Berlinale 2021: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn review – cheeky, timely and very provocative

★★★★ BERLINALE 2021: BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN Cheeky, timely, provocative 

Spicy Romanian satire, plus French drama 'Drift Away' and US indie 'Language Lessons'

The Romanian director Radu Jude invariably serves spicy satire that challenges his compatriots to face historical crimes and present failings. The latest is an erudite and daft, raunchy and knockabout, endlessly provocative film that, for sake of brevity, we’ll call Loony Porn.

Blu-ray: Liberté

★★ BLU-RAY: LIBERTE On 'libertinage': Albert Serra’s improvisaton of 18th century debauchery is painful in every sense

On 'libertinage': Albert Serra’s improvisaton of 18th century debauchery is painful in every sense

Catalan director Albert Serra’s interest in late 18th century France is well established – his previous film was The Death of Louis XIV – but the title of his new one has precious little to do with the triadic revolutionary slogan that swept away the French monarchy at the end of it.

LFF 2020: Nomadland review - Francis McDormand gives a career-defining performance

BAFTAS 2021 'Nomadland' takes four awards, including Best Film

Plus Francis Lee’s sombre love story 'Ammonite' closes the festival, and the spellbinding 'Wolfwalkers' from Cartoon Saloon

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider was a film of rare honesty and beauty. Who would have thought she’d be able to top the power of that majestic docudrama? But with Nomadland she has.

LFF 2020: Supernova review – Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth shine as couple on the road

LFF 2020 Supernova, The Painter and the Thief, Rose: A Love Story

Harry Macqueen’s tale of love and loss, plus first looks at ‘The Painter and the Thief’, ‘Rose: A Love Story’

Unsurprisingly, theres a lot of pleasure to be had watching Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as a mature couple pootling around the UK in their humble camper van. They bicker about the satnav voice, argue the merits of the shipping forecast, and both give such convincing performances that you’d think they’d been together for decades.

Blu-ray: Beanpole

★★★★★ BEANPOLE Bleakness of story mediated by fragile visual beauty

Bleakness of story mediated by fragile visual beauty in outstanding Russian arthouse period offering

Kantemir Balagov’s second feature announces the arrival of a major new talent in arthouse cinema.

Young Ahmed review - jihadist drama misses the mark

★★★ YOUNG AHMED  Jihadist drama misses the mark

Cannes Best Director-winner has its moments, but focuses on the wrong parts

Belgian filmmaking duo the Dardenne Brothers have long been darlings of Cannes Film Festival, winning awards for hardhitting dramas like La Promesse, Le Silence de Lorna and The Kid with the Bike. Their latest offering Young Ahmed is no different, a domestic terrorist tale which won them Best Director at 2019’s festival.

Berlinale 2020: Never Rarely Sometimes Always review - raw and unflinching abortion drama hits home

Plus Abel Ferrara's Jungian nightmare and Decker's shrieking 'Shirley'

Back in 2017, writer-director Eliza Hittman won over audiences with her beautiful coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is a more quietly devastating drama, shifting the focus away from sexual awakenings to a more politically charged arena.

Berlinale 2020: Berlin Alexanderplatz review - a contemporary twist on a classic

Alfred Döblin's novel becomes a tale for our times and Sally Potter's dementia drama

Burhan Qurbani isn’t the first director to bring Alfred Döblin’s seminal 1929 novelBerlin Alexanderplatz, to the screen. First, there was the Weimar Republic era adaptation that Döblin himself worked on. Fifty years later, Rainer Werner Fassbinder brought us his 15-hour television opus.

Berlinale 2020: My Salinger Year review - 70th edition of the festival opens in style

★★★★ BERLINALE 2020: MY SALINGER YEAR 70th edition of the festival opens in style

Sigourney Weaver channels Meryl Streep in Falardeau's charming feature

There’s an undeniable romance to mid-Nineties New York. Absent of the chirp of mobile phones, or the swirl of social media, it comes across as a more halcyon age, closer to the Forties than the Noughties.

LFF 2019: Marriage Story review – not a dry eye in the house

★★★★★ LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2019: MARRIAGE STORY Not a dry eye in the house

Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver break up, plus first looks at ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ and ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’

Marriage Story, shown at the London Film Festival, feels like an instant classic, that intimate, tangible, resonant kind of classic that touches a chord with almost anyone. It’s not just a film about a divorce, but that added nightmare of a divorce with kids involved, and the yet more despairing experience of separating when there is still love. And it’s heart-breaking.