Blu-ray: Eclipse

★★★ BLU-RAY: ECLIPSE Unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

The BFI has unearthed an unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry’s slippery 1977 psychological thriller Eclipse certainly fits the bill, having languished unseen in the BFI vaults for nigh on half a century.

The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck's lethal bean-counter

★★★ THE ACCOUNTANT 2 Belated return of Ben Affleck's lethal bean-counter

Horror, humour and mind games combine in Gavin O'Connor's sequel

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a super-efficient assassin working for the highest bidders. In this follow-up, again directed by Gavin O’Connor and written by Bill Dubuque, Affleck barely seems to have aged, and he's still solitary, anti-social and probably autistic.

Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural France

★★★★★ MISERICORDIA A deadpan comedy-thriller from the director of ‘Stranger by the Lake’

A deadpan comedy-thriller from the director of ‘Stranger by the Lake’

“Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his deceased mentor Jean-Pierre, the film’s ambiguous ending suggests he might still share it with the widow, Martine (Catherine Frot). Unless or until the gendarmes come calling.

To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle

A slick tale of two refugees striving and surviving in Athens

The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s very properly cinematic.

Films like Io Capitano and Green Border, tracking the tragic migrant trail to and through Europe, prick consciences and sweat palms in equal measure, but those two fine examples from last year were made by European directors on helicopter missions, as it were, to raise consciousness and to mine fresh seams of character.

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

★★★★★ BLU-RAY: HITCHCOCK - THE BEGINNING Embracing the sound revolution

A box set shows how Alfred Hitchcock embraced the sound revolution – pathologies intact

There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleasure Garden (1926), Easy Virtue (1927), Champagne (1928), The Manxman (1929), Blackmail (1929), Juno and the Paycock (1930), and The Skin Game (1931) were adapted. 

Black Doves, Netflix review - Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw battle against the implausible

★★ BLACK DOVES, NETFLIX Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw battle against the implausible

Can anyone be trusted in Joe Barton's twisty London drama?

It’s rare to spot Keira Knightley in a TV series, and it’s no doubt a sign of changing times that she’s starring in this six-part spies-and-guns caper, penned by Joe Barton (of Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project fame).

Blu-ray: Juggernaut

Witty and exciting British thriller, brilliantly cast

That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in desperation. His quest to salvage Juggernaut in a just a few weeks mirrors events in the film, its protagonists attempting to defuse a set of bombs planted in the bowels of a transatlantic liner.

Red Rooms review - the darkest of webs

Writer-director Pascal Plante has a cult hit on his hands with this skilful cyber-thriller

A woman sits at her computer. She copy-pastes an address into a search engine. She goes to street view. She zooms in. Click. Opens a new tab. Click. Searches a name. There are no lines of green code on a black screen or indecipherable programmes that we associate with sketchy online activity. Instead the woman is doing the kind of amateur sleuthing that anybody with a computer and internet connection can do. 

Trap review - how not to find a serial killer in a haystack

★★★★ TRAP M Night Shyamalan serves up some preposterous Hitchcockian fun

M Night Shyamalan serves up some preposterous Hitchcockian fun

Don’t think too hard about the narrative absurdity of Trap, the new movie wriitten and directed by M Night Shyamalan. There’s a serial killer called The Butcher on the loose in Philadelphia and though the FBI doesn’t know their quarry’s name or what he looks like, they muster what looks like hundreds of agents, SWAT teams, and private security to bring him in.

Sleep review - things that go bump in the night

★★★ SLEEP Weird nocturnal phenomena threaten couple's marital bliss

Weird nocturnal phenomena threaten couple's marital bliss

The question Korean director Jason Yu is asking in this eerie little spine-tingler (his debut feature) is “how well do you know your partner?” He may also be inquiring whether or not you believe in life after death, while planting nagging seeds of doubt about the competence of the medical profession.