What films are out in UK cinemas this week? Reviews from Resident Evil to Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
Even though video game adaptations have been getting a better critical reception of late, most of the majors hits have been on the small, rather than the big screen.
But Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil film – which completely reboots the franchise – looks to have finally delivered a video game movie that is earning just about unanimous praise.
Meanwhile, if you're after a very different sort of horror film to watch in cinemas, then new Shaun the Sheep movie The Beast of Mossy Bottom delivers some rather more family friendly scares, and is also very much worth your time.
Also out in UK cinemas this weekend there's the Saoirse Ronan-led black comedy Bad Apples, Juliette Binoche-starring drama Queen at Sea, and the second part of a French historical epic about Charles De Gaulle.
You can check out our verdict of all of those new films below, and you can also discover our lowdown on the other major movies released in UK cinemas in recent weeks which are still available at your local movie theatre, including The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Want to see this content?
This page contains content provided by Google reCAPTCHA. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as Google reCAPTCHA may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose 'Accept and continue' to allow Google reCAPTCHA and its required purposes.
Read on for your weekly round-up of all the films currently showing in UK cinemas.
What films are released in UK cinemas this week? 18 – 24 September
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
A few days before Halloween, Shaun the Sheep (voiced by Justin Fletcher) and the Flock are tending to their secret pumpkin patch, hiding it from the Farmer and sheepdog Bitzer (both John Sparkes). When the Farmer stumbles across it, he wrecks them all, leading Shaun to get creative in his mad science lab to rapidly grow new ones.
Meanwhile, the Farmer wants to impress the Vet (Nina Sosanya) and invite her to the Halloween Hoedown, but he goes missing, and a gigantic, furry beast appears in the woods of Mossingham. The spooky setting comes with plenty of gags, so it never veers into being too scary for kids (in fact, it's a great gateway horror for them), but adults will love genre references that span from Psycho and Friday the 13th to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Nosferatu.
Aardman Animations’ technical artistry and stop-motion storytelling never fail to impress – and bold new sets and looks for Shaun’s third outing make it the biggest Flockload of fun for the franchise yet. – Laura Rutkowski
- Read our full Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom review
- Read our exclusive behind-the-scenes look
Resident Evil
A star rating of 5 out of 5.
There have been a fair few Resident Evil films over the years, but this film from Weapons and Barbarian director Zach Cregger, is comfortably the best yet. It’s evident after watching the film that Cregger isn’t just a fan of the video game franchise, he understands the DNA that sits at its very heart.
Choosing to craft an original story set within the universe, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), an organ courier who decides to take a last-minute gig delivering something very important to Raccoon City. Bryan is an everyman who’s a bit of an endearing screw-up and Cregger balances intense moments with both humour and body horror spectacle as his night goes from bad to worse.
It’s big, gory fun that highlights how a normal person might react to discovering a dog with tentacles pouring from its orifices. The structure of the film is fleshed out like a game run-through and there are references to the games littered throughout but they’re subtle nods to world lore rather than anything more egregious. – Ben Rayner
Bad Apples
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
A beleaguered primary-school teacher takes her anger at a problem pupil to extremes in this marvellous satire. Try as she might, dedicated Maria (a ballsy Saoirse Ronan) is unable to cope with the unruly, disruptive Danny (Eddie Waller), whose vile behaviour in class is a mask for his own emotional deficiencies.
He’s a kid any teacher would want removed from their register, something Maria has a chance to do after she and Danny clash during an encounter out of school. Inspired by Swedish author Rasmus Andersson’s novel The Unwanted, Maria’s rash actions may stretch credulity, but director Jonatan Etzler eases the film into blackly comic terrain to the point where you’re along for the ride regardless.
