Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge

A Serious Man

Always the cruel gods of their movies, the brothers now turn to religious desperation—a perfect match—and, obliquely, to their own Jewish boyhood in late-’60s suburban Minneapolis....

Bright Star

Reviewed at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival

Jane Campion’s ‘Bright...

Cracks

As Ridley’s daughter, Scott probably got filmmaking manuals to chew on as a baby and her first directing effort demonstrates their effect. All 1930s films, apparently, must be achingly slow and...

Farewell My Concubine

Hitherto, Chen Kaige's films have specialised in poetic, allusive allegory: in King of the Children and...

Glorious 39

Many of British cinema’s grandees (Nighy, Lee, Christie, Redgrave) come out to play for Poliakoff’s first cinema film for over a decade. It’s a Hitchcockian wartime drama whose journey is...

La Guerre est finie

Stylistically, La Guerre est finie is probably Resnais' most orthodox film, covering three days in the life of a Spanish exile in Paris involved in a plot to overthrow Franco....

I Always Wanted to be a Gangster

Benchetrit’s dry, stylish, black-and-white comedy is especially reminiscent of Belgian fare like ‘Aaltra’ and ‘The Carriers Are Waiting’, but should also please fans of Kaurismäki or...

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

It makes a change to see a 3D animated kids’ film that doesn’t poke your eyes out with fancy effects just for the sake of it. In fact, some of the 3D elements in Blue Sky’s latest prehistoric...

Lady Jane

A fervent supporter of the Reformation, Lady Jane Grey (Bonham Carter) was brought up at a time when England was riven with religious dissension, and to prevent the Catholic Mary ascending to the...

Séraphine

Martin Provost, director of the biographical Séraphine, has little use for pretty pictures....

Some Like It Hot

Still one of Wilder's funniest satires, its pace flagging only once for a short time. Curtis and Lemmon play jazz musicians on the run after witnessing the St Valentine's Day massacre, masquerading...

The First Day of the Rest Of Your Life

The classic French family drama gets a modern reboot in this unstoppably entertaining saga of life, love, death, pop music and an ongoing battle to cut down on the ciggies. Director Rémi...

The Posters Came from the Walls

Stadium-straddling electro-pop titans Depeche Mode are largely viewed in their home country as faintly embarrassing ’80s throwbacks, but the rest of world has a very different view. In America,...

The White Ribbon

Reviewed at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival

For quite some time at the beginning of Michael HanekeSpike Jonze – who juggled...