As April turns into May, cinemas are alive with new releases. It sees the release of the adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic love story, Far from the Madding Crowd, a new animated take on the Noah’s Ark tale with Two By Two, and the haunting Unfriended. Exam season may be on the horizon but it is not here yet- so take this time out for a trip to the cinema for one of this week’s films.
8 1/2 is a rerelease of Frederico Fellini’s 1963 film. Winning two Academy Awards, for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design, the film centres on a famous movie director named Guido Anselmi, who finds himself retreating into his memories and fantasies when suffering from ‘director’s block.’
Anti-Social is a crime film set in central London, today. It focuses on two brothers, Dee, a street-artist confronting the new system, and Marcus, an armed robber involved in a jewellery shop crime wave. It depicts anti-socialism as a way of life in the urban world for the two brothers.
Argerich shows the portrait of a mother through a daughter’s eyes, as it follows Argentine pianist Martha Argerich, filmed by daughter Stéphanie Argerich. The film documents sequences focusing on Martha and her husband Stephen in their everyday lives, rehearsal and performance, and was filmed across two decades all over the world.
Bad Land: Road to Fury stars Michael Shannon, Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning. The film is set in the future where a drought has rendered water almost impossible to find, and the land is dried out. A teenage boy must set out in search of water in order to protect his family, and to survive.
The Blood Street is a project by Darshan Darvesh. It is a Punjabi action movie that follows the ruin of the streets as violence leads to the spilling of blood.
Terrorism and family come head to head in Born of War. After her whole family is killed, Mina discovers that her real father is a terrorist, and behind the deaths. Mina then works with British Intelligence in order to hunt her father down in what becomes a seemingly impossible search for justice.
In Darkest Day, Dan awakes on a beach with no memory to discover an empty city that has been destroyed by a deadly virus. He befriends a select group of survivors before he must fight to escape the army that are hunting him down.
Elsa & Fred is a true heartfelt story of two people at the end of the road. 80 year-old Fred and 74 year-old Elsa meet before Elsa is diagnosed with a terminal illness and love unexpectedly blossoms. When Elsa receives her diagnosis, Fred makes it his mission to make her dream come true: to re-enact the scene from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita at the Trevi fountain in Rome.
Falstaff Chimes at Midnight centres on the career of Shakespeare’s recurring character Sir John Falstaff as the roistering companion to young Prince Hal between 1400 and 1413. Orson Welles directs the somewhat paternal relationship between the two.
Carey Mulligan stars as the headstrong Bathsheba Everdene in the adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic love story, Far From The Madding Crowd. Adapted for the screen by David Nicholls (One Day), the film is set in Victorian England as Bathsheba attracts three very different suitors; a sheep farmer, a reckless sergeant and a prosperous bachelor.
Gabbar Is Back follows Gabbar Singh Rajput as he creates a vigilante military network called the Anti-Corruption Force to tackle the corruption of his government.
Get Up & Go, comedy-drama following a close nit group of friends entering and leaving their twenties who, being to toy with the concept of adulthood, must re-consider the reality of those lives and friendships taken for granted since their teenage years.
The Hero Of Colour City, children’s animated film about a group of crayons forced to confront a terrifying monster in order to protect the imagination of children everywhere. Voice starring Owen Wilson, Christina Ricci and Rosie Perez.
I Am Big Bird, a documentary feature about the life and work of Carroll Spinney, the cameo actress responsible for Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969. Still going strong at the age of 78 this old bird has no plans for retirement.
Gina Carano, Cam Gigandet and Danny Trejo star in In The Blood, action thriller following the self-guided mission of Ava, a woman whose husband mysteriously disappeared during a romantic Caribbean retreat. Certain she has identified those men responsible, Ava is keen to take justice with her own hands.
Letter To Momo, still reeling from the passing of her loving father young Momo moves with her mother from bustling Tokyo to the remote island of Shio. But when the superficial tranquillity of the island is disrupted by a series of bizarre occurrences and a strange mumbling from the attic of her new home, Momo embarks on a supernatural quest to discover the source of the mischief.
Monsters: Dark Continent, the long awaited sequel to Monsters is set ten years on from the original when the ‘infected zones’ have spread worldwide. A new insurgency in the Middle East calls for army intervention to deal with the growing epidemic.
Samba, French comedy-drama starring Omar Sy as Samba a migrant born in Senegal whose life is spent plugging away at lowly paid jobs until fate draws him to Alice, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, a senior executive struggling to recover her career after a psychological breakdown.
In the animated comedy-adventure Two By Two: Ooops…The Ark Has Gone, the end of the world is approaching, but luckily for Nestrian Dave and his son Finny an ark has been built to save all animals. Or so they thought. It soon becomes apparent that Nestrians are not included in the rescue mission.
Unfriended, a supernatural horror starring Mathew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson and Heather Sossaman as a group of online chat friends who find themselves subject to torment by a mysterious force accessing the account of their dead friend.
We Are Monster, drama depicting the story of Robert Stewart, a well-known violent racist whose placement in Feltham Young Offender Institute saw him share a cell with Zahid Mubarek, a pairing which led to Mubarek’s brutal murder six weeks later.