Maria’s increasing desperation is infectious, especially when Danny’s fellow pupil Pauline (Nia Brown) gets involved, and the film becomes a power play between teacher, student and, ultimately, the PTA committee. Asking just how far you’d go for your child’s education, this is howlingly funny. – James Mottram
Queen at Sea
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay headline this powerful, nuanced family drama. Binoche is Amanda, an academic who comes to London to deal with her ailing mother Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who is suffering from dementia. After clashing with stepfather Martin (Courtenay), Amanda calls in the authorities, arguing that his continuing sexual encounters with her mother are non-consensual – it's an emotionally driven decision that soon spirals.
Meanwhile, Amanda's teenage daughter (Florence Hunt) starts to explore her own sexuality and begins a tentative affair. American writer/director Lance Hammer (Ballast) offers up a scrupulously researched work that examines a very complex and painful issue of sexual consent with clear-sighted intelligence, but also genuine sensitivity.
Binoche works wonders as the frazzled mum-of-one, unable to cope with her own mother’s increasing lack of awareness, while Courtenay – a decade on from co-starring in Andrew Haigh's 45 Years – offers another great late-career performance. – James Mottram
De Gaulle: Part 2 – Liberte
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Taking its title from a Paul Elouard poem written under the German occupation of France in 1942, this is the second part of writer-director Antonin Baudry’s sweeping account of exiled French leader Charles de Gaulle (Simon Akbarian) in World War Two.
Beginning in January 1943 with the Casablanca Conference attended by Churchill and Roosevelt to decide the future of French North Africa, De Gaulle: Liberté interweaves three different narrative strands. There are the battlefield actions of General Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armoured Division across Africa and France, the efforts of civil servant Jean Moulin (Felix Kysl) to unify the disparate French resistance networks into a national movement, and the struggles of De Gaulle in the corridors of power to win over the suspicious Allied leaders to his vision of French sovereignty.
Whilst audiences will be familiar with how its story ends triumphantly in the summer of 1944, the great virtue of this film is that it brings to life how complicated, risky and lonely the journey was for de Gaulle. Impressively photographed in widescreen, and credibly acted by its ensemble cast, this dynamic historical epic merits its combined five-hour running time. – Tom Dawson
What else is still showing in UK cinemas?
Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
Oasis’s 2025 world tour viscerally comes to life in this surprisingly sentimental documentary. Tracing the reunion of brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher nearly 16 years after their acrimonious split, Don’t Look Back in Anger does as the title suggests, with little interest in exploring any festering wounds between the famously fractious siblings, although the pair are interviewed together on screen.
Instead, directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (who previously made Blur reunion doc No Distance Left to Run) simply let the songs speak for themselves, as they follow the revived band from rehearsals to the first gig in Cardiff and onward, taking the music to fans around the globe.
It's this notion, rather than a tour catalogue, that drives the rest of the movie, as the film-makers dig into Oasis fandom. Some of these sequences, such as one following a young woman who survived the Ariana Grande Manchester concert bombing in 2017, prove touching; others, like one that sees two Korean girls going diving, feel rather random.
But while not particularly incisive or likely to draw in new fans, this does a fine job in showing the healing power of music. And if you're even slightly into Oasis, several performances here are real lump-in-the-throat stuff. – James Mottram
Pressure
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Preparations for the D-Day landings of the Second World War are played out in this gripping drama, a study of a behind-closed-doors Anglo-American battle of wills. US director of operations General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) locks horns with the RAF’s chief meteorological officer Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) over the timing of the invasion, the latter insisting weather conditions could result in large-scale loss of life.
Scott is the picture of stoicism as the pragmatic expert, matched each step of the way by Fraser, whose bulk and steely expressions are tailor-made to fit Eisenhower’s medal-adorned uniform, the epitome of a charismatic military man used to everyone following his every command.
Director Anthony Maras stays true to both historical fact and the film's stage origins, sharing screenplay credit with original playwright David Haig. If anything, Maras heightens the human intensity of the source material, blessed by a cast who bring remarkable nuance and depth to driven characters trying to make sense of, and find a clear path through, the fog of war. – Terry Staunton
Practical Magic 2
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
Set 25 years after we last saw the witchy Owens sisters, this comedy sequel manages to improve on the clunky 1998 original – but only just.
