Films

Cry Wolf Jeff Wadlow
Though it is essentially a teen film, Cry Wolf walks the tightrope of teen credibility by providing a commentary on the social lives of suburban rich kids, and playing on the confusion of rumour and fact, a familiar theme in teen films with pretensions to serious social criticism.
Gavin Bower

The Libertine Laurence Dunmore
What Stephen Jeffreys does is but question our selective, often arbitrary, choice of morals when it comes to appreciation of literature. Above all, he questions our appreciation of art in relation to the existence of the author.
Ion Martea

The Constant Gardener Fernando Meirelles
To replace the Soviet Union, Le Carre has chosen a big drugs company. Unlike his subtle and nuanced Cold War novels, in this story the drugs company is all bad, and Tessa is so right-on one wonders how she can stay and breathe the same corrupt air as the rest of the mere mortals.
Tara McCormack

Battle in Heaven Carlos Reygadas
The juxtaposition between stillness and often violent aural intrusion builds the impression of a physically traumatised individual trapped within the maelstrom of a world which, for him, has changed irrevocably.
Dean Nicholas

Pride and Prejudice Joe Wright
Much of the dialogue is taken from the book, but the wit and eloquence is entirely lost. The lines are given about as much spirit as a tube station announcement. Matthew McFadyen's Mr Darcy seems simply rather glum, rather then the proud and passionate man in inner turmoil that he should be.
Tara McCormack

A History of Violence David Cronenberg
The film's final third seems out of place. Having built up a suitably chilling suburban nightmare, the film concludes with a showy and unfulfilling detour into Western-style revenge tale.
Dean Nicholas

Mr Lothian's Uptown Research (Short) Ben Steiner
With a British film industry littered with painfully formulaic romantic comedies, costume dramas and skinny boys acting tough, an injection of the downright bizarre makes for a refreshing and welcome change.
Hannah Knowles

Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor) Timur Bekmambetov
The film combines a certain philosophical bent with cinematic flair and wit to make something like a cross between The Matrix and Star Wars, while remaining unmistakably and refreshingly Russian in flavour.
Dolan Cummings

Oliver Twist Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski's film is very much in the shadow of Oliver! And the first hour in particular is so close to the musical that I found myself singing the songs in my head as each scene came up.
Dolan Cummings

Howl's Moving Castle Hayao Miyazaki
When Sophie cleans out his bathroom and inadvertently messes up his hair dye spell, Howl's golden locks become red, and he sinks into a melodramatic tantrum, melting into a glutinous green mess wailing 'There's no point in living if you can't be beautiful'. Here is a wizard with a lesson to be learned.
Lily Einhorn

Primer Shane Carruth
By taking to heart one of the complexities of time travel - namely, the idea that by moving through time you are creating endless facsimiles of yourself - the film ends up resembling the Escher print of two hands drawing each other; it becomes increasingly difficult to follow which 'copy' is which.
Dean Nicholas

The Island Michael Bay
The film's vision of science, which amounts to the message that humanity is his own worst enemy, is contradicted by the basic plot: clones that become self-conscious and inquisitive, and are driven by a sense of duty to expose the 'Island' as barbaric and murderous.
Chris Bickerton

Me and You and Everyone We Know Miranda July
I get the feeling that July finds this sort of appeal to convention reprehensible; she wants life to be more like romantic comedy, for people to feel free to do odd things and thus make connections they otherwise wouldn't.
Dolan Cummings

Paradise Lost: the child murders at Robin Hood Hills / Revelations: Paradise Lost II (DOUBLE DVD) Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
The first film is really about how prejudice bordering on superstition, a 'Satanic Panic', condemned three probably innocent teenagers. The films can be read as a searing indictment of small town prejudice, then, but interestingly they suggest prejudices of their own.
Dolan Cummings

The Last Mitterand Robert Guédiguian
In Michel Bouquet's magnificent portrayal of the fading leader, the grandeur of Mitterand lies in not in his political exploits and legendary political acumen, but in his effortless charisma and affability.
Philip Cunliffe

Batman Begins Christopher Nolan
The parallels to Al-Qaeda are surely too obvious to be an accident. Here is a rich boy from the West, travelling abroad to find a way to deal with the injustices of the world around him. He falls in with a committed group of poetic vigilantes who dress in black ninja costumes...
Munira Mirza

Dear Wendy Thomas Vinterberg
This critique of American gun culture and small-town mentality is, unlike a documentary such as Moore's Bowling for Columbine or a realist film such as Van Sant's Elephant, delivered through bizarre twists and stylistic devices.
Nathalie Rothschild

