Eighth Grade (15)
Directed by Bo Burnham
★★★★

IF YOU have perhaps mercifully forgotten the emotionally confused distresses of adolescence, then allow stand-up comedian-turned-brilliant-first-time screenwriter-director Bo Burnham to remind you of them with Eighth Grade.

A funny and moving true story of 13-year-old Kayla, it’s an all too credible account of teenage emotional highs and lows as she spends her last week of middle school before high school beckons.

Elsie Fisher — magnificently credible and utterly unforgettable — is 13-year-old New Yorker Kayla, the perfect modern miss who’s absolutely at home in the internet age, constantly posting motivational video messages on homemade YouTube videos and surviving the rigours of Snapchat and Instagram.

Safety behind the screen, however, slowly vanishes when she starts to connect with fellow students, only to find that her peers don’t know her at all and her attempts at bonding are far from satisfying.

 “Growing up can be a little scary and weird,” she states and goes on to prove it with a close encounter with a shirt-removing fellow teen, seeking advice on oral sex online and giving her father (Josh Hamilton, excellent) a tough time before they convincingly bond.

Witty and sympathetic, Eighth Grade deservedly won a best screenplay award from the Writers’ Guild of America.

Alan Frank

Avengers: Endgame (12A)
Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
★★★★★

IT HAS taken 11 years and 22 films and the question has to be whether Endgame, the film to bring the mammoth and trailblazing Avengers undertaking to its conclusion, has been worth the wait.

The simple answer is yes as it delivers epically on all fronts, particularly emotionally, and in the big action department.

It’s a film aimed squarely at the fans, many of whom laughed, cried, whooped and cheered loudly at the screening I attended.

Its three hours fly by and what really holds the attention is how Endgame explores loss and grief and its devastating effects on the remaining Avengers, also dealing with survivors’ guilt, as they team up again.

Hell-bent on unearthing a solution to the villainous Thanos’s actions, and despite the pain they are suffering, they still manage to whip up flashes of the irreverent humour we saw in Thor: Ragnarok.

And there are plenty of surprise cameos to lift fans spirits.

Masterfully, the film brings fitting closure to the mammoth story arc of the Avengers gemstone saga. If only it could do the same with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which now reigns supreme, but alas that’s wishful thinking.

Maria Duarte

Donbass (15)
Directed by Sergei Loznitsa
★★★★

THE conflict in Eastern Ukraine between the government and the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic is the setting for Sergei Loznitsa’s extraordinary amalgam of ferocity and melodrama.

Infused with jet-black comedy, it examines violence and corruption at every level of society in a region where war is known as peace, propaganda is claimed to be truth and hatred is “love.”

It’s all vividly and mostly uncomfortably illustrated by the film-maker in a series of chilling episodes whose tone is largely set when a woman empties a bowl of faeces on a chairman’s head, a conman deceives the staff of a maternity hospital, bus travellers are menaced and mayhem culminates in a major homicide.

Loznitsa says he stole the film’s idea from Luis Bunuel — “I wanted to describe a society and describe the situation” — and his “theft” is more than justified with this mesmerising collection of episodes, which deservedly won a prize at Cannes Film Festival.

AF

Styx (12A)
Directed by Wolfgang Fischer
★★★

A SUCCESSFUL doctor gets a major wake-up call when she sets off on her dream solo sailing holiday and is faced with an unexpected life-and-death challenge.

When Rike (Susanne Wolff) sails off from Gibraltar to Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean, she encounters a fishing vessel in which 100 refugees are about to drown.

Her appeals for help to the coastguard and ships in the vicinity go unheeded as they advise her not to go to their rescue, although she manages to save a young boy.

Shot mostly on the open sea and with minimal dialogue, co-writer and director Wolfgang Fischer’s nautical drama poses an ethical and moral dilemma as it pits the well-off Rike against the impoverished and helpless refugees.

As a doctor it is her job to save lives and her desire to help is a no-brainer. That contrasts with the chilling and morally questionable callous reactions from the coastguard and other vessels.

It’s an engaging drama, which could act as a springboard for a wider discussion on the growing number of refugees risking their lives on the high seas for a better life.

MD

Bel Canto (15)
Directed by Paul Weitz
★★★

AN ODD aspect of this stressful but not entirely involving thriller is that director Paul Weitz, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anthony Weintrau, is best-known for helming coarse comedies like American Pie and Little Fockers.

Adapted from Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel, the film has celebrated soprano Rozanne Cross — played with full operatic magnitude by Julianne Moore — in an unspecified Latin America country to give a private concert sponsored by Japanese industrialist Katsumi Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe) at the Japanese embassy.

Cue a violent incursion by rebel guerillas, who take hostages as a bargaining chip for the release of their imprisoned comrade and an ensuing example of the Stockholm syndrome as hostages and terrorists bond. Meanwhile, Cross and Hosokawa embark on an affair while a Red Cross negotiator tries to end the siege.

Moore’s arias, dubbed by Renee Fleming, steal a show whose off-beat moral appears to be that kidnapping and being held hostage is a surefire aphrodisiac for terrorists and victims alike. Hmm.

AF

Ash is Purest White (15)
Directed by Jia Zhang-ke
★★★

THIS slow-burning melodrama, set in the criminal underworld of jianghu martial arts, follows a violent love affair over the course of 17 years.

It centres on the quick-witted and sharp-tongued Qiao (Tao Zhao) and her gangster boyfriend Bin (Fan Liao) who in 2001 start claiming their turf by beating off their rivals.

But after Qiao spends five years in jail for the sake of Bin, she emerges to discover a changing world and that Bin has not waited for her but gone on to forge a new life with another woman. Livid, she sets out to exact revenge.

Jia Zhang-ke’s drama is another exploration of a changing China as seen through the eyes of Qiao and her determination to survive, although her love for the loser Bin is a mystery.

Driven by Zhao’s captivating and powerhouse performance, it’s slick, exquisitely shot and wonderfully structured.

But it isn’t for the fainthearted.

MD