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as Sally and Gillian, who are still plagued by a curse that keeps killing off their menfolk. They head to England in pursuit of Sally's devastated daughter Kylie (Joey King), who is desperate to break the spell once and for all after her boyfriend (Xolo Maridueña) is hit by a car and left on life support.
After a wobbly start, things click into place when the older Owens sisters arrive in a comically quaint version of England, and the rest of the story coasts along on the chemistry of its leads. Sally's daughters have been aged down drastically (the other one is played by Maisie Williams) and there are some awkwardly executed moments, mostly involving Lee Pace, who gives a bizarre turn as academic Ian Wright (a name that, for British audiences, has its own associations).
The actor's romantic scenes with Bullock don't really work but with Danish director Susanne Bier at the helm (taking over from the original's Griffin Dunne), the film looks enchanting and there are fun spells, great songs, and touching sisterly solidarity. In the end, the women make it work. – Emma Simmonds
Blue Film
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
Setting out to break as many taboos as possible, this provocative sex drama is the debut of American writer/director Elliot Tuttle. When cocky LA cam boy Aaron (Kieron Moore) accepts $50,000 to spend the night with one of his fans, an older gentleman called Hank (Reed Birney), he assumes he is being paid to fulfil Hank’s domination fantasies.
But Hank was a teacher at Aaron’s school years before, and each man knows some of the other’s darkest secrets. What follows is intense – mostly just two actors in a single setting over one night – and troubling. From rape fantasies to paedophilia, with trigger warnings to match, no subject is off the table.
There are shades of Todd Solondz’s Happiness in the way we are asked to sympathise with those who have done unforgivable things, but it is never quite clear how much the film is really confronting these contradictions, or using them for shock value. Deftly made and powerfully acted, the result is a queasy, watch-once affair. – Matt Glasby
Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Want to see this content?
This page contains content provided by YouTube. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as YouTube may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose 'Accept and continue' to allow YouTube and its required purposes.
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
The great American jazz pianist Bill Evans – a bandleader as well as sideman to the likes of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley – struggles with grief and addiction in this award-winning biopic.
Titled after Evans’s celebrated 1958 second album, the film begins three years after that triumph, when bassist Scott LaFaro is killed, aged 25, in a car accident. Already addicted to heroin, Evans (Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie) finds himself further spiralling in the wake of this loss, and he is forced to lodge with his parents (Laurie Metcalf and Bill Pullman) in Florida as he tries to get a grip.
Crowned best director at the 2026 Berlin film festival, Britain’s Grant Gee shoots in smoky black and white, stylishly transporting his audience back to early-'60s America. Adapted from the novel Intermission by Owen Martell, the film is less about the usual biopic theme of musical inspiration than the creative stasis that life-shifting events can bring.
Danielsen Lie truly inhabits Evans, and spars well with Pullman, who effortlessly plays the father figure. Their drunken pow-wow in a bar is simply priceless. – James Mottram
The Incomer
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Blackly absurdist humour is laced with poignancy in Scottish writer/director Louis Paxton’s distinctive feature debut. Adult siblings Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) are the only inhabitants of an isolated outcrop, where their days revolve around survival, squabbling and storytelling.
Sandy has an impulsive, childlike attitude, while his older sister has taken on a caregiving role since the death, long ago, of their parents, with their father’s dire warnings about the lies of incomers taken to heart. This means that when pen-pusher Daniel (Domnhall Gleeson) arrives from the mainland with instructions to evict them, he does not receive a warm welcome.
Paxton draws on folklore to create the siblings' own skewed mythology, and brings in some lovely inventive elements including graceful animation from Selina Wagner and an offbeat, folk-infused score from Tom Kingston.