Overnight Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana
There is a pleasing symmetry to Overnight: on one level, it is a Hollywood 'rags to rags' story. On another, though, it is a study, albeit perhaps unwitting, in the process of storytelling itself.
Dolan Cummings

Festival Annie Griffin
As in her Channel 4 series The Book Group, Griffin's dark humour sets an interesting tone. This darkness works perfectly in the film, with its focus on comedy, the single biggest element of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Neda Mostafavi

Evil (Ondskan) Mikael Håfström
Evil is a personal story, but it reveals deep-seated tensions in a society in which traces of Nazism have not yet been erased and where expressions of individualism are suppressed.
Nathalie Rothschild

Notre Musique Jean-Luc Godard
Rather than offering anything precise to grab onto, it seems that Godard is merely providing the pivotal setting of Sarajevo for a free-ranging exploration of territorial disputes throughout the ages.
Dean Nicholas

5x2 François Ozon
For all of Ozon's hard-nosed cynicism about contemporary relationships, he is seemingly unable to explore any authentic alternative possibilities, instead falling back on our faded collective cultural memory of sentimental romance.
Philip Cunliffe

In Your Hands Annette K Olesen
The film lives up to its brief of being bleak - a feel bad movie, as Olesen puts it. There is something very unDogmelike about the suggestion that a character has supernatural powers, but the theme is a crystallisation of real issues rather than an imposition.
Dolan Cummings

Tarnation Jonathan Caouette
The preferred roles of this 11-year-old boy were not cowboys or cops but battered wives and junkies. Spliced with other intimations of abuse and neglect, these moments perfectly capture the contemporary cultural preoccupation with vulnerability and distress.
Dolan Cummings

The Edukators Hans Weingartner
Is disenchantment and anger at the state of the world strong enough triggers for real political change? Jan, Peter and Jule want to take on the world and end up frustrated with it.
Nathalie Rothschild

Kinsey Bill Condon
Kinsey may not be the propaganda its conservative critics claim it to be, but in other ways it is a useful touchstone for contemporary mores.
Graham Barnfield

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Wes Anderson
Whereas for other directors reconciliation between father and son might form the core component of a storyline, character development seems secondary here to the creation of painstaking tableaux and glacially paced, seemingly unrelated scenes.
Graham Barnfield

The Aviator Martin Scorsese
Some will label this as - yawn - a post-9/11 reaffirmation of American values. It's really a celebration of the oddball who takes on every challenge and wins - but seems prepared to pay the psychological price.
Nicky Charlish

Creep Christopher Smith
Like a fair number of recent British horror pics, Creep is comfortable living inside the constraints of the genre while episodically kicking against them.
Graham Barnfield

Sideways Alexander Payne
The film has the added bonus of being clear and detailed enough actually to teach us a little about different wines, which makes a nice change from the usual film-going experience, after which we can barely remember the characters' names.
David Haviland

Closer Mike Nichols
Ultimately, with Marber writing the script, the desire for truth perpetually shatters the illusion of love, and veriphiles are doomed to be alone.
Patrick Hayes

Yasmin Kenny Gleenan
The dialogue is wooden and lacks any emotional depth, but what is most absent from the script is any humour or familiarity - indeed, any relationship - between the characters.
Munira Mirza

Melinda and Melinda Woody Allen
The film does not only consider the difference between shaping your life or letting life shape you, but also how an author or director can approach his subject matter, characters and reader or audience.
Nathalie Rothschild

Dear Frankie Shona Auerbach
Auerbach is at heart a photographer, and her work in Dear Frankie on this front is laudable, but she not writer Andrea Gibb manage to distinguish between dreams and reality, and this is arguably the film's greatest shortcoming.
Ion Martea

Enduring Love Roger Michell
The film is much more interested in vague themes than in its characters, so the screenplay is littered with pretentious speeches about the nature of love and evolution.
David Haviland

The Merchant of Venice Michael Radford
An inevitable problem with Shakespeare on screen, but particularly with this film's exquisite Venetian backdrop, is that the spectator is distracted from the sound of Shakespeare's verse. We are so drawn to the visually stunning that his words do not resonate.
Rhona Foulis

The House of Flying Daggers Zhang Yimou
Zhang dwells on the universal tradition of the power of love, but despite the richness of the concept, he limits himself to the pure, straightforward principle of 'the superiority of love'. And even if we allow that he takes simple things to make them grand, one can't but leave with a feeling of dissatisfaction.
Ion Martea