Shortly after debuting at Coachella Festival, Guava Island – the new film starring Donald Glover and Rihanna – has been made available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Set in Cuba, the thriller arrived on the streaming service at 8.01am UK time on Saturday (13 April).
Glover – who will headline the festival under his musical moniker Childish Gambino – said of the film: ”I’m really humbled having the opportunity to present something this timely and timeless.
“Between Rihanna and the people of Cuba, this is one of my favourite projects I’ve ever worked on.”
1/17 The Favourite
“Macabre and fraught though The Favourite gets, this isn’t so much a film about sex or power as it is about plain mischief. It’s a hilarious, buffoonish pleasure, right down to the sets and costume design, and a breeze to spend 120 minutes with.” Christopher Hooton
Fox Searchlight Pictures
2/17 Beautiful Boy
“Casting Chalamet as Nic was a very clever move. The young actor from Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird has a natural charm and charisma. He still engages an audience’s curiosity and sympathy even when his behaviour is at its most selfish and erratic.” Geoffrey Macnab
Amazon Studios
3/17 The House by the Sea
“Guédiguian’s storytelling style is deceptive. At first, it seems as if this is low-key social realism in the Dardennes or Ken Loach mould, albeit set on the French Riviera. Gradually, though, we realise how stylised and theatrical his approach really is.” Geoffrey Macnab
4/17 Stan & Ollie
“Director Jon S Baird, whose previous film was scabrous Irvine Welsh adaptation Filth, wrings every last drop of pathos he can from his material. This is very much a case of the tears of the clowns.” Geoffrey Macnab
Entertainment One
5/17 Vice
“Vice is bravura storytelling. McKay isn’t only taking us through Cheney’s life and career but is giving us a whistle stop tour through US politics from the Nixon administration almost right to the present day.” Geoffrey Macnab
Annapurna Pictures
6/17 Can You Ever Forgive Me?
“Playing Lee Israel, McCarthy manages something very special: she makes a character who is odd, obnoxious, difficult and alcoholic seem lovable and even heroic. The rest of the world is at fault, not Lee.” Geoffrey Macnab
Fox Searchlight Pictures
7/17 Green Book
“Green Book flatters the audience about its own good sense and tolerance. It deals with racism and homophobia but still has a fairytale, fantasy feel to it. Whatever humiliations Don endures on their road trip, we know no real harm will ever come to him as long as Tony is at his side.” Geoffrey Macnab
Universal Pictures
8/17 Velvet Buzzsaw
“The golden age of bonkers horror movies is gloriously evoked by Netflix’s latest feature length presentation. Beginning as a satire of the arts world, Velvet Buzzsaw swiftly and gleefully descends into a savage splatter-fest, smeared in paint, viscera and garishly-bright blood.” Ed Power
Netflix
9/17 If Beale Street Could Talk
“The setting is New York in the 1970s. Anyone who has watched Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver knows this was an era of violence, corruption and sleaze on a monumental level, but [Barry] Jenkins somehow makes the city seem like a modern-day Eden.” Geoffrey Macnab
Annapurna Pictures
10/17 All Is True
“Written by Ben Elton and directed by its star Kenneth Branagh, the film plays so fast and loose with the playwright’s final years that they needn’t have bothered fitting Branagh with a prosthetic nose – accuracy is clearly not the priority here.” Alexandra Pollard
Sony Pictures Classics
11/17 The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
“The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is the doomed progeny of a celebrated genius – brilliant but slightly stunted by the knowledge they will never live up to their predecessor.” Clarisse Loughrey
Warner Bros. Pictures
12/17 Piercing
“Nicolas Pesce’s sleek and stylish horror comedy is repulsive and funny by turns. In adapting Ryu Murakami’s cult novel, Pesce strikes just the right balance between humour and Grand Guignol-style shock tactics.” Geoffrey Macnab
Universal Pictures
13/17 Capernaum
“The best moments here are remarkable. Labaki elicits an astonishing performance from her young lead. He’s an irrepressible figure with such an inbuilt sense of moral decency the film seems upbeat and optimistic, even at its darkest moments.” Geoffrey Macnab
Sony Pictures Classics
14/17 US
“Doppelgangers abound in Jordan Peele’s weird, creepy and ingenious new horror film. As in his Oscar-winning 2017 feature Get Out, Peele leavens matters with ironic humour but the joking becomes increasingly uncomfortable once the main characters come face to face with dark shadows of themselves which wish them extreme harm.”
AP
15/17 The White Crow
“Ralph Fiennes combines thriller elements with poetic flashbacks to ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev’s childhood and keeps a tight focus on the dancer. When he is most at risk, Nureyev makes decisions with his artistic future more in mind than his personal safety. As Fiennes reminds us again and again in what is his best film yet as a director, the ‘white crow’ will do anything to put himself in the limelight, the one place he is convinced he belongs.”
StudioCanal
16/17 Border
“Border reverses the perspective taken by most other horror films. In more conventional genre fare, Tina and Vore would be portrayed as malevolent outsiders, but in the world conjured up by director Ali Abbasi, the humans are the monsters. Tina is the innocent – a visionary who hardly understands her own powers but who can sense human venality and corruption wherever it appears.”
TriArt Film
17/17 Fighting with My Family
“Certain scenes feel very trite and predictable but the film gets you in a choke hold early on and won’t let you go. It is far more gripping than its subject matter might suggest. Who ever would believe a story about a wrestling family from Norwich could have quite such heart and resonance?”
