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There's some great news for UK-based film fans this weekend: not only have five very different new movies just arrived in cinemas, but they're pretty much all worth your time. In fact, all five of today's new releases have been awarded four stars from us, so the only difficult part is deciding which one to go and see first.
The headline-grabber is the third entry in Rian Johnson's terrific Knives Out series of star-studded whodunnits – with Wake Up Dead Man playing in select cinemas ahead of a Netflix release next month – while younger cinemagoers will be delighted that Disney sequel Zootropolis 2 is upon us.
Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney stars in boxing biopic Christy, Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott shine in Richard Linklater's true story drama Blue Moon, and Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård are both superb in subversive comedy-drama Pillion.
You can read our verdicts on all five below, and of course, you can also find our lowdown on other major films released in UK cinemas in recent weeks, from Wicked: For Good and One Battle After Another to Bugonia and The Running Man.
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? 28th November – 4th December
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Having previously staged star-studded murder mysteries at a cosy mansion and a lavish private island, Rian Johnson's third Knives Out film unfolds against the backdrop of a small Catholic parish in upstate New York. This time, Daniel Craig's Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc is tasked with solving the murder of an intimidating priest (Josh Brolin), whose increasingly warped fire and brimstone sermons have seen him brush up against Josh O'Connor's younger clergyman.
What makes the mystery so enticing is that it initially appears to be an impossible crime, with Johnson's script making several references to John Dickson Carr's classic locked room mystery novel The Hollow Man. The church setting allows the director to make cinematic use of religious iconography and deliver a pointed satire about the way contemporary right-wing figures have weaponised faith to their own ends.
Meanwhile, the film gets a little darker, more unsettling, and weirder than the previous instalments – embracing elements of gothic horror – and although there are times where the case threatens to get a little too convoluted, it eventually leads to a hugely satisfying denouement.
Blue Moon
Ethan Hawke stars as real-life lyricist Lorenz Hart in this melancholy, moving tale from director Richard Linklater (Boyhood). Set across one evening in New York restaurant Sardi’s, the film sees an embittered Hart arriving from the opening performance of Oklahoma!, written by hot new partnership Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney).
Hart and his one-time mentee Rodgers were celebrated for penning beloved standards My Funny Valentine and Blue Moon but Hart’s alcoholism has left their working relationship soured. With Hawke wearing an unconvincing bald wig and made to look shorter than his co-stars (Hart was under five foot), his appearance distracts.
Thankfully, on his ninth collaboration with Linklater, the actor brings alive the dazzling, witty script, especially in his exchanges with an on-song Scott. Only Margaret Qualley is shortchanged as the demure Elizabeth, whom the tortured Hart is enamoured by. Still, this is a touching tribute to an artist whose contributions to popular culture deserve to be recognised. – James Mottram
Christy
Sydney Sweeney delivers a powerhouse performance as real-life boxer Christy Martin, in a sports movie with a sting. During the 1990s, West Virginia native Christy is a fighter on the rise when she crosses paths with trainer James (Ben Foster), who soon proposes marriage, despite Christy's obvious interest in women. While her success brings wealth and fame – the way she fronts up to a rival fighter (Katy O’Brian) is telling – James’s increasingly controlling behaviour leads to a very dark final act.
Directed by David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) and co-scripted with his partner Mirrah Foulkes, this is less a boxing movie and more a study of female resistance. Whether it’s in the ring in a male-dominated sport or facing up against domestic abuse, Martin is a remarkable figure, given her due by Sweeney, who pours her heart into this transformation.
Unfortunately, whether it’s dealing with LGBTQ issues or the boxing world, it feels skin-deep at times – typified by the distracting wigs that both leads wear. – James Mottram
Zootropolis 2
Brimming with rapid-fire sight gags and movie in-jokes, the sequel to Disney’s hit 2016 animation is a fast and funny combination of buddy cop comedy and conspiracy romp. It picks up where the original left off, with perky bunny Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) on police duty with her wily fox partner Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman).
