Graduation (15)
(Cristian Mungiu, 2016, Rom/Fra/Bel) 128 mins
Doing the right thing often involves doing the wrong thing, and a Romanian father doesn’t know where to draw the line in this intelligent, downbeat morality play. His domestic life is already a mess, but when his daughter is assaulted just before her crucial exams, he sets about boosting her chances of getting to a British university, even if that means a little soft corruption.
Get Out (15)
(Jordan Peele, 2017, US) 104 mins
A Meet The Parents-style set-up leads to something more like a racially charged Stepford Wives in this excellent horror, in which an African-American man (Daniel Kaluuya) gets a lot more than he bargained for when he visits his white girlfriend’s folks, who aren’t quite as liberal as they seem.
Ghost in the Shell (12A)
(Rupert Sanders, 2017, US) 107 mins
Neither triumph nor disaster, the long-anticipated anime remake turns out to be a dark, moody sci-fi in a RoboCop-meets-Blade Runner vein – sombre to the point of glum, but visually stunning and commendably ambitious. Scarlett Johansson plays a cyborg detective whose hunt for a mysterious cybervillain becomes more of a soul-search.
Free Fire (15)
(Ben Wheatley, 2016, Fra/UK) 91 mins
Wheatley has fun orchestrating a cartoonish shoot ’em-up that pulls in some great actors (Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley) but forgoes some of his distinctive Englishness. That’s mainly because of the trigger-happy showboating and American setting: a 1970s Boston warehouse, where a firearms deal rapidly devolves into a firearms demonstration.
The Age of Shadows (15) (Kim Jee-woon, 2016, S Kor) 141 mins
Impressive action set-pieces, elegant design and a fast-moving plot add up to a cracking Korean spy thriller, set during the 1920s struggle for independence from the occupying Japanese. The reliably great Song Kang-ho plays a double-agent detective torn between the two sides.
