Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a young painter in the 1770s who is sent to a remote manor in Brittany at the request of a wealthy countess (Valeria Golino), who commissions her to paint a portrait of her daughter, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). This presents itself as a bit of a challenge, as the young woman is…

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced masseuse who makes her living through liaising with many of the suburban stereotypes she often wishes she could escape in her small community. When she’s not mingling with her two married friends (Toni Collette and Ben Falcone), she’s the mother of a daughter who is about to embark on…

Gatsby Welles (Timothée Chalamet) is a young man studying at a small but prestigious university in Upstate New York – he doesn’t have much passion for academic life, thriving on his unexpected talents when it comes to gambling. His girlfriend is the film-obsessed journalist Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), who manages to wrangle an interview with someone…

Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) is a mild-mannered museum curator who suffers from intense social anxiety and constantly refuses to put herself out in the world (especially after her lover decided to end their relationship), seeing life as something that has been sold to everyone as being far more easy than it actually is. Seymour Moskowitz…

The first scene of The Heartbreak Kid starts where most movies end – with a wedding. We’re introduced to Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin), a young man who is about to be wed to his sweetheart, the loud but kind-hearted Lila (Jeannie Berlin). The pair head to Florida for their honeymoon, hoping for some quality time…

Claudine (Diahann Carroll) is a single mother living in Harlem with her six children. She has to work extremely hard to make ends meet, with her meagre earnings from her job as a domestic worker for a rich suburban family not being anywhere close to enough to support her family, and thus she has to…

A film set in Italy, filmed in German and made by a French director – The Marquise of O is an anomaly of a film, but in the best way possible. Éric Rohmer was a director whose output throughout his career was nothing short of extraordinary, both in the stories he told and how he…

Sasha (Ali Wong) and Marcus (Randall Park) used to be best friends from childhood – they grew up living next door to each other, and bonded over the fact that Sasha’s parents were always too busy to take care of her, so she was essentially raised by Marcus’ mother and father, who gave her the…

Two for the Road is more than just a great film – it is a poignant reminder of why I love cinema. There is a quality of a story well told that just strikes harder than anything else, and with this film, Stanley Donen made something quite extraordinary – a funny, melancholy and utterly gorgeous…

Gloria Bell ends exactly as it starts – the titular character (Julianne Moore) stands on a crowded dance-floor, bathed in neon lights, dancing her heart out to a selection of the hits from a bygone era. The difference between these two scenes is the roughly two hours between them, which chronicle a time in the…