Our latest movie reviews

Imagine Richard Curtis adapting Bake Off and you’re close to the sugar high of this slice of cinematic comfort food

Newcomer Kelly O’Sullivan mines the progressive American dream for sharp laughs and relatable truths

Werner Herzog’s undefinable drama is a moving exploration of loneliness and modern life

Will Ferrell struggles to spoof the unspoofable in Netflix’s patchy pop comedy

This #MeToo doc is a searing story of abuse and survival for Black women in the music industry

In the age of culture wars and political turmoil, Jon Stewart’s satire has a surprisingly musty vibe

Take a trip into the muddy, mysterious world of this enjoyable Puritan western

This tender study of Black American life offers the perfect message for the moment

The pain of growing up never quite goes away in this quietly electrifying Australian drama

This likeable, light-as-a-feather Italian comedy will top up your reserves of bonhomie

Spike Lee throws a light on African-American soldiers in Vietnam with a drama full of old scars and new possibilities

You don’t need to know a bean about Aussie Rules football to walk away from this moving doc fired up and challenged

This reverential snapshot of the ’60s scene at Laurel Canyon is a nostalgia rush for folk fans

Dave Bautista is wasted in this rote riff on the old Kindergarten Cop formula

This shoddy fantasy-adventure is an exercise in how not to adapt a beloved YA novel.

This likeable ‘Showgirls’ reappraisal wants us to stop worrying and love Paul Verhoeven’s bomb.

Even Pete Davidson can’t energise this baggy Judd Apatow slacker-com

Warm and whimsical, Simon Bird’s directorial debut is a slight but deeply sympathetic mum-and-son story

The many sides of our cracked mirrorball of a nation are captured with grace and style in this collection of short films

Woody Allen’s latest love letter to New York deserves to be returned unopened

This out-there Atom Egoyan mystery sees David Thewlis as a restaurant inspector with a difficult family past to chew on

This tricksy French murder mystery wears a bleak look on its face. But it also has quiet fun playing with time and place, drip-feeding us information to make sense of a woman’s disappearance on the windswept hills of a French farming community. It opens in the dark with what sounds like a scream – but which turns out to be the shriek of a goat sitting on the back of a young man riding a scooter through the streets of Abidjan in Ivory Coast. Don’t believe everything you see or hear, the film seems to be whispering to us in this bizarre teasing prologue. From there, we cut to the unforgiving wintry hills of the Causse Méjean, where most of this adaptation of Colin Niel’s 2018 novel ‘Seules les bêtes’ takes place. Director and co-writer Dominik Moll (the other writer is Gilles Marchand) gives us five chapters, five characters: each of them integral to the same story, each of them allowing us a different perspective on the same unhappy tale. The role of chance – coincidence – is key to the connections between these characters: two farmers in Lozère, a waitress by the sea, a woman with a holiday home in the hills, the young man in Ivory Coast. But the script stretches our faith at times, especially in the final connections it makes between its European and African characters. What prevents us from crying foul, though, is the bravado of the storytelling, and a firm sense of intrigue. Moll already played slick Hitchcockian cards in 2000’s ‘Harry, He’s Here to Help’ and 2005’s ‘Lemmi

‘Rams’ director Grímur Hákonarson swaps sheep for cows in this quietly gripping study of moral courage set in a remote Icelandic dairy farming community. Battling corruption at every turn is struggling farmer Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir), whose husband has been blackmailed into whistleblowing on his friends for the local co-operative. Then there’s an accident and it slowly dawns on Inga quite what menace the monopolistic co-op, and its genially intimidating CEO (Sigurður Sigurjónsson), are capable of. Soon she’s on Facebook and the TV news comparing them with the Mafia. What follows could be played in a number of ways: as a crusading drama in the spirit of ‘Erin Brockovich’ or the kind of tough Scandi-noir-style thriller that would have you worrying about the farm dog’s wellbeing. You can even half-imagine it repurposed as a broad British comedy with added cowpat-based slapstick. But Hákonarson takes the Ken Loach approach of zeroing in on what it takes to stand alone against a grim status quo. Egilsdóttir centres it all wonderfully as the lugubrious Inga, bemused to find herself slowly transforming into a champion of the underdog. Beneath the superficial stillness – no one moves very fast in this windswept world – there’s a burning sense of injustice at work, and a lovely streak of bone-dry humour too. Hákonarson makes comic capital out of automated farming processes: the milking machine Inga has been told will transform her work turns out to be hilariously clanking and e