1: Heart Of A Dog (PG)
(Laurie Anderson, 2015, Fra/US) 76 mins
The death of her dog sets in motion a rich, free-ranging essay from Anderson, which touches on matters profound (death, dreams, data storage, storytelling), personal (some astounding childhood incidents) and trivial (teaching her dog to play piano). The imagery is fluid and dreamlike but, as you’d expect, it’s as much an aural experience as a visual one, thanks to Anderson’s mellifluous narration and hypnotic soundscapes.
2: Everybody Wants Some!! (15)
(Richard Linklater, 2016, US) 117 mins
Linklater’s spiritual sequel to Boyhood finds much to write home about before term’s even started at a 1980s frat house. These amiable jocks spar with each other in whatever field they can find – repartee, ping pong, bong-smoking, sexual bravado, handlebar-moustache size – never truly questioning how their masculine bonding might look from the outside. The characters are vivid, the observation shrewd and the overall tone warm and affectionate.
3: Mustang (15)
(Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015, Fra/Ger/Tur/Qat) 97 mins
Girlhood is literally a prison in this assured, Oscar-nominated drama, centred on five orphaned sisters in Turkey who are barricaded in their home and cut off from their former carefree lives.
4: Green Room (18)
(Jeremy Saulnier, 2015, US) 95 mins
An out-of-town gig at a skinhead club turns into a life-or-death siege in this expert thriller, somewhere along the lines of a backstage Assault On Precinct 13, but packed with nasty surprises – not least Patrick Stewart as the baddie-in-chief.
5: Sing Street (12A)
(John Carney, 2016, Ire/UK/US) 106 mins
The Once director bashes out an unpretentious, three-chord coming-of-ager, in which a lovestruck Dublin teenager starts a band to get a girl. Musically and stylistically it’s a nostalgia trip back to the mid-1980s, with some agreeable new tracks of its own, but there’s also a dose of family strife to add some shade.
