The highlights of the summer movie-going season.
Here at TMW, the Summer is usually our least favourite season, due to the reduced number of movies in cinemas, but this year offered more than few treats, and even the blockbuster fare impressed.
Here we count down the 10 best movies released in UK/ROI cinemas between May and August.
10. Detour
We said: Detour is all about the storytelling, and like the director he pays tribute so explicitly to here, Christopher Smith displays an ability to create a minor work of art with restricted means. Edgar G Ulmer would approve.
9. After the Storm
We said: After the Storm may not quite hit the peaks of the director's recent modern masterpieces, but even second tier Koreeda is essential cinema, and any opportunity to witness Kirin Kiki's wonderfully wrinkled face break into a smile is worth seizing.
8. Detroit
We said: America's complex racial issues deserve far better treatment than this, but as a fan of exploitation cinema, I'd be lying if I claimed Detroit wasn't one of the most impactful experiences I've had in a cinema in 2017.
7. Shin Godzilla
We said: Think The Martian, but with the core problem of saving a stranded botanist replaced with the mammoth task of destroying a giant lizard impervious to conventional weapons. By the movie's climax, the initially goofy looking Godzilla is no longer a laughing matter.
6. Inversion
We said: Though worse things happen to women in the Middle East on a daily basis, the psychological bullying of Niloofar is perhaps more relatable for western audiences than, say, a woman being stoned for adultery (in much the same way a paper cut produces louder screams from an audience than a beheading), and you'll find your blood boiling at the arrogance and insensitivity of her narcissistic siblings.
5. The Untamed
We said: Depending on how far you personally embrace the idea of 'live and let live' when it comes to sexual gratification, The Untamed will play as either a sickening piece of shock cinema or a celebration of the physical pleasures enjoyed by all creatures.
4. Dunkirk
We said: In lesser hands this could play like a traditional disaster movie, introducing us to an array of familiar faces only to cruelly pick them off. Instead, what Nolan has fashioned is closer to the propaganda films of silent Soviet cinema, more Battleship Potemkin than Titanic.
3. War for the Planet of the Apes
We said: For those who appreciate pure cinema, stories told through pictures rather than words, War is a rare opportunity to revel in the previously untapped possibilities of the modern blockbuster format.
2. It Comes at Night
We said: It Comes at Night has infuriated many cinemagoers, upset that they weren't given the horror movie the film's marketing hinted at. But Shults' film is very much a horror movie. It may not explicitly feature a haunted house, but it does feature a house that's haunting its human dwellers, causing them to reject their humanity in order to protect their narrow material idea of civilisation.
1. Harmonium
We said: Fukada's film is one you'll find yourself haunted by for a considerable time after viewing, as it refuses to wrap itself up neatly. Like its distraught protagonists, Harmonium cruelly leaves us seeking emotional closure.