Screen Rats

A s Baltimore is to John Waters, or Rome is to Federico Fellini, or Oregon is to Kelly Reichardt, that’s what the sunny Brazilian state of Recife is to filmmaker Klebe…

L ike a patient naturalist with his digital camera pre-primed, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan is adept at spotting dyed-in-the-wool male misanthropes out there wa…

C uriously muscular for a four-foot-something nine-year-old, his steely eyes poking out from under sun-bleached sandy tresses, newcomer Aswan Reid cuts a striking figu…

U sually when you’re watching a film by the Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante, you’re constantly asking the question: “I wonder when this character is going to die, and…

I t’s possible to map various different battles for individual freedom onto Thomas Cailley’s gorgeously warm and inventive sci-fi drama. Set in a world in which some h…

F or better or for worse, the post-exam group holiday is a rite of passage for countless teenagers in the United Kingdom. Every summer in the wake of GCSEs and A-Level…

A film about not being able to keep a good Nazi down feels very apposite in the current climate of rabid conservatism, and so that might go some way to justify the ex…

N ewsflash: it turns out that the absolute worst bank in the world is situated in Buenos Aires. Security is so lax and the manager so chill that it would become very e…

L ike Eminem’s 2004 single Mosh, the new comedy The Sweet East opens with contextless audio of schoolchildren reciting the United States’ pledge of allegiance. And in …

W ith his narratively oblique yet emotionally legible new film Monster, one-time Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda adds another entry to his scrapbook of fractured f…

S teve McQueen introduced the Cannes Special Screening of his 4.5 hour Holocaust documentary, saying: “It’s about what’s under your bed and on your doorstep.” The Brit…