Meanwhile, the film's poignant consideration of isolation is blended expertly with the comedy of Daniel, who is lonely in his own way, starting to go native. John Hannah pops up, literally, in support as the sinister Fin Man, who repeatedly tries to lure Isla into the water. – Amber Wilkinson
The Death of Robin Hood
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
One of cinema’s most enduring outlaws is framed as a world-weary figure living a twilight of regret in this pensive, speculative portrait of a folk hero facing up to his violent past. Hugh Jackman plays Robin as a troubled man recuperating on a remote island priory, his wounds tended to by Jodie Comer’s serene nun, but has he finally found redemption, or is there one last bloody battle to be fought?
Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski (Pig), this contemplative drama is peppered with violence, but at its heart is a study of morality and loyalty, played out with the intimacy of a theatre piece.
It’s given cinematic oomph, however, by the lush cinematography of its Northern Ireland locations, and a score by Sheffield musician Jim Ghedi that blends the serenity of traditional folk music and the jarring tension of Bernard Herrmann’s work on Hitchcock movies.
It helps paper over the screenplay’s lapses into cod psychology, as does a strong main cast doing impressive work, including Bill Skarsga{circle}rd as Robin’s former partner in crime, Little John. – Terry Staunton
- Read our full The Death of Robin Hood review
- Read our exclusive interview with Jodie Comer and Michael Sarnoski
Leviticus
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
The very real horror of so-called gay conversion therapy is given a stark if somewhat shallow supernatural twist in this atmospheric Australian film. In a devoutly Christian industrial town, teenagers Raim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) have secretly become an item.
When Ryan is outed and taken to a "deliverance healer" by his concerned parents, he starts to behave strangely, leading Raim to suspect his boyfriend is in the grip of a malevolent entity. Putting a queer spin on It Follows (2014), debut director Adrian Chiarella choreographs some effective moments of terror rooted in the LGBTQIA+ experience.
The film offers a stark depiction of isolation and loneliness, as the nature of the story's demonic antagonist prevents its characters from taking solace in those who should bring them comfort and joy. This theme resonates through some genuinely haunting imagery, such as a strip of pictures from a photo booth and an opening scene in a swimming pool shower.
Bird and Clausen sell their romance well, but the dynamic between Raim and his mother (Mia Wasikowska, who executive produces) feels less focused. While the film struggles to fully engage with the heavy topics at its heart, its images of gay men both clinging to and tormented by the objects of their desire can’t help but linger in the mind. – Josh Winning
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
From the people who brought you Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models (David Wain, Ken Marino) comes this good-natured, awkwardly titled meta-comedy. Zoey Deutch is the titular heroine who is on a mission to track down and bed Jon Hamm after her fiancé has a tryst with Jennifer Aniston – permitted because she’s on his celebrity ‘allowed list’.
Cameos come thick and fast but the film belongs to Hamm’s Mad Men cast mate John Slattery, playing a satirical version of himself. He’s absolutely brilliant, no longer the debonair lothario Roger Sterling, instead he’s a hapless has-been happy to help Gail fulfil her mission.
Some business with a swapped briefcase belonging to a high-level criminal (White Lotus star Sabrina Impacciatore) sends the movie into slapstick crime-caper territory, with Gail, Slattery and her best pal Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) running from armed goons during a Los Angeles hair styling convention while trying to pitch Hamm his next movie. This is funny, silly, old-school comedy that you rarely see at the cinema these days. Delightful. – Rosie Fletcher
Late Fame
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Directed by Kent Jones (Diane) and scripted by Samy Burch (May December), this observant character study is an imaginative adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Late Fame, with the setting transposed from late 19th century Vienna to contemporary wintry New York.
Back in the late 1970s, Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) was a young poet in the downtown scene, authoring a collection titled Way Past Go, but he has spent the last four decades working at a postal sorting office. His everyday routine is disrupted by his unexpected involvement with the Enthusiasm Society, a group of 20-something aesthetes from rich backgrounds, who rail against contemporary culture and seemingly venerate his poems.
Set exclusively in the Greenwich Village and SoHo neighbourhoods, Jones's film is a story of cultural New Yorks both past and present, and explores the contradictory feelings experienced by Saxberger at the prospect of literary "rediscovery".
