Wasp Network
Released on Netflix with a lack of publicity remarkable even by Netflix standards, Olivier Assayas’s new film got sniffy write-ups on the festival circuit but is worth disinterring. It reunites him with his Carlos lead Édgar Ramirez, tackling that film’s terrorist subject matter from the opposite end of the political spectrum – although Assayas knows the pleasure of this kind of Le Carré-esque yarn is that all political allegiances are subject to review. Its scarcely believable true story involves an alliance of Cuban ex-pats in Florida who traffic drugs and carry out a heinous string of terrorist atrocities in the cause of deposing Castro – all while the US intelligence agencies turn a suspiciously blind eye. Like its titular animal, there’s no shortage of stings in the tale. It’s a film that looks beneath the comforting promises governments offer their people – strong borders, no drugs, no Commies – and finds abject, psychopathic levels of cynical calculation underneath. Good election year viewing, is what I’m saying. Graham Williamson
The Way I See It
Taking us behind the lens of White House photographer Pete Souza, this documentary from Dawn Porter offered up a mesmerising bit of history. Souza’s responsibilities and life are shown with such interest, a good array of anecdotes make the rounds as he talks us through his time as the former Chief Official White House Photographer. Detailing the days of Ronald Reagan all the way through to his time under Barack Obama, we’re offered an incredible display of modern political history, all captured through the lens of a talented photographer. Possibly the most insightful and engaging political documentary to release this year, The Way I See It is a strong documentary. Ewan Gleadow
The Whalebone Box
One of the more unexpected consequences of No Time to Die being pulled from its original April date was that this plucky piece of counter-programming from the increasingly prolific Andrew Kötting became the week’s major release. The Whalebone Box is ostensibly about the writer Iain Sinclair’s quest to bury an Edwardian box in the location where a whale (whose bones it was carved from) was beached. In practice, as ever, it is about whatever Kötting wants it to be about. He is still keenly attuned to our current golden age of nature writing, interviewing Leviathan or, The Whale author Philip Hoare. The true charm of the film, though, comes from its focus on Kötting’s relationship with his daughter Eden, which is as central here as it was in his epochal debut Gallivant. Kötting’s films are trippy, esoteric and experimental, but they also have a heart and tenderness that’s unique among avant-gardeists. This is as solid a proof of that as anything he’s done. Graham Williamson
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