Despite their clashing methods, the duo stumble on a mystery involving Zootropolis’s 100-year anniversary and Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a rogue viper slithering amok in the supposedly reptile-free city. Predictable plot twists aside, the duo’s investigation nimbly spans genres and Disney tropes, with animal jokes, crime film influences and lightly handled messages about prejudice deftly interwoven.
Old and fresh characters are breezily balanced, with series newcomers Quan, Fortune Feimster and Andy Samberg playfully nailing their voice roles. Featuring a winning lead pairing, pacey chase sequences and a richly realised world, the film builds on its predecessor’s appeal with charm, energy and the wittiest nod to The Shining in a kids’ movie yet. – Kevin Harley
Pillion
A nerdy young man finds his mojo in this racy, charming and hilariously funny British gem. Colin Smith (Harry Melling) is a parking attendant locked in a humdrum life until, one day, he’s picked up in a pub by enigmatic biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). After an unusual first date on Christmas Day, Colin is bewitched by this leather jacket-wearing hunk, and soon finds himself in an S&M relationship with the dominant, mysterious Ray.
With its titular double meaning – slang in the niche world of BDSM-practising bikers, meaning those who take the submissive role – the film may prove a little too outré for certain viewers. However, British writer/director Harry Lighton finds humour and sweetness in the premise, leaning into the sexual dynamics on show without ever kink-shaming its participants.
Melling and Skarsgård are wonderfully cast, especially Melling, who convincingly goes from dowdy and downtrodden to confident and cool. Seasoned with a dash of Mike Leigh-style suburban angst, Pillion will truly tickle your fancy. – James Mottram
Best of the rest still showing in UK cinemas
The Thing With Feathers
Benedict Cumberbatch fronts this wrenching, if wayward, portrayal of loss, adapted from Max Porter's 2015 novella Grief Is The Thing With Feathers. When a British family experiences the sudden death of the mother, everything is thrown into turmoil, and Cumberbatch's Dad must deal with the reality of caring for two boys (twins Richard and Henry Boxall) amid his own need to grieve.
Gradually, Crow (voiced by David Thewlis) steps out of the shadows, a creature from Dad's drawings that embodies their suffering and the need for therapeutic resolution. Writer/director Dylan Southern, a former music documentarian, doesn't quite strike the right balance between the fantastical elements and hard-hitting realism, despite good intentions.
The eight-foot Crow, played by an actor sporting an animatronic head, is smartly filmed in the gloom, but his appearance lacks real horror. As such, you're never left feeling that Dad and the boys are teetering on the emotional brink. But Cumberbatch's committed turn as a father desperately seeking a roadmap through his pain is honest and heartfelt. – James Mottram
Wicked: For Good
After last year’s Wicked: Part One, we’re back for some more Ozploitation. Jon M Chu’s two-part adaptation has already been a wild ride, tapping into the perennial enthusiasm for the long-running stage show by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, which itself came inspired both by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and, of course, Hollywood Golden Age musical The Wizard of Oz. Part One conjured a healthy $756 million global box office, followed by 10 Oscar nominations and two wins.
There’s no reason to think Wicked: For Good won’t perform the same trick, or better it, with Chu bringing events to a rousing close. While he infuses enthusiasm into every frame, the same can be said for his leading ladies. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are back in top, lung-busting form as, respectively, the pink-hued Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the green-skinned witch who has been cast out of Oz, thanks to the machinations of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, wickedly charming as ever), the ultimately carney-man.
Now in exile, the demonised Elphaba’s name has been stained by the Wizard, in league with her one-time tutor, the former Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, still wearing that delicious Mr Whippy ice-cream hair-do). The slightly vapid Glinda, meanwhile, thinks they need to be trademarking the word "good", while she’s also caught up in preparations for her impending wedding to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has been charged with capturing Elphaba. – James Mottram
The Running Man
Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) steps into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoes with this big-budget remake set in a dystopian United States where violent TV is the opium of the people. Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) stays faithful to the original Stephen King story, as irascible, hard-up Everyman Ben Richards (Powell) volunteers for the lethal Running Man show to provide for his family. Avoid capture for 30 days and $1 billion is the reward.
