And while Ryan Hendrick’s low-budget horror is unlikely to garner as much critical acclaim as Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, at least it’s more eventful.

The Puppet Asylum & Otto Baxter: Not a F***ing Horror Show review - director extraordinaire exorcises his demons

Impressive horror debut by actor-director-writer with Down's Syndrome

Otto Baxter is no stranger to the camera, ever since he was a small boy he’s been featured on television with his adoptive mother Lucy Baxter, an impressive campaigner for better understanding of people with Down's Syndrome. Archive footage shows him to be a cheeky, outgoing child with a keen sense of fun.  

Passages review - amusing, lusty, surprising Parisian love triangle

PASSAGES Whishaw, Exarchopoulos and Rogowski fight it out, in Ira Sachs' latest romantic drama

Whishaw, Exarchopoulos and Rogowski fight it out, in Ira Sachs' latest romantic drama

From Forty Shades of Blue, 20 years ago, to Keep the Lights On and Love is Strange, writer/director Ira Sachs has proved himself to be a master at exploring romantic relationships – and the messier, the better. So, after the whimsical, inconsequential ensemble Frankie, he’s back to his best with a good old-fashioned love triangle. 

And Then Come the Nightjars review - two farm friends

A pair of blokes bond amid a foot-and-mouth cattle cull down in deepest Devon

This modest British dramedy is billed as a “heart-warming story of friendship and survival set against the backdrop of the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak”. That’s perhaps not the first catastrophe we associate with that fateful year, but it was a grim event in its own way: a livestock epidemic that led to the culling of countless farm animals across Britain.