engagingly

This comfortingly familiar Irish underdog sports movie deviates for not one single second of its running time from the formula. You can tell exactly where it’s going the moment you catch a glimpse of a rowdy women’s rowing team downing shots to celebrate a rare victory – they don’t have a hope in hell’s chance of making it to the tournament final. It’s a film so predictable that you could probably leave the room for 15 minutes and not miss a beat, but it has a big heart and enough easygoing banter to make it watchable.…

British indie director Jon Sanders creates another of his low-key, thoughtful movies developed through improvisation; it is a static, eccentric chamber piece in some ways, but engaging and pregnant with ideas about mourning and grief. Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers play Dot and Phoebe, two sisters who have come to the seaside home of their late mother, a singer and entertainer, to confront the daunting task of sorting out all her belongings and theatrical memorabilia.This opens up painful memories and psychic wounds:…

Feature first-timer Raine Allen Miller directs this romcom urban-pastoral, goofing and freewheeling around the streets of south London with an almost childlike innocence – shot by Olan Collardy in rich colour with cartoony wide-angle streetscapes, and scripted by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia. Unsubtle and on-the-nose though it undoubtedly is, there is also an amiable, upbeat energy.It benefits from two sympathetic leads: Vivian Oparah (from BBC TV’s Dr Who spin-off Class) and David Jonsson. Oparah plays Yas, a wannabe…