JAWS ★★★★★
Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
You know what this is. From 1975, Jaws (back in a restored print) is among the most gripping entertainments Hollywood ever dreamt up. John Williams's borderline avant-garde score is – let's not pussyfoot – a serious contender for the best ever in a Hollywood production. Scheider, Shaw and Dreyfuss trade men-at-work dialogue that would have pleased Howard Hawks. It became the highest-grossing film ever and helped close off Hollywood's post-classical era, but we can't really blame Spielberg for that. 12A cert, lim release, 124 min DC Full review
THE CHAMBERMAID/LA CAMARISTA ★★★★★
Directed by Lila Avilés. Starring Gabriela Cartol, Teresa Sánchez
Avilés' remarkable, rigorously researched debut concerns itself with the day to day rigours of working in a luxury Mexico City hotel. One of the film's lesser pleasures is the detail it offers on how Eve's job is done. The film is, however, most remarkable for its gentle teasing out of workplace relationships. This is not the worst job in the world, but its pressures clearly wear away at the soul. A gripping and oddly beautiful gem. Club, lim release, 102 min DC Full review/trailer
MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE ★★★★☆
Directed by Nick Broomfield. Featuring Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Ron Cornelius, Helle Goldman
In 1960, struggling Leonard Cohen relocated to the Greek island of Hydra, a haven for artists, the plant-waterers and cat-minders of artists, and free love. There he met Marianne Ihlen, the ex-wife of novelist Axel Jensen and the mother of a young son. She became Cohen's lover, the maker of his sandwiches, and the stunning blonde who sat at his feet while he dropped acid and banged out an incomprehensible novel. Who would ever be a muse? That's the question underpinning Broomfield's romantic, angry, funny, sorrowful new film, which contextualises Cohen's carelessness and Ihlen's passivity within contemporaneous social and cultural climate. 15A cert, gen release, 102 min TB Full review
A SEASON IN FRANCE/UNE SAISON EN FRANCE ★★★★☆
Directed by Mahamat Saleh Haroun. Starring Eriq Ebouaney, Sandrine Bonnaire, Aalayna Lys, Ibrahim Burama Darboe
Schoolteacher Abbas (Ebouaney) has left the war-torn Central African Republic with his surviving family more than a year before Chadian auteur Haroun's (A Screaming Man) jolting drama begins. Abbas and his brother Etienne now do cash-only jobs in France, where their status remains uncertain. Abbas is troubled by visions of his wife, who died as they fled from Africa, but he has attempted to build some kind of life. His two young children are enrolled in school and he is romantically involved with a kindly florist (Bonnaire). Etienne, who lives in a makeshift shelter under a motorway overpass, is the more troubled sibling, and his final actions make for the most shocking film scene of the year. Club, Triskel, Cork, 100 min TB Full review
GWEN ★★★★☆
Directed by William McGregor. Starring Maxine Peake, Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Richard Harrington, Mark Lewis Jones, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jodie Innes
This lovely, spooky thing stars young up-and-comer Worthington-Cox as Gwen, a teenager struggling to take care of a younger sibling (Innes) and ailing mother (Peake) in dankest 19th-century Snowdonia. The crops are not growing properly and the sheep have been slaughtered. An attempt to sell their meagre vegetables at market ends with the death of the family horse. All the while, mother is behaving in increasingly erratic ways and engaging in occultish looking bloodletting rituals in her room. Are these actions borne of scientific ignorance, or is something more witchy going on? 15A cert, QFT, Belfast, 84 min TB Full review
VARDA BY AGNÈS ★★★★☆
Directed by Agnès Varda. Featuring Agnès Varda
This final film from the late photographer, film-maker, conceptual artist and pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague offers a timely retrospective of her life's work. It's a freewheeling affair anchored by a (kind of) Ted talk on what Varda calls cine-writing. Theme trumps chronology as she takes the viewer through her early years as the only woman to emerge alongside Godard, Truffaut and Rivette, her seminal 1962 feature Cleo from 5 to 7, and her marriage of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg director Jacques Demy. Varda died in March; watching the sprightly, energetic creature at the heart of this picture, it's hard to believe she's gone. 15A cert, QFT, Belast, 115 min TB Full review
