Gloria

Gloria is 58. Divorced 12 years earlier, she’s intent on living life. Her two children are grown up, she works in a characterless office and is open to almost anything. She’ll try cannabis, attends a class where instruction is given on releasing laughter and tackles yoga for the first time. Beyond keeping in touch with her son and daughter, her greatest efforts are directed towards her nightlife. On her own, Gloria goes to ballrooms, bars and nightclubs where she hopes to make a connection...

Closed Circuit

We have plenty to be paranoid about in the most surveilled country in the world. British contributions to the conspiracy thrillers that bloomed so fruitfully in the US around Watergate have, though, stayed slim. Maybe that’s one reason Closed Circuit’s extreme Secret Service behaviour in the aftermath of a bomb atrocity at London’s Borough market feels so fake.

CIA agents snuffing out inconvenient people on city streets is cinematic second nature. MI5 hunting Eric Bana and...

Muscle Shoals

“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Common sense indicates it’s a rare film which retains the impact it had on first exposure. Films can often reveal new depths and fresh detail with repeated viewing, but that initial effect is tough to duplicate. This new release of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens actually captures the thrill of the first-time experience. Partly, that’s due to the extraordinary restoration.

LFF 2013: 12 Years A Slave

One of this year’s Oscar contenders, Lincoln, covered the ending of the American Civil War as it played out in the comfortable confines of the Capitol. 12 Years a Slave, an exceptional film that will surely be in the running next year, reveals the “fearful ill” that set the country alight in the first place.

LFF 2013: The Past

Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning A Separation was a marriage of drama, melodrama and social observation that was beyond compare; it’s expecting too much of his new film to equal it. That said, The Past confirms that few can match the Iranian's attention to the psychological minutiae of family relationships. It's riveting.