1-After the Storm

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest is part family drama, part hardboiled noir, as a novelist-turned-private-investigator (Hiroshi Abe) tries to reconnect with his family.

What we said: In the hands of another film-maker, this situation might be the focus of a queasy black comedy ... There is such intelligence and delicacy in Kore-eda’s film-making, such wit and understated humanity.
2-Aquarius

Sônia Braga stars as an intellectual who refuses to vacate her apartment when the developers come calling, in a film that has been perceived as a comment on the cronyism and corruption plaguing Brazil.

What we said: Aquarius is a rich and complex character study from the Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça Filho: densely observed, scrupulously realised, and with a wonderful lead performance.
3-Baby Driver![download.jpg]

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Edgar Wright’s inventive wheel-spin on the car-chase movie stars Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver whose tinnitus causes him to pump out banging tunes at high volume while performing some miraculous escapes from the law. John Hamm, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey are the surly crims taking advantage of his gifts.

What we said: It is a terrifically stylish and exciting piece of work, a summer movie cool enough to induce brain freeze, like an episode of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke directed by Walter Hill.
4-The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola provides her own deadpan take on Southern Gothic, with an adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan’s civil-war-era novel about a Union soldier who sets hearts a-flutter in a Confederate ladies seminary. It’s attracted approving reviews, as well as awkward questions over whitewashing.

What we said: Coppola won the director’s prize at Cannes for this hugely enjoyable melodrama that more or less allows bodices to remain unripped until an uproarious third act, when passions are declared, animals killed and acts of mutilation carried out ... a tremendously watchable movie, with its teasing flecks of noir and black comedy.
5-Cameraperson

Veteran documentary-maker Kirsten Johnson taps into her vast library of footage to piece together a collage memoir on her career in cinematography and the nature of authorship.

What we said: A fascinating and unique meta-documentary or quasi-professional memoir; it challenges the question of personality and authorship in the act of seeing, filming and editing.