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Up-to-date insider information on all Beijing has to offer

Dead Pigs

Dead Pigs

Dead Pigs makes an ensemble movie out of today's Shanghai and the people we know in it: a young busboy, an ambitious American architect, an apathetic rich girl, a western face for nightclubs and a no-bullshit ayi who refuses to sell her property. Their disparate lives converge and come to a head when, mirroring real-life events, thousands of rotting pig carcasses are found floating in the Huangpu River, Shanghai's drinking water source. Director Cathy Yan's debut film won an award for ensemble acting at Sundance and has screened at film festivals internationally.


Image: courtesy Seesaw Entertainment

The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner

Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon is slowly building a rep for producing hand-drawn gems like this gem set in Taliban-controlled Kabul. It’s the story of a girl who must pass as a boy under an oppressive, misogynistic state in order to glean crucial supplies for her family. It’s heartbreaking stuff, too. In fact, only a fantastical story-in-the-story stitched into its fabric saves it from rinsing out your tear ducts altogether.


Image: courtesy Cartoon Saloon

Lean on Pete

Lean on Pete

Rivalling Debra Granik’s equally terrific Leave No Trace in our hastily identified new genre of ‘social realist pastoral drama loosely involving animals’ is this showcase for the rich talents of Charlie Plummer as a kid travelling cross-country with a horse. Surprisingly, it’s directed by a Brit – Weekend's Andrew Haigh – though you’d never know it. This is a movie with an acute eye for the cadences of life on America’s margins.


Image: courtesy The Bureau

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Hitting Shanghai cinemas at the end of the month (Aug 31), the sixth and best Mission movie, Fallout proves that as long as Tom Cruise has legs, so does this franchise. It’s now a slicker, simpler proposition than the series it’s often compared with – James Bond – not least for blazing a trail with smart, complex female characters. Having a settled director in the skilful, cineaste Christopher McQuarrie doesn’t hurt either. Oh, and the set-pieces rock.


Image: courtesy Skydance Media

The Square

The Square

A vicious art-world satire, Ruben Östlund’s Cannes-winning comedy scores points against the fictional staffers of a Swedish contemporary art museum – especially its chief curator, a stylish nincompoop who gracelessly opens several cans of worms. (Brace for Elisabeth Moss as a nightmarish sexual conquest.) The movie is a brutal takedown of moneyed self-entitlement, with humour that sneaks up on you, as it did with Östlund’s Force Majeure.


Image: courtesy Plattform Produktion

Coco

Coco

In Pixar we trust and all that, but a movie about a bunch of dead people and skeletons clattering around in the afterlife still seemed like a tough sell. We needn’t have worried: this kaleidoscopic adventure is a rich tapestry of Mexican folk stories, hummable songs, lovable sidekicks and richly drawn characters. Best of all, it tackles death and grief with sensitivity but no soppiness or sentiment. Never has a film about death burst with so much life.


Image: courtesy Walt Disney Pictures

Lady Bird

Lady Bird

Stepping out of the shadow of her own onscreen persona as a mumblecore It girl made good, Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this semi-autobiographical stunner about a chatty Sacramento teen who yearns to be anywhere but home. The movie was anchored by the arresting Saoirse Ronan, continuing her post-Brooklyn run as the most exquisitely transparent actor of her age. Prediction: just as there’s a Breakfast Club generation, there will be a Lady Bird one.


Image: courtesy Scott Rudin Productions

Annihilation

Annihilation

Don’t be surprised that Alex Garland, the genius behind Ex Machina and some of your favourite scripts (28 Days Later, Sunshine), made our cut of the best films of the year so far. Here’s what you can be surprised by: Annihilation is an action movie led by an all-female cast, with hints of Tarkovsky-like metaphysics.


Image: courtesy Skydance Media

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