A tenderly handled subplot in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire reminds us how rarely the termination of a pregnancy features in cinema, and how such stories tend to turn out, writes Violet Lucca.
Singletons Jack Quaid and Alice Erskine team up to be each other’s wedding dates in a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy that offers only the most predictable of pleasures, writes Violet Lucca.
Clint plays an aged drug trafficker in this disarming, funny movie, which offers a pointed critique of American values and the nuances of racial discrimination, writes Violet Lucca.
Chloë Grace Moretz plays an introverted teenager at a naff but merciless gay conversion therapy camp in Desiree Akhavan’s study of psychological cruelty, writes Violet Lucca.
Sandra Bullock leads her crack burglar squad in a high-society, low-hurdle heist caper in which togetherness is a matter of sharing the spoils, says Violet Lucca.
Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s space-travelling children’s fable steers Storm Reid’s brooding young heroine through a bold lesson in nonconformism – but not even the most star-spangled Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon can make it sparkle, says Violet Lucca.
Ruben Östlund’s museum-set satire contrasts the prestige of high culture with the thankless work of helping people, with unpredictably uncomfortable results, writes Violet Lucca.
There’s no fun or friskiness in this anticlimactic final film, just the gruelling spectacle of a woman submitting to a tyrannical husband and a ludicrously prolonged revenge plot, writes Violet Lucca.
Lee Unkrich’s fabulous familial adventure finds its animating principle in Mexican cultural riches, with a reach that crosses our mortal divide, says Violet Lucca.