Love is Strange (15), directed by Ira Sachs

LOVE, marriage and commitment in the face of adversity are depicted with raw honesty in Love is Strange, one of the most delightful and tender romantic dramas of the year.

It stars Alfred Molina as George, a music teacher at a Catholic school who is fired after he marries his partner of 39 years Ben (John Lithgow).

The couple are then forced to sell their New York apartment and stay separately with family and friends while they look for cheaper accommodation.

Co-written and directed by Ira Sachs, the film explores the pain and tensions of living apart and being a third and unwelcome member of someone else’s household.

It’s a pretty simple and straightforward drama but it’s lifted to stratospheric heights by the remarkable performances of Molina and Lithgow, who make a believable and loving couple whose unfair predicament hits home.

Although this is about a gay couple the problems and pressures that they face are universal.

Thoughtful and touching, Love is Strange is a heart-wrenching depiction of love and marriage.

Maria Duarte

Snow in Paradise (18), directed by Andrew Hulme

“I FOUND someone with a story so incredible I was compelled to try and tell it in cinematic form,” director Andrew Hulme says of his low-budget, high-cliche drama.

The narrative, based on a true story, is certainly simple. Petty East End criminal and full-on drug user Dave (Frederick Schmidt) is basically a gopher for his gangster uncle Jimmy (Martin Askew), a smiling and lethally inclined drug lord.

Schmidt’s actions, including stealing drugs from a pick-up for his uncle, lead to the death of his best friend Tariq (Aymen Hamdouchi). He finds solace at the mosque the latter attended — a sudden switch in character which fails to convince.

Even so, it’s visually impressive enough, with Hulme establishing the petty crime milieu effectively from the off and he’s particularly well served by Mark Wolf’s atmospheric location cinematography.

Schmidt performs adequately enough, as does Askew in underscoring the essential menace of the drug-dealing world he operates in.

But there’s little new on offer, with the usual four-letter words employed to establish the characters as real people. Unfortunately, they are all too obviously “reel” characters.

Ethan Carter

Love is All (12A), directed by Kim Longionotto

BASED on cleverly chosen and thematically appropriate clips from documentaries and feature films ranging from 1911 to the present, this extraordinary and genuinely poignant documentary vividly and uniquely examines love in its many forms.

There’s entertainment for anyone interested in the art of film along with a compelling education in the changing aspects of love, from early silent dramas to groundbreakers like My Beautiful Laundrette and coverage of a contemporary gay wedding in Islington.

Another plus is Richard Hawley’s score, which aurally matches director Kim Longionotto’s unique version of variations in love through the ages.

A rare movie, deserving to be seen more than once.

Ethan Carter

Coherence (15), directed by James Ward Byrkit

IT’S difficult not to appreciate a low-budget shocker eschewing cliched found footage to tell a tall tale of four couples whose evening is scarily disrupted by a passing comet.

While special effects are few, writer-director James Ward Byrkit — filming in his living room — uses excellent sound effects to underline the sense of unease.

As lights, mobiles and internet fail as the comet approaches, tension mounts to an unexpected climactic resolution.

While the storytelling could have done with rather more coherence, how can you castigate a film containing a line so sadly appropriate to our times: “What did we do without cellphones?”

Ethan Carter