But contestants are also hunted relentlessly across the country by assassins, with the action televised to an audience willing to dob them in for reward, all under the auspices of Josh Brolin’s scheming network puppet-master. No stranger to delivering breakneck action with the likes of Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver, Wright produces plenty of nerve-jangling set-pieces, while the cross-country pursuit reveals an America riven by economic inequality and manipulated by a self-satisfied few.
The episodic nature of the plot, with Richards donning a variety of disguises to lay low, occasionally leads to a lull in pace and tension. However, Powell is a hero to root for, and there are tasty cameos from William H Macy and Michael Cera, whose mercurial rebel lives in a booby-trapped bolt-hole worthy of Rambo. – Jeremy Aspinall
Now You See Me: Now You Don't
Combining legacy characters with a new trio of younger illusionists, the third film in this action-comedy series is a busily disposable – if fitfully fun – combination of reunion gig and new-generation franchise spruce-up. Director Ruben Fleischer (Venom, Uncharted) replaces predecessors Louis Leterrier and Jon M Chu, stepping in to juggle the expected ingredients of a tangled heist, some tricksy set pieces, a couple of crowd-pleasing cameos and splashes of globe-trotting glitz.
Yet as the crowded cast grapple with the script’s patchy supplies of sparkle and finesse, it can be hard to care which way the plot’s cards end up landing. The set pieces lift proceedings, with action sequences at a public diamond display and in a house of illusions showing flashes of pacy wit, levity and invention.
However, the narrative linking them is frustratingly loose – even for a franchise that revels in the ridiculous. One or two twists prove inconsequential, while the script is rarely as clever as it thinks it is and hardly ever as fresh as it should be. – Kevin Harley
Nuremberg
Russell Crowe is captivating as Hermann Göring in this compelling but somewhat muddled drama set against the Nuremberg trials. These events have been dramatised before – most notably in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 classic Judgement at Nuremberg – but writer/director James Vanderbilt finds a new way in by focusing on the conversations between Göring and military psychiatrist Douglas Kelley.
Kelley had been assigned to investigate whether each Nazi defendant was fit to stand trial, but also hoped to find fame and fortune by diagnosing something new about the nature of evil – perhaps something unique to the German character. Although Vanderbilt doesn’t always land on the right tone, there’s an undeniable spark to the scenes between Kelley and Göring, while a late reveal about Kelley’s translator Sergeant Howie Triest (Leo Woodall) is profoundly moving.
The many scenes devoted to explaining how the trials came about feel rather more perfunctory, while as an exploration of Nazi evils Nuremberg pales in comparison to Jonathan Glazer’s recent masterwork The Zone of Interest. But this is an engaging study of Kelley and Göring’s unusual dynamic. – Patrick Cremona
Keeper
Modern love meets ancient evil in this folk horror hybrid from director Osgood Perkins (The Monkey). Tatiana Maslany stars as the inscrutable Liz, a city artist who is taking a break in a plush forest cabin with her boyfriend Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald and half-brother of Kiefer). It looks like an idyll but there’s something nasty in the woods – and it’s not just Malcolm’s annoying cousin Darren.
At first a very slowburn relationship drama peppered with unsettling elemental images, Keeper belatedly morphs into something outrageous, outlandish and nonsensical. While Maslany is engaging as the skittish, paranoid Liz, Sutherland has a harder time with enigmatic Malcolm.
