1 On Body and Soul (18)
(Ildikó Enyedi, 2017, Hun) 116 mins
Combining mysticism, wildlife footage and stomach-churning abattoir action, this peculiar Hungarian movie stands out from the pack. It charts the hesitant relationship between a slaughterhouse’s financial director and its new quality inspector, both of whom are bad communicators but whose shared dream (of being deer in a forest) could be a bridge.
2 My Pure Land (15)
(Sarmad Masud, 2017, UK) 98 mins
Somewhere between feminist social drama and modern-day western, this Pakistan-set film, based on a true story, pits two daughters and a mother against their greedy uncle, who comes to claim their house as his own. Both sides have firearms and know how to use them. A cleverly structured debut that favours tension over action.
3 Mother! (18)
(Darren Aronofsky, 2017, US) 121 mins
Questions mount up pretty quickly with Aronofsky’s latest domestic thriller. Where is this Victorian house Jennifer Lawrence is fixing up? Why is Javier Bardem so welcoming when strangers come knocking? Is this really happening? It’s a puzzle of a movie, whose pieces you’ll have to fit together later.
4 In Between (15)
(Maysaloun Hamoud, 2017, Isr/Fra) 103 mins
Palestinian womanhood gets an eye-opening update in this feature. Tel Aviv flatmates Laila and Salma basically live like their liberated Israeli neighbours: they party hard, hold down jobs, sleep with women and stand up to men – all to the horror of a strictly Islamic student who comes to live with them. This defiance comes at a price, of course.
5 It (15)
(Andy Muschietti, 2017, US) 128 mins
Having been strip-mined by Stranger Things, Stephen King’s 1980s horror story deserved a new incarnation and this does it justice, serving up a similar mix of retro nostalgia and outcast pre-teens banding together to track down a monster (Bill Skarsgård’s scary clown is no laughing matter).