James Field
1/17 The Favourite
“Macabre and fraught though The Favourite gets, this isn’t so much a film about sex or power as it is about plain mischief. It’s a hilarious, buffoonish pleasure, right down to the sets and costume design, and a breeze to spend 120 minutes with.” Christopher Hooton
Fox Searchlight Pictures
2/17 Beautiful Boy
“Casting Chalamet as Nic was a very clever move. The young actor from Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird has a natural charm and charisma. He still engages an audience’s curiosity and sympathy even when his behaviour is at its most selfish and erratic.” Geoffrey Macnab
Amazon Studios
3/17 The House by the Sea
“Guédiguian’s storytelling style is deceptive. At first, it seems as if this is low-key social realism in the Dardennes or Ken Loach mould, albeit set on the French Riviera. Gradually, though, we realise how stylised and theatrical his approach really is.” Geoffrey Macnab
4/17 Stan & Ollie
“Director Jon S Baird, whose previous film was scabrous Irvine Welsh adaptation Filth, wrings every last drop of pathos he can from his material. This is very much a case of the tears of the clowns.” Geoffrey Macnab
Entertainment One
5/17 Vice
“Vice is bravura storytelling. McKay isn’t only taking us through Cheney’s life and career but is giving us a whistle stop tour through US politics from the Nixon administration almost right to the present day.” Geoffrey Macnab
Annapurna Pictures
6/17 Can You Ever Forgive Me?
“Playing Lee Israel, McCarthy manages something very special: she makes a character who is odd, obnoxious, difficult and alcoholic seem lovable and even heroic. The rest of the world is at fault, not Lee.” Geoffrey Macnab
Fox Searchlight Pictures
7/17 Green Book
“Green Book flatters the audience about its own good sense and tolerance. It deals with racism and homophobia but still has a fairytale, fantasy feel to it. Whatever humiliations Don endures on their road trip, we know no real harm will ever come to him as long as Tony is at his side.” Geoffrey Macnab
Universal Pictures
8/17 Velvet Buzzsaw
“The golden age of bonkers horror movies is gloriously evoked by Netflix’s latest feature length presentation. Beginning as a satire of the arts world, Velvet Buzzsaw swiftly and gleefully descends into a savage splatter-fest, smeared in paint, viscera and garishly-bright blood.” Ed Power
Netflix
9/17 If Beale Street Could Talk
“The setting is New York in the 1970s. Anyone who has watched Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver knows this was an era of violence, corruption and sleaze on a monumental level, but [Barry] Jenkins somehow makes the city seem like a modern-day Eden.” Geoffrey Macnab
Annapurna Pictures
10/17 All Is True
“Written by Ben Elton and directed by its star Kenneth Branagh, the film plays so fast and loose with the playwright’s final years that they needn’t have bothered fitting Branagh with a prosthetic nose – accuracy is clearly not the priority here.” Alexandra Pollard
Sony Pictures Classics
11/17 The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
“The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is the doomed progeny of a celebrated genius – brilliant but slightly stunted by the knowledge they will never live up to their predecessor.” Clarisse Loughrey
Warner Bros. Pictures
12/17 Piercing
“Nicolas Pesce’s sleek and stylish horror comedy is repulsive and funny by turns. In adapting Ryu Murakami’s cult novel, Pesce strikes just the right balance between humour and Grand Guignol-style shock tactics.” Geoffrey Macnab
Universal Pictures
13/17 Capernaum
“The best moments here are remarkable. Labaki elicits an astonishing performance from her young lead. He’s an irrepressible figure with such an inbuilt sense of moral decency the film seems upbeat and optimistic, even at its darkest moments.” Geoffrey Macnab
Sony Pictures Classics
14/17 US
“Doppelgangers abound in Jordan Peele’s weird, creepy and ingenious new horror film. As in his Oscar-winning 2017 feature Get Out, Peele leavens matters with ironic humour but the joking becomes increasingly uncomfortable once the main characters come face to face with dark shadows of themselves which wish them extreme harm.”
AP
15/17 The White Crow
“Ralph Fiennes combines thriller elements with poetic flashbacks to ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev’s childhood and keeps a tight focus on the dancer. When he is most at risk, Nureyev makes decisions with his artistic future more in mind than his personal safety. As Fiennes reminds us again and again in what is his best film yet as a director, the ‘white crow’ will do anything to put himself in the limelight, the one place he is convinced he belongs.”
StudioCanal
16/17 Border
“Border reverses the perspective taken by most other horror films. In more conventional genre fare, Tina and Vore would be portrayed as malevolent outsiders, but in the world conjured up by director Ali Abbasi, the humans are the monsters. Tina is the innocent – a visionary who hardly understands her own powers but who can sense human venality and corruption wherever it appears.”
TriArt Film
17/17 Fighting with My Family
“Certain scenes feel very trite and predictable but the film gets you in a choke hold early on and won’t let you go. It is far more gripping than its subject matter might suggest. Who ever would believe a story about a wrestling family from Norwich could have quite such heart and resonance?”
James Field
The trailer for Guava Island – directed by Hiro Murai and co-starring Letitia Wright and Nonso Anozie – debuted at Pharos Festival in New Zealand last year.
Murai said: “Guava Island is the end result of four incredible weeks spent in Cuba with some of the most inspiring creative talents I’ve ever met.
“Designers, performers, musicians, and filmmakers came together from all over the world to create this crazy fever dream of a production.”
