“The Levelling”
Director: Hope Dickson Leach
Cast: Ellie Kendrick, David Troughton, Jack Holden
Synopsis: A young woman returns to her family farm in the West of England after her brother’s death
Verdict: With Andrea Arnold’s triumphant return last year, and Lynne Ramsay, Clio Barnard, Amma Asante and Gurinder Chadha all coming back in 2017, it’s a bumper time for British female directors, and Hope Dickson Leach’s terrific debut “The Levelling” only adds to that number. An intimate rural drama led by what Oli called an “astonishing performance, one of the most impressive depictions of grief we can remember” from “Game Of Thrones” star Kendrick, it’s “an incredibly controlled piece of filmmaking” blending realism and expressionism to powerful results, a movie that proves to be “not just one of the best debut films of the year, but one of the year’s best films, period.” Keep an eye out.
Our Review: A grade from Oli at the BFI London Film Festival
Release Date: No U.S. distributor yet as far as we know, but it’ll hit UK theaters in the spring, and hopefully the States not long after that.
“The Lost City Of Z”
Director: James Gray (“The Immigrant”)
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen
Synopsis: In the 1920s, a British explorer attempts to find a legendary lost city in the jungles of Brazil.
Verdict: Though perhaps slightly less so than when Brad Pitt or Benedict Cumberbatch were attached (it’s been developing as a film for the best part of a decade now), there’s a fair chance that “The Lost City Of Z” could be the film that finally helps James Gray, one of the best living American filmmakers but someone who’s often been under the radar, the mainstream acceptance he’s long deserved. An epic, almost Herzogian adventure (albeit with, as our NYFF review said, “a continuation of the quieter mood” of his previous film) that puts his themes of familial tragedy front and center once again, it’s absolutely gorgeous-looking thanks to DP Darius Khondji, and sees its stars deliver some of their best work to date. It might not be for everyone — it’s “classical, unrushed filmmaking,” but it’s likely to “inspire admiration and obsessives,” too.
Our Review: Rod gave it a B grade at the NYFF
Release Date: April 21st
“My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea”
Director: Dash Shaw
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Reggie Yates, Maya Rudolph, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon
Synopsis: Two reporters from a school newspaper discover that their teachers are covering up a terrifying secret.
Verdict: It’s an exciting time for animation, not just because because of high-quality fare from Pixar, Laika and others, but also with more indie and foreign-language animation getting theatrical releases, thanks in large parts to new-ish distributors GKIDS, who’ve so far picked up eight Oscar nominations despite their small size. One of their great hopes for 2017 is likely to be this film, the directorial debut of graphic novelist Dash Shaw, which won raves at TIFF last year. With an all-star voice cast, and some heavyweight backing from “Compliance” director Craig Zobel, who produces, and Shaw collaborator John Cameron Mitchell, who lends his voice, it’s what our review called “an engaging surrealist take on the disaster movie,” an animated film that almost feels like reading a graphic novel, ending up with something “strangely beautiful and almost like something you’ve never seen before.” While it’s perhaps a touch slight, it definitely feels like a cult hit in the making.
Our Review: B- from Jordan Ruimy at TIFF
Release Date: “Late spring,” according to GKIDS.
“Nocturama”
Director: Bertrand Bonello (“Saint Laurent”)
Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Vincent Rottiers, Hamza Meziani, Manal Issa, Martin Guyot
Synopsis: A group of young Parisians execute a shocking terrorist attack
Verdict: Its provocative subject matter saw major festivals like Cannes and Venice pass on the movie, despite it coming from a major French director, so it was a relief to catch up to Bertrand Bonello’s “Nocturama” to find that it was one of the helmer’s most impressive films, if not quite the masterpiece that some critics have labelled it. Playing initially as a chilling, “stripped down procedural, vaguely reminiscent of (but quite distinct from) the likes of Gus Van Sant’s ‘Elephant,’” as our review put it, it becomes a sort of “May ’68 for the Bernie Sanders generation.” And while the more claustrophobic second half of the film isn’t as strong, failing to develop its characters beyond “archetypes” and occasionally feeling like a “condescending kids-these-days-with-their-Snapchat-and-rap-music rant,” it’s still a haunting and thought-provoking piece of work.
Our Review: Oli gave it a B grade at the BFI London Film Festival
Release Date: No firm U.S. distributor yet, but hopefully one emerges soon.
“Personal Shopper”
Director: Olivier Assayas (“Clouds Of Sils Maria”)
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidineger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie
Synopsis: After the death of her twin, a young American woman in Paris receives a text that she believes could be from her dead brother.
Verdict: Like the Xavier Dolan film, “Personal Shopper” is a film that, despite our love for its director, we didn’t particularly like when it premiered at Cannes last year. But as with Assayas’ previous collaboration with Kristen Stewart, “Clouds Of Sils Maria,” it has plenty of fans, and is, as Jess said, “not an uninteresting [mess], and better than a staid, unadventurous bore,” so we’d be remiss in not putting it here. Mashing up the ghost story and the Hitchcockian thriller but done with an oblique arthouse sheen, it won Assayas the Best Director award at Cannes, even if Jess said of it “it’s genuinely difficult to work out how much of ‘Personal Shopper’ is meant to be trashy and kind of dumb, and how much ends up there accidentally.” If nothing else, it’s sure to be the focus of some of the best cinephile arguments of the year… But for what it’s worth, Gregory Ellwood put it on his Best Of 2016 Top 10 list and EIC Rodrigo Perez thought it compelling, warts and all.
Our Review: Jess gave it a C+ at Cannes
Release Date: Reportedly March 10th, via IFC.