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Pretty Red Dress
Debut feature from writer and director Dionne Edwards, who chooses the inner city streets of South London as a backdrop to her complex exploration of black masculinity and self acceptance. Travis, recently released from prison, strives to reintegrate himself into family life but as secrets and desires surface, his life unravels. This moving drama is…
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Aftersun
Though widely described as a coming-of-age film, Aftersun is more accurately an essay in reflection as the adult Sophie (Rowlson-Hall) looks back on a holiday at a Turkish resort in the 1990s spent with her father, Calum (Mescal). While the wider circumstances are never fully explained, it’s clear that this was a pivotal moment for…
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The Banshees of Inisherin
The setting of the film is obviously meant to represent a larger canvas. Inisherin literally translates as Island of Ireland. But this may be just one of many misdirections by Martin McDonagh who gleefully toys with the tropes of Irish history. Far from being a parable about the distantly-heard Civil War, this is a more…
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Benediction
A non-conventional film biography of the poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden), Benediction spans three distinct eras: the horror and waste of World War I, and the poetry it gave rise to; the interwar years of “gay” society (and covert homosexuality); and finally the 1960s, where we see the elderly poet, played by Peter Capaldi, attempt…