Nick Lepard’s uneven script is exposition-heavy and coherence-light, but the film looks great, at times recalling Ari Aster’s excellent Hereditary (keep your eyes on the edges of the frame for the best scares). Hit and miss overall, but this cements Perkins as a bold voice in horror. – Rosie Fletcher
Dragonfly
Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough deliver understated but powerful performances in this quietly devastating British drama. Elsie (Blethyn) is a widow living alone in a bungalow next door to Riseborough’s Coleen, a singleton on benefits who only has her bullish-looking dog for company. Gradually, these two lonely souls find each other when Coleen starts running small errands for her neighbour.
It’s a tender and touching relationship, but one that ultimately sours in a way you won’t see coming until it's too late. While the film almost entirely takes place in their adjoining abodes, writer/director Paul Andrew Williams (Bull) crafts a compelling sketch of modern-day Britain, a world where harassed care workers barely know your name and the elderly are treated as numbers.
Aided by a low-key electronic score and unsettling cinematography, Blethyn and Riseborough – almost unrecognisable as the tracksuit-wearing Coleen – offer unvarnished, vanity-free turns. What results is a portrait of isolation that feels fully rounded, filled with hope, humanity and horror. – James Mottram
Die My Love
Featuring the one-two punch of leads Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, Die, My Love is an absorbing and quietly devastating relationship drama. Lawrence plays Grace, a new mother living in a rural Montana backwater with husband Jackson (Pattinson). Gradually, as marital woes unfold between the two, Grace's mental health deteriorates. Is this a problem of nature or nurture?
One flashback, to their wedding night, shows her inebriated and out of control. There’s a self-harming, self-destructive impulse buried in her DNA, but it’s clear she loves her baby more than life itself. Adapting from Ariana Harwicz’s 2017 novel, director Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) is in supreme command of her craft, conjuring an atmospheric character piece that showcases Lawrence's great talents as she and Pattinson are pushed to their limits.
Featuring acting legends Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in small but potent roles, the film also spins on brilliant cinematography from Seamus McGarvey, whose subtle work heightens the increasingly sombre mood. Scored with to-die-for tracks (Cream, David Bowie), this perfectly essays one woman's psychological journey and builds to a heartbreaking crescendo. – James Mottram
The Choral
This wartime tale, which is at once poignant and feel-good, could only have been engineered by British national treasure Alan Bennett. In 1916, in the fictional West Yorkshire town of Ramsgate (actually World Heritage site Saltaire), the local choral society is haemorrhaging male singers to the war. Three young possible future soldiers are among those plucked to fill the gaps, and strict choral master Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) is hired to elicit tuneful artistry from the rather unpromising assemblage of the town’s willing vocalists.
Sidestepping the Teutonic, he substitutes a perennial favourite by JS Bach with The Dream of Gerontius by English composer Edward Elgar (Simon Russell Beale, in a delectable cameo that chimes with the film’s lightness of touch).
The climactic use of Elgar underpins a stirring film about the horrors of war and the power of music. Collaborating for a fourth time with director Nicholas Hytner, nonagenarian Bennett delivers an original screenplay rather than adapting one of his plays, and the depiction of ordinary people in hard times is at once moving, understated, truthful and very Bennett. – David Oppedisano
Bugonia
A ruthless CEO is kidnapped by two men who think she’s an alien in this pleasingly madcap comedy-drama. A remake of 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, Emma Stone plays the power-dressing biomedical honcho Michelle Fuller, abducted by Jesse Plemons's greasy-looking conspiracy theorist Teddy and his slobby cousin (Aidan Delbis).
Taken to Teddy’s mother’s basement, Michelle is tied up as her captors try and force her to confess that she’s an extraterrestrial out to obliterate our planet. Scripted by Will Tracy (TV's Succession), this marks the fourth film collaboration between Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness), and her sparring with the excellent Plemons lingers.
Also featuring Alicia Silverstone in a key role, the film is unpredictable, even for those familiar with the Korean version. A prod at the way corporations have taken over our planet, maximising profits at the expense of all else, it smartly asks if we’re the masters of our own demise. Or whether, as Michelle says, 'Sometimes a species just winds down.' – James Mottram
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Bruce Springsteen goes back to basics in an intimate biopic that explores the singer’s troubled past as he confronts questions about his future. Jeremy Allen White stars as The Boss, opening a can of analytical worms while writing and recording songs for the low-key 1982 album Nebraska, a far cry from the amped-up anthems of his previous LPs.
