A worry for the maker of any period film is that audiences may struggle to relate to the tribulations of a past era. In Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, set in 1930s Chicago, that concern is actually inverted: the film has so many modern echoes that it risks resembling too strongly the here-and-now, only with vintage Buicks instead of SUVs, Tommy guns rather than AK-47s.

The story is set in the [...]

Shirin (PG)dir: Abbas Kiarostami

Rudo y Cursi (15)dir: Carlos Cuarón

Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin is comprised entirely of close-ups of women as they sit in a cinema watching a film based on a 12th-century Persian poem about two ill-fated lovers. We can hear the other film throughout – the dialogue and music, the galloping hooves and clanging swords, and a dripping noise that may be a comment on inadequate [...]

On the poster for Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric, the “i” in “Eric” has been replaced by the silhouette of an exultant figure, arms raised to the skies, just like the letter “y” in the original Rocky artwork. Like Rocky, Loach’s picture has a lowly, hangdog hero redeemed by his love for a good woman. It’s the first resolutely upbeat film in this director’s 40-year-plus career, but it doesn’t quite [...]

The first time we see Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Pérez Soto), a speed gun has him in its sights. It registers 90mph, but this 19-year-old Dominican is no boy racer: he’s a pitcher, and it is the velocity of his nigh-on unhittable Exocet curveballs that is being measured. Miguel is a prodigy at a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic that grooms up-and-comers for the US leagues. (Around 15 per [...]

Terminator Salvation (12A)dir: McG

The year is 2009. The world’s reserves of film franchises are severely depleted. Marauding scavengers – known as “studios” – roam the earth in search of a formula from which they can squeeze a precious few hundred million dollars.

The elders talk of the inexpressive one, the one they call “the Terminator”. Didn’t he say he’d be back? Alas, he has embarked upon another [...]

The Girl Cut in Two (15) dir: Claude Chabrol

A full half-century separates Claude Chabrol’s latest picture from his debut, Le beau Serge, commonly known as The Film That Kicked Off The Nouvelle Vague. But there is little evidence in The Girl Cut in Two that his X-ray lens, with its alertness to emotional fissures invisible to the naked eye, is losing clarity.

All right, so we could [...]

Charlie Kaufman is a rarity among screenwriters, having explored the same preoccupations (the dissolution of identity, the comforts and cruelty of storytelling) in a number of scripts realised by different directors, not one of whom has compromised his authorial identity.

Only the most venerated auteur enjoys the kind of freedom Kaufman has had since setting out his stall in the pop-culture hall of mirrors a decade ago with Being [...]

Chéri (15)dir: Stephen Frears

Asked by her maid what is ailing her, Léa de Lonval sighs: “Oh, you know. Age.”

Léa, a courtesan in early 20th-century Paris, is aware her best days are behind her. She doesn’t want to turn into one of her grotesque colleagues, who try to arrest the march of time with inches of slap and the company of escorts so young they practically have [...]

Helen (PG)dirs: Christine Malloy, Joe Lawlor

When a film acquires funding from many different sources the result can sometimes be a hotchpotch. The most infamous examples are the “Euro-puddings” of the 1990s (The House of the Spirits, A Business Affair, Suite 16 et al), with their token bewildered A-list star, scripts translated into English via Norwegian, and picturesque footage of Differdange or Minsk.

The directors Christine Malloy and Joe [...]

“Corporate conspiracies that threaten the highest levels?” splutters a detective in State of Play, responding to the idea that a recent murder stinks of political skulduggery. “I’ve only ever seen that on TV.” Clever chap. State of Play did indeed start life in 2003 as a six-part BBC series, though in writing it, Paul Abbott paid homage to two breeds of movie – conspiracy thrillers (The Parallax View, Three Days [...]