Hangry: bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger; also the title of the most recent short film from UK Indie writer/director Daniel Harding. Fusing classic horror elements with a modern twist (and adding a few dashes of macabre humour), a posh British couple, Clarey (Sophie Dearlove) and Boyd (Neil James), are taking a trip away from the stresses of their big city life, though, along the way, get lost in the countryside. Both a bit peckish, a surly, ornery attitude begins to seep into their conversation – I am quite sure we have all been there before.

After a much lauded rebirth of the Star Wars franchise with 2015's The Force Awakens (directed by J.J. Abrams), it is understandable why the 2017 sequel, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, this time written and directed by Rian Johnson (Looper), is one of the most anticipated films of the year. To keep your mind at ease, I will attempt to keep this one mostly spoiler free. Picking up almost immediately after the 2015 offering ended (the first time a Star Wars film has done this), the remaining Resistance fighters are being mercilessly tracked soon after a First Order fleet has attacked their planetary base. Led by the unifying Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), she must try to navigate them away from General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). By her side is the fast talking, wild-card hero fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), who is no less spontaneous. Finn (John Boyega), having recovered from his injuries, has his own secret mission with Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) – a new addition to the franchise.

As three volunteering women rush aboard a river-boat that takes children from underprivileged families on an annual daytrip, they receive an unexpected letter from one of their friends explaining that she has left their quaint little city behind with one of their beloved husbands in tow, putting each into a state of crisis. This is the suspenseful hook for the 1949 romantic drama A Letter to Three Wives, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The letter writer is voice over narrator Addie Ross (Oscar winner Celeste Holm) – the sultry, well connected dame is never shown, and the husband she has run off with is also left in the dark until almost the very end. Doing their duty as good citizens, Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), three longtime friends, take the kids on the cruise and stop off to have a picnic, each flashing back (at a moment when they are not busy) to a time in which their significant other may have shown their true colours in regards to Addie.

Indie darling Greta Gerwig makes her solo writing/directorial debut with Lady Bird, a coming of age film that has been building strongly towards the 2017-2018 Awards season. . . earning an almost unheard of rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Many of the plot points will sound familiar when it comes to a coming of age tale – teen angst, strife between mother and daughter, obsession with sex and losing your virginity, first love, applying for colleges, joining the school theatre club, crushes on teachers and other such things; though, it is not these things that are truly important, but rather the honest, realistic voice in which it is told.

Long before Zac Efron and his fraternity bros started terrorizing new parents Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne in the 2014 comedy Neighbors, there was another movie with the same name, a superlative 1920 short from the great Buster Keaton (one of his first four shorts on his own). A tale of star crossed lovers, The Boy (Buster Keaton) and The Girl (Virginia Fox – originally one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties, she would marry major Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, retiring from the business just a few years later) are madly in love, though the fence that separates their tenement apartments might as well be topped with barbed wire and armed with snipers, as their families despise each other – a feud rivalling the Montague’s and Capulet’s. Both fathers are especially involved in keeping the pair apart, though The Girl’s giant sized Father (Joe Roberts) is a much bigger threat than The Boy’s equally diminutive dad (played by Buster’s own father, Joe). Early each morning, they slip notes through a hole in the fence to communicate.

Landing somewhere in between French New Wave, older classic French features and the grand Hollywood musical, Jacques Demy’s 1964 colourful kaleidoscopic romantic drama, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, is most definitely not your typical movie musical. Firstly, there is no dancing (a standard in musicals), rather, Demy orchestrates many lengthy choreographed takes with his camera – it adding the graceful movement that would usually be asked of the actors. But, more importantly, and at greater risk, every single line of dialogue in Cherbourg is sung. Perhaps a bit daunting to movie audiences, it does, in some ways, make sense. I have never bought into the idea that people would just randomly break into song and dance at any given time. . . only a few films giving some sort of reason for this (see Singin’ in the Rain and La La Land), so it is more plausible, in this vividly toned movie landscape, that people naturally sing all the time – this means no distracting breaks between song and talk.