Palestine 36 ★★★★☆
Directed by Annemarie Jacir. Starring Hiam Abbass, Kamel Al Basha, Yasmine Al Massri, Jalal Altawil, Robert Aramayo, Saleh Bakri, Yafa Bakri, Karim Daoud. 12A cert, limited release, 120 min
The Palestinian submission for international picture at the incoming Academy Awards is a handsome, old-fashioned production that, even when it is telling us things we didn’t know, confirms all worst suspicions about the British colonial experience in the Holy Land. Set during the 1936 Arab revolt, the film flits between several shallowly drawn Palestinian characters, but is at its best when in quasi-documentary mode. Making skilful use of colourised archive footage, the film drags up unavoidable pointers to the area’s current miseries. Aramayo is strong as eccentric, brutal British officer Orde Wingate. Full review
Bugonia ★★★★☆
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, Alicia Silverstone. 15A cert, gen release, 118 min
Plemons’s conspiracy theorist kidnaps Stone’s pharmaceutical chief executive in Lanthimos’s imaginative adaptation of Jang Joon-hwan’s Korean eco-thriller Save the Green Planet! (2003). The film’s ecological themes are stated without being much expanded or explored. No matter. This remains a careering exercise in mid-ranking Yorgosia that just about justifies its many indulgences. All actors are at the top of their games. Of Stone’s many characteristic moods, the most compelling is the barely contained fury she exhibits here. We should remain grateful that a talent so odd as Lanthimos remains somewhere adjacent to the mainstream. Full review DC
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Kenny Dalglish ★★★★☆
Directed by Asif Kapadia. Featuring Marina Dalglish, Kenneth Dalglish, Jegsy Dodd, Eric Hooton, Cathy Long
If you weren’t aware that the Academy Award-winning film-maker Asif Kapadia was a lifelong Liverpool fan, the opening Roy of the Rovers-style comic credits provide a vital clue. After chronicling the turbulent brilliance of Ayrton Senna, Amy Winehouse and Diego Maradona, the documentarian turns towards a steadier master craftsman: Kenny Dalglish, the Scottish number 9-turned-manager and known at Anfield as King Kenny. Composed of archive footage, Kapadia’s signature technique allows Dalglish to tell his own story. His journey from Glasgow’s tenements to footballing royalty is framed by pronounced family values and community spirit. One for all football fans. Full review TB
Kontinental 25 ★★★★★
Directed by Radu Jude. Starring Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța, Șerban Pavlu, Oana Mardare, Annamária Biluska. No cert, limited release, 109 min
Nobody captures the late capitalist wretchedness quite like Jude. The Romanian auteur’s latest lands us in Cluj, where Ion (Spahiu), a homeless former athlete, has an unfortunate encounter with a Hungarian-Romanian bailiff (Tompa). The surroundings are rife with contradictions: streets lined with EU flags as venture capital takes a punt, casting the population aside. In common with Jude’s scathing Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Kontinental 25 takes a scattershot, but biting, approach to various targets: anti-Semitism, capitalism, nationalism and religious hypocrisy. It pokes with ethical heft and barbed wit. Full review TB
