Miles Ahead (15)
Directed by Don Cheadle
4/5
IF YOU’RE anticipating a conventional biopic of jazz legend Miles Davis, this one-off — no orthodox Hollywood offering — will be a surprise. Like jazz itself, much of it seems interestingly improvised.
Co-writer — with Steven Baigelman — co-producer, director and star Don Cheadle is outstanding. His version of Davis, he’s explained, sets out to make an entertaining “rock and roll” film about a multi-talented musician in a non-traditional, subversive way, rather than “simply chronicle the highlights and low-lights of his life.”
His central storyline finds drug-addicted recluse Davis shaken up in the late 1970s by a fictitious Rolling Stone journalist (Ewan McGregor) and lured into a series of wild adventures involving, among other often surreal elements, a car chase, Davis puling a gun on a CBS executive and flashbacks to his relationship with first wife (Emayatzy Corinealdi)
The storyline’s frequently less than convincing but that’s an irrelevance. What matters is Cheadle’s magnificently compelling portrait of his sad, enigmatic and foul-mouthed subject, cruelly referred to as more profitable dead than alive, a sad fate that awaits many artists.
It’s a film which is more fable than fact. But if you want the real Davis, his recordings are immortal.
Review by Alan Frank

Louder than Bombs (15)
Directed by Joachim Trier
3/5
NORWEGIAN film-maker Joachim Trier’s first English-language film, co-written with Eskil Vogt, follows a father and his two sons during their harsh emotional battles as they try to come to terms with the death of their celebrated war photographer mother two years previously.
Despite strong performances and a sensibly restrained approach to an over-sentimentalised storyline, it’s a film which ultimately struck me as rather too novelette-ish. 
Yet key performances add authenticity to a sometimes cliched drama.
Isabelle Huppert is memorable as the father’s photojournalist wife and mother, Gabriel Byrne’s performance is convincingly modulated as the paterfamilias, notably in the run-ins with his two sons.
Jesse Eisenberg as the older sibling is excellent, too, especially after his fey villainous turn in Batman vs Superman and youngest son Devon Druid (“The Billy Elliott of Hip-Hop!”), addicted to computer games as refuge from grief, is painfully convincing.
Review Alan Frank

Desert Dancer (15)
Directed by Richard Raymond
3/5
BRACE yourselves for a powerful and moving drama about the fight for the freedom of expression which we take so readily for granted.
Richard Raymond delivers an impressive directorial debut with this feature based on the true story of Iranian choreographer Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life to become a dancer.
Set in Iran in 2009, where dance is banned, it shows how Afshin (Reece Ritchie) formed an illegal underground dance company with his university friends, played by Freida Pinto, Tom Cullen and Marama Corlett, and decided to stage a performance in the desert in defiance of the authorities.
Ritchie gives a heartbreaking turn as Afshin who, after being arrested and beaten up for dancing and taking part in protest demonstrations over the presidential election results, flees the country and goes to Paris where he seeks political asylum.
It may feel like the Iranian equivalent of Billy Elliot but you can’t help but be touched by Afshin’s remarkable story.
Review by Maria Duarte