Zootropolis 2 is pure delight, every bit as exciting, and heartwarming, and imaginative as the Oscar-winning original, and maybe even funnier.

Those heroes are, again, the opposites-in-temperament Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), a bunny who is enthusiastic, and committed to justice, and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a fox who is a former con artist. They met on opposite sides of the law in the first film, but now Nick has joined the police as Hopps’ partner.

They immediately get into trouble after ignoring orders from Police Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) and end up on a wild chase after a perpetrator in a catering van labeled “Amoose Bouche” (there are many such animal related sight-gags).

This leads them to uncover a massive conspiracy: long ago reptiles, and especially snakes, were ostracised from Zootropolis, and their entire way of life was scrubbed in favour of expansion by the “superior” mammals (the mirroring of current events isn’t subtle, but highly welcomed). Zootropolis 2 is zippy, and highly enjoyable, but it also has the kind of heart that has too long seemed to be missing from other Disney offerings, and many other animated films for that matter.

Craig Brewer’s drama strikes a heartfelt chord, turning the true story of a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute band into a warm, quietly affecting crowd-pleaser.

Set in the mid-1990s, it follows Milwaukee single dad Mike (Hugh Jackman) and single mother Claire (Kate Hudson), two restless dreamers who can’t write songs of their own but find solace and eventually love in the music of Neil Diamond. Persuaded by Mike’s infectious enthusiasm, they form the cover band Lightning & Thunder, blending their families as quickly as they blend harmonies. Their live shows take off, their bond deepens, and for a while life feels electric, until tragedy threatens to break everything they have built.

Jackman belts Diamond’s classics with a swagger while Hudson offers a tender, melodic counterpoint, and together they create a duet built on bruised hearts and big hope. Brewer recreates the era with flair. Glittering costumes, lovingly scuffed venues and fluid camera work capture both the joy of their performances and the shadows creeping in around them.

Moving, tuneful and gently uplifting, this is a charming human tale that will likely send everyone who watches searching for the real couple and the documentary that first told their remarkable story.

Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, a bourbon-sipping Columbo eight steps ahead of his smug suspects, returns for a third case.

In keeping with the traditions of the genre, we first meet the key players, who are all, of course, soon-to-be suspects. Father Jud (Josh O’Connor) is a young priest and former boxer who is banished to a small parish church in upstate New York. Presiding over Jud’s new posting is Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a domineering figure who rules his congregation with contempt. These acolytes include a dedicated parishioner (Glenn Close), a put-upon lawyer (Kerry Washington), a washed-up sci-fi writer (Andrew Scott), a nasty wannabe politician (Darryl McCormack) and a down-on-his-luck doctor (Jeremy Renner). Benoit and Jud, the atheist and the believer, joust satisfyingly over a crime that has all the signs of miraculous conception.

Wake Up Dead Man has fun smuggling all sorts of one-upmanship and sneakiness under its religious vestments. As with the previous Knives Outs, the satire is applied in broad but enjoyable brushstrokes. This thrilling installment makes three-for-three for director Rian Johnson. Don’t miss.

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A Guinean in Paris seeks the perfect tale to secure asylum in Boris Lojkine’s affecting migration drama.

Migration has been a hot topic in recent European cinema, and Souleymane’s Story joins the conversation with propulsive focus. Set in Paris, it follows Souleymane, an undocumented Guinean man preparing a fabricated asylum narrative while scraping by on endless gig work. Coached by Barry, he navigates precarity, small kindnesses and quiet threats. Rather than big drama, the film’s power comes from its accumulation of lived, urgent moments.

At the centre is Abou Sangaré, a 24-year-old first-time actor whose own history as an undocumented immigrant was woven into the script after he was discovered during an open casting call. His performance is remarkable in its naturalism. It is steady, vulnerable, and free of affectation. He carries the film with an authenticity that can’t be faked, giving the drama its emotional force. Lojkine’s direction is restrained but attentive, giving modest moments of strength and solidarity room to land.

In the end, this is not just a portrait of hardship but a deeply human account of persistence, fronted by someone who has walked the path himself.

June Squibb stars as a brassy older woman bonding with a chipper young college student, in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.

Squibb plays Eleanor, a widow lady with a waspish way of speaking her mind to youngsters. She lives in Florida, sharing an apartment with her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). Eleanor finds herself at a support group meeting for Holocaust survivors. Eleanor is not Jewish, but Bessie was, and what’s the harm in telling her friend’s stories as if they were her own?

Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student, is sitting in on the group to write an article, and she’s struck by Eleanor’s story. Since Eleanor could use the company, she gets drawn into a connection with Nina. Back in Florida, Eleanor and Bessie were obsessed with Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a cable-TV newsman — and it turns out that Roger is Nina’s recently widowed father. The table is now set for Eleanor’s fake Holocaust story to go very public. Eleanor the Great is a tender film, with June Squibb on top form (as she always is), but there's something darker and deeper at play. The result? An ambitious and emotional dramedy.

The Choral is a quiet and consistent pleasure: a deeply felt drama which assigns actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense.

With a brand new original screenplay by Alan Bennett (his first in 40 years), it is set during the first world war in a mill town in northern England where the choral society has appointed a new choirmaster, Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes).

As Guthrie and his motley society grow, they struggle to land on a choral composition to perform. Too many of the great composers are (gasp!) German. Eventually, the group agrees to mount a performance of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Geronitus, a blunt good vs. evil parable that evolves as the group does.

The expected bonding follows: romances take root, more than a few members of the society get tangled up in positively shocking relations, and hearts are broken. But music and song and the possibility of coming together to make something beautiful and potent, if even for a single performance, pushes the society on, just as it pushes The Choral on. Don’t miss.

James L. Brooks’ political dramedy is getting hammered by critics, who call it dated, overstuffed, and out of step. But who cares?

Ella McCay follows a 34-year-old lieutenant governor (Emma Mackey) who is abruptly elevated to the top job just as her personal life veers off course, including an imploding marriage, a troubled brother and a father who reappears after more than a decade away. An ensemble cast of heavy-hitters, including Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rebecca Hall, and Kumail Nanjiani are there to try to pick up the pieces.

Broadly appealing, well cast, neither strictly comic nor melodramatic, concerning ordinary people in non-IP circumstances, it’s the type of mid-budget adult film that used to appear regularly in cinemas in the 90s and 00s, before the streaming wars devoured the market. Even its lead promotional image (Mackey’s titular Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken block heel) recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality or Little Miss Sunshine.

We miss these types of movies, and want to see more of them.

Working from the transcript of a conversation lost for 45 years, Ira Sachs crafts an unexpectedly riveting portrait of artistic life in 1970s New York. Shot on 16mm and steeped in lived-in period detail, the film transforms an hour-long chat into something quietly spellbinding.

In December 1974, photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) visits his friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), who asks him to recount the previous 24 hours of his life. As she records and gently prods for clarity, Peter details encounters with fellow artists, a portrait session with Allen Ginsberg, restless walks across the Lower East Side, and his constant tug-of-war between work and sleep. Famous names drift through the conversation, but the film is less about celebrity than the texture of a day lived among creatives.

Whishaw brings a warm, unforced intimacy to Peter’s recollections, while Hall’s curiosity gives their dynamic an engaging spark. Their friendship, built on easy chatter and thoughtful silences, anchors the film with emotional truth. Sachs enriches their exchange with subtle shifts in light, music and movement. It’s a delicate, beautifully observed meditation on creativity and the quiet richness of everyday life.

Josh Safdie’s solo venture delivers a bruising, propulsive portrait of ambition.

Set in the early 1950s and loosely inspired by table-tennis icon Marty Reisman, Safide uses the world of competitive ping-pong as a springboard into a sharper study of American identity, class, and self-invention, built around a Oscar-hungry performance from Timothée Chalamet.

Marty’s rise begins with a breakout showing at the British Open, but his sights are set firmly on the World Championship in Tokyo. Getting there requires ingenuity of the least noble variety: hustling, grifting, and even a dog-napping that spirals into a wonderfully chaotic subplot. The result is a portrait of a man whose talent is matched only by his capacity for self-sabotage. His entanglements with Rachel, a childhood friend now trapped in a mess he refuses to acknowledge, and Kay, a faded Hollywood star married to the very tycoon Marty hopes will bankroll him, sharpen the film’s critique of charm weaponised as survival. Chalamet makes Marty both magnetic and exasperating, sustaining a performance of coiled energy.

The momentum never flags, and as Marty barrels toward Tokyo, Safdie crafts a character study as combustible as its antihero. It’s volatile, gripping, and impossible to look away from

Magic, courage, and the power of friendship ignite this spellbinding finale that brings Elphaba and Glinda’s journey to a thundering close.