As he delves deeper into the creative process, he’s reminded of an often unhappy childhood and difficult relationship with his father (Stephen Graham), while in the present day his manager and mentor (Jeremy Strong) strives to shield him from the hits-hungry demands of the music biz.
Director Scott Cooper follows author Warren Zanes’s acclaimed book of the same title relatively closely, the film working best in its quieter, more subdued moments. Blessed by subtle performances from the leads (although White is less convincing when called upon to be Springsteen as a louder, strutting stage presence), it’s an eloquent, if occasionally flawed, film about self-examination and the power of music as a form of therapy. – Terry Staunton
Black Phone 2
Writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C Robert Cargill have upped the supernatural ante for the sequel with ghoulish and gory aplomb by taking the original film’s characters (and cast) out of small-town suburbia and stranding them at an isolated, blizzard-hit Christian youth camp where boys had vanished mysteriously back in the 1950s.
Horror fans will spot allusions to all sorts of fright flicks, whether it’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Poltergeist or The Shining, but Derrickson is navigating his own creepy groove, sustained by stars Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw, who have literally grown into their roles and deliver emotionally compelling performances.
The first Black Phone was a serial-killer horror with a side order of supernatural, but this gripping sequel embraces the paranormal and gruesomeness in all its gory glory, too. Meanwhile the dream sequences, seemingly shot on scratchy 70s film stock and recalling Derrickson’s 2012 spine-chiller Sinister, ooze unsettling menace and deliver some hearty jump-scares. – Jeremy Aspinall
I Swear
Tourette’s Syndrome sufferer John Davidson became an unlikely TV personality in the late 1980s when, aged 16, he was the focus of John’s Not Mad, a BBC documentary examining the condition. This feelgood but inevitably foul-mouthed movie tells a deeper story, the teenager now in his 20s (played by Robert Aramayo) and trying to make his way in the adult world.
Still mocked and ridiculed by some, he finds more supportive figures in Maxine Peake’s straight-shooting mental health nurse and Peter Mullan’s avuncular caretaker boss. Writer/director Kirk Jones skilfully weaves comedy and drama together, never losing sight of the subject matter’s seriousness (Davidson, now a campaigner, is credited as a consultant), but occasionally lapses into a mawkishness that threatens to undermine the message.
Nevertheless, he benefits from a strong and sympathetic cast, with both Peake and Mullan close to the very top of their game. In Aramayo, however, he has a breakout star, an actor whose range of emotions provides the beating heart of a film destined to find a legion of fans. – Terry Staunton
One Battle After Another
This terrific film from Paul Thomas Anderson is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. Rather than a straight adaptation, the auteur expertly borrows elements and crafts them into something his own, keeping the book's rebellious spirit, absurdist comic tone and thematic weight intact.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, a former member of resistance group the French 75, now completely sapped of his revolutionary spirit. But when his old nemesis (Sean Penn in sensationally odious form) re-emerges, Bob must rediscover his fight so he can protect his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti, a revelation).
The resulting chase is thrilling, uproarious and perfectly paced, with DiCaprio excelling as a frustrated layabout thrust back into the fold. Anderson stages the film's set pieces – including a mesmerising car chase – in unpredictable, inventive ways, with Jonny Greenwood's frantic, piano-led score the perfect complement.
The film feels urgent and timely, tapping into contemporary themes from the USA's barbaric treatment of immigrants to the growing prevalence of extremist ideologies among people with influence, but there's also a dash of hope and poignancy. Anderson's choice to put a touching father/daughter relationship front and centre amid the thrills gives his masterful film undeniable emotional heft. – Patrick Cremona
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