Birdman (2014). Co-written and directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The film opens with a meteor streaking across the sky. It then switches to the dressing room of a New York theatre, where Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is floating cross-legged in his underwear. He receives a Skype call from his daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), querying what flowers he ( Read more... )

Wild Tales (2014). Written and directed by Damián Szifron. The film starts on a plane mid-flight. Two of the passengers get talking and discover they both know a young man called Pasternak. A passenger behind them pipes up that he also knows Pasternark, followed by another passenger. Wild Tales is a mixed bag of a film, somewhat in the vein of ( Read more... )

When Marnie Was There (2014). Co-written and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. The film starts at a school. A young girl, Anna, sits on a bench separate from other students. She is sketching children at the playground. The teacher asks to see her drawing but is distracted by a child that has hurt himself. Anna thinks that she feels outside from ( Read more... )

It Follows (2014). Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Set in 80s USA, the film starts with a girl running from a house on a suburban street. A neighbour ask if she's OK and needs help, but she says she's OK. Her father leaves the house and asks if she's OK, and she runs back into the house. Seconds later she leaves the house again, gets ( Read more... )

Project Almanac (2015). Written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman, and directed by Dean Israelite. With the aid of his friends David Raskin (Jonny Weston) is filming an application for MIT based around gesture control of drones. Subsequently he gets into MIT, but without the scholarship he required to be able to afford it. Later he's ( Read more... )

Parasyte Part 1 (2014). Based on the manga by Hitoshi Iwaaki and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. The film starts with a spore of unknown origin in the ocean. The spore floats towards a dock where it produces tiny creatures that enter into shipping containers. As the containers are moved inland the creatures leave and start infecting people, entering ( Read more... )

Unbroken (2014). Based on the biography by Laura Hillenbrand and directed by Angelina Jolie. The film is initially set in 1943, during World War 2, with a number of US bombers attacking the Japanese island of Nauru. The story focusses on one of the bombers which is damaged by flak and struggles to land on the return to base. As with all ( Read more... )

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Co-written and directed by Matthew Vaughn. The film is set initially in the Middle East. A helicopter with soldiers hanging from it approaches a military base, and said soldiers take out the guards. The soldiers try to interrogate one of the enemy, but he has secreted a grenade and pulls the pin. One of the ( Read more... )

Jupiter Ascending (2015). Written and directed by The Wachowskis. The story is initially told in flashback, about 20 years in the past in Saint Petersburg. Maths professor, Aleksa, spots astrophysicist Maximillian Jones stargazing with his telescope while she is leaving the university where they both work. The two start talking and ultimately fall ( Read more... )

The Voices (2014). Written by Michael R Perry and directed by Marjane Sartrapi. Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) has been working several months at a bathtub factory, having been released from a mental hospital where he spent his adult life to-date. Unfortunately he's not taking the medication recommended by his court appointed psychiatrist and ( Read more... )