Elphaba, now the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, hides in exile while fighting for the freedom of Oz’s silenced Animals, while Glinda revels in the perks of fame and glamour as the city’s beloved new symbol of good. Under Madame Morrible’s watchful eye, Glinda tries to mediate between Elphaba and the Wizard, but escalating tensions push them further apart. As the kingdom teeters on the brink, Fiyero, Boq, Nessarose, and even a girl from Kansas are drawn into a tornado of loyalty, love, and long-suppressed truths.

Superior to Act Two on stage, the film builds out the world and delivers an emotional gut punch. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande deliver career-high performances, capturing every nuance of their characters’ emotions, while the new songs “There’s No Place Like Home” and “The Girl in the Bubble” soar with memorable energy.

Already generating strong awards buzz and poised to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps at the Oscars, it’s a triumphant, heart-stirring conclusion.

Adapted from Harper Lee's timeless and priceless Pullitzer Prize-winning novel, Robert Mulligan’s 1962 Oscar-winning classic remains as captivating, entrancing and timeless as ever.

Told through a child’s eyes over a long and hot summer in America’s deep south, temperatures run high, literally and its sweaty metaphor, as a convincingly noble Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) defends a black man against a charge of rape.

Striving to uphold the true spirit of the law, Atticus must fight to protect the innocence of his children Scout and Jem also as events ultimately expose them to the realities of racism and white trash prejudices of the (unchanged) place and time.

Themes of justice, fairness and tolerance are explored in depth, bolstered by one of the all-time great performances in the lowest of keys by an impeccable Gregory Peck.

“As Mulligan so deftly demonstrates, Harper Lee’s story is in the characters, their failings and fragility, their heroism and nobility of spirit.” (Telegraph)

“An American classic. Storytelling doesn't get much better than this.” (Empire) Russell Harlan’s black & white camerawork is exquisite from the opening shot, and what a perfect opening credits sequence it is. Watch out for (who is?) Boo Radley. Not ever to be missed on the big screen.

Paul Feig’s sly psychological thriller blends glossy camp with razor-sharp tension.

Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a young woman desperate to outrun her past who lands a coveted live-in job with the affluent Winchesters. Amanda Seyfried’s Nina greets her as the picture of domestic refinement, but Millie’s arrival at the palatial estate quickly exposes fractures beneath the family’s immaculate surface.

Millie isn’t as spotless as she claims, yet Nina’s volatile mood swings and the icy scrutiny of mother-in-law Evelyn suggest the Winchesters have secrets of their own. Andrew Winchester provides a veneer of calm, though even his support hints at deeper complications. As the household’s perfect facade splinters, the story becomes a cutthroat game of manipulation, shifting power and buried histories, each woman masking motives the other can’t quite read.

Feig orchestrates the twists with playful style, leaning into glamorous mischief before steering the film into darker, gripping territory. Sweeney and Seyfried are electric together, their performances fuelling a seductive, surprising thriller about about dominance and self-assertion that keeps you guessing until its final, breathless reveal. This is one to see with a crowd

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Nora (Renate Reinsve) is a celebrated actress undone by panic attacks she’s inherited from her estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård). When he turns up late at her mother’s funeral, Nora and her sister Agnes brace for whatever comes next. His plan? To shoot his new film in their childhood home, casting Nora in a role he wrote specifically for her. When she refuses, he turns instead to an American star (Dakota Fanning), while unresolved wounds push their already fragile family into deeper turmoil.

Trier interweaves past and present gracefully, letting scenes slip between memory, imagination and cinema. Reinsve gives Nora a vivid inner world, her guardedness revealing the emotional cost of carrying her family’s history, while Skarsgård’s performance captures a man desperate to repair what he’s broken.

As long-buried secrets surface, the film becomes a moving reflection on inheritance and how pain echoes across generations. With beautifully observed characters and a film-within-a-film framework, it becomes a layered study of connection, regret, and the stories families tell to survive one another.

Ten years on from the release of his final album Blackstar, Jonathan Stiasny’s landmark documentary charts the extraordinary final creative chapter of one of music’s most iconic and inventive artists.  

The team behind Freddie Mercury: The Final Act and ABBA: Against the Odds turns its focus to David Bowie, crafting a vivid portrait of an artist who met mortality with defiance, imagination and renewed creative fire. The film charts Bowie’s turbulent 1990s, when shifting tastes and harsh criticism left him fearing his star was fading, yet from that uncertainty emerged one of his boldest reinventions.

His resurgence unfolds through a triumphant Glastonbury headline set, a return to his South London roots and an early embrace of the internet’s creative potential. These shifts paved the way for Blackstar, the haunting final album