There’s an appealing flow to the storytelling, and a generosity towards the characters, even during the more pointed moments in a film that comments on lower Manhattan's gradual gentrification. Impressive performances, too, from Dafoe and from Grace Lee, as a flamboyant cabaret artist who delivers a memorable recital of Brecht and Weill’s Surabaya Johnny. – Tom Dawson
The Dog Stars
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
Sir Ridley Scott dips his toe into the post-apocalypse genre with this beautifully shot if meandering adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel set years after a pandemic has decimated the world’s population. Jacob Elordi plays Hig, a grieving pilot hoping for a better alternative to sharing an abandoned airfield with sardonic survivalist Bangley (Josh Brolin).
After an attack – and a garbled radio message from faraway Grand Junction – Hig decides to fly there, and an unexpected stop-off brings him into the orbit of Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her distrustful dad (Guy Pearce). Meanwhile, the Reapers – ever-more feral gangs – are rumoured to be roaming the countryside. Veteran Scott is in reflective mood, with compassion, community and human connection taking precedence over explosive action scenes.
The languid pacing, especially during the first half, often dilutes any building tension, although there are some heart-pounding moments. Elordi and Qualley give convincing leading performances and have a touching chemistry to complement the bristling, bumptious turns of Brolin and Pearce.
The cinematography is terrific, with Eric Messerschmidt providing the impressive visuals, while the restrained score from regular Scott collaborator Harry Gregson-Williams contains haunting Ry Cooder-like guitar notes. It's a thoughtful rather than spectacular offering which may leave avid fans of survival thrillers wanting something more propulsive. – Jeremy Aspinall
- Read our full The Dog Stars review
- Read our interview with Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce
- Read our interview with Josh Brolin
Bitter Christmas
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
A film-maker draws on his own life and those around him in the self-reflective 24th feature from Pedro Almodóvar. Leonardo Sbaraglia plays Raúl, a famed director struggling with his latest script, until he borrows heavily from the lives of his boyfriend (Quim Gutiérrez) and assistant (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón).
The story he conjures also plays out in a film-within-the-film, telling of Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a commercials director desperate to return to features who is beset with creative and personal dramas following the death of her mother.
Returning to the semi-autobiographical mode of his 2019 film Pain and Glory, Almodóvar explores the personal cost of artistic creation with typical élan, especially in visually lush sequences set around the black beaches of Lanzarote. He also makes some amusing broadsides at the "dying profession" that is the movie industry.
As intelligent and perceptive as the film is, its rhythm suffers from the constant flip-flopping between narratives as reality and fiction blur. It’s not top-tier Almodo{acute}var, but a rich experience nonetheless. – James Mottram
De Gaulle: Résistance
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Inspired by a monumental biography by English historian Julian Jackson, French film-maker Antonin Baudry crafts an old-fashioned yet stirring portrayal of Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War. It is epic in scale, consisting of two standalone films with a combined run-time of five hours.
This first part begins in June 1940, with the Nazis invading France and Brigadier General de Gaulle (a spirited Simon Abkarian) fleeing to London. Incorporating archival footage into its dramatic re-enactments, the film has a real action-movie tempo, particularly during military set pieces such as the scuttling of a fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, and a heroic rearguard action by outnumbered Free French forces at Bir Hakeim in Libya.
The love-hate exchanges between the stubborn de Gaulle and a flamboyant Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) are amusing, though the most interesting plot strand involves a teenage Parisian resistance fighter (Florian Lesieur) who plots to assassinate a leading figure in the collaborationist Vichy government.
Baudry ends his first instalment in late 1942, with some dramatic turning points in the North African theatre of war; part two, Liberté picks up shortly afterwards and continues to France's liberation in 1944. – Tom Dawson
Insidious: Out of the Further
A star rating of 2 out of 5.
The sixth instalment of the blockbuster horror franchise limps onto the screen, as we return once more to the Further, "the dark void between this world and the next." This time, it’s the turn of Pittsburgh dental hygienist Gemma (Amelia Eve), a single mother who still lives in the childhood home where her mother took her own life.
After some initial strange goings-on, including the appearance of three dentally challenged elderly folk, Gemma is soon sucked into the Further. Writer/director Jacob Chase (Come Play) has an eye for fear-inducing sequences. In the first act, an oral check-up at Gemma’s dental practice and an innocent childhood game both turn unsettling.
But nothing afterwards quite has the same impact, as Gemma encounters the series' regular psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) and a grisly (if somewhat ineffectual) villain, Cyrus Lam (Sam Spruell), who wants out of the Further.
Despite credible work from Eve as Gemma, the story is never as scary as it means to be, right up to an unimpressive final act. At one point, a character hisses "watch me" – something that becomes an increasingly laborious task. – James Mottram
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
A star rating of 5 out of 5.
Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) delivers another eerily atmospheric exploration of identity with this terrific meta-slasher movie. As with their previous film, it revolves around a fictional cult media property, this time the Friday the 13th-inspired slasher series Camp Miasma.
Hannah Einbinder (from TV’s Hacks) plays Kris, an emerging queer film-maker who is attached to reboot the franchise and travels to meet the original's now largely forgotten final girl (Gillian Anderson, in fine scenery chewing form). Schoenbrun conjures up a mesmeric, evocative experience that merges fantasy with reality to explore themes relating to art, sexuality, desire and otherness.
Although it includes plenty of melancholic moments, there are generous lashings of humour, too, making this an endlessly engaging film equipped with arresting imagery, gorgeous design (including some beautiful matte paintings) and no shortage of gore. It further cements Schoenbrun as one of the most exciting directors to emerge in the 2020s. – Patrick Cremona
- Read our full Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review
- Read our exclusive interview with Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson
Coyote vs Acme
A star rating of 5 out of 5.
The madcap world of vintage Looney Tunes is celebrated in style with an outrageous, laugh-a-minute comedy of one lone beast battling a corporate giant. After yet another faulty Acme contraption violently frustrates Wile E Coyote’s pursuit of a tasty Road Runner feast, he enlists the services of a reluctant small-beer personal injury lawyer (Will Forte) to sue the uncaring company for every penny they’ve got.
However, as the plaintiffs prepare for trial, they uncover a dark conspiracy that’s considerably bigger than one canine’s claim. This is a hugely inventive and affectionate salute to the bygone cartoons of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, with the two-dimensional likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn in crucial supporting roles, while the human cast is boosted by the pantomime villainy of John Cena as Acme’s own lawyer.
The blend of animation and live action is brilliantly accomplished, the gag count races into three figures with ease, and there’s a surprisingly touching bromance subplot thrown into the mix. A stone-cold classic caper for all ages. – Terry Staunton
Tony
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
The early years of late celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain are explored in this hugely pleasurable film from Matt Johnson (BlackBerry), which mostly sidesteps the tired tropes of the biopic genre. Adapted from a section of Bourdain's best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential, it unfolds entirely over the summer of 1975 in the seaside Massachusetts town of Provincetown.
Aspiring writer Tony (Dominic Sessa) travels there to chase the attentions of his high-school crush, before circumstances lead to him landing a job washing dishes in a small local restaurant, where he is moulded both by his raucous colleagues and the quiet mentorship of its hard-working proprietor and chef (Antonio Banderas).
Sessa is terrific, playing Tony as a livewire with both the cocksure arrogance of youth and the wounded quality of a lost soul, while Leo Woodall is electric in a standout supporting role as an unpredictable colleague. Johnson expertly crafts the nostalgic vibe of a specific seaside summer and stages intense, authentic kitchen scenes reminiscent of TV's The Bear, while the stellar soundtrack includes 70s hits from Jonathan Richman and Karen Dalton.
It adds up to a moving, well-performed coming-of-age film told with a commendably light touch. – Patrick Cremona
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Tom Holland's embattled web-spinner returns for his exhilarating fourth solo outing, which picks up a few years after the downbeat ending of 2021's No Way Home. With all memory of Peter Parker erased from the world, including from the minds of his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best bud Ned (Jacob Batalon), we now follow a lonely neighbourhood Spider-Man as he helps the police with baddies like the Scorpion (Michael Mando) and a ninja cult known as the Hand.
Still pining for his lost love, Spidey is then faced with multiple distractions: the return of Ned and MJ to New York; mutating powers which threaten to make Peter more spider than man; and an insidious mystery villain able to possess anyone instantly. Director Destin Daniel Cretton delivers plenty of nifty web-slinging and dizzying set pieces, not least when a rampaging Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) battles Spidey and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal, in his big-screen debut as the fearsome vigilante).
Indeed, Holland’s double act with the brooding Bernthal is a refreshing addition to the franchise. This is stuffed full of the usual Marvel Cinematic Universe cameos and Easter eggs, but it also strives to work as a coming-of-age tale, with our happy-go-lucky teenage hero now a battle-scarred adult struggling with various losses, exemplified by some poignant scenes between real-life spouses Holland and Zendaya. It's the stirring humanity beneath the mask that sticks in the memory as much as the pyrotechnics and punch-ups. – Jeremy Aspinall
The Odyssey
A star rating of 5 out of 5.
Christopher Nolan returns to the subject of warmongering with an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, one of the very cornerstones of western literature. Brought viscerally and vividly to life, it feels utterly of the moment.
Matt Damon is Odysseus, the cunning if arrogant warrior-king of Ithaca who recounts the horrors of Troy and the terrors faced by he and his men on their perilous journey home. Nolan blends in the fantasy of Homer – monsters, giants, whirlpools and even a trip to Hades to meet the undead – in a way few other directors can manage.
Shot entirely on IMAX cameras, The Odyssey looks nothing short of spectacular. The performances are equally grounded with Damon leading the line as the egotistical soldier who dismisses the idea of honouring the dead – until he comes to realise the pain of war. But it’s the female performances that stand the tallest – Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron and Samantha Morton all have their moments, as do Lupita Nyong’o and Zendaya.
Filled with blazing action, blood-curdling fights and creatures that truly bring Homer’s epic poem to life, this is Nolan at his finest. Big-screen spectacle, expertly crafted and propelled by yet another masterful score by Ludwig Göransson. A powerful and profound achievement. – James Mottram
- Read our full The Odyssey review
- Read our interview with Christopher Nolan
- Read our interview with Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway
- Read our interview with Himesh Patel
Toy Story 5
A star rating of 3 out of 5.
More than 30 years since its debut, Pixar’s popular animated franchise finally catches up with the reality of being a modern kid, as the Toy Story gang face their stiffest challenge yet: screen time. Rag doll Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack) is in charge of the bedroom of a now eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), with Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) her deputy, and Woody (Tom Hanks) off enjoying an alfresco life.
Bonnie’s lack of friends prompts her concerned parents to get her a tablet, Lilypad (Greta Lee), but when Lilypad alienates Bonnie further, the toys are tasked with saving the day. Directed and co-written by Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), Toy Story 5 is beautifully animated and largely well executed, if a little overstuffed.
Highlights include Conan O’Brien’s toilet trainer Smarty Pants, while it's great to see Jessie finally coming to the narrative fore. Her emotional arc might be overfamiliar but Cusack's performance is terrific. The threat of screens is an interesting idea, too, feeling like essential fodder for this play-based franchise, though some of the commentary is heavy-handed and hard to square with the fact that Lilypads are included among the film's official merch.
Yet, such is the love and attention to detail that goes into making these films, that even a slightly underwhelming effort remains a cut above most of Hollywood's animated field. – Emma Simmonds
- Read our full Toy Story 5 review
- Read our exclusive interview with the cast and crew of Toy Story 5
- Read our exclusive interview with Joan Cusack
- Read our behind-the-scenes glimpse at Pixar Animation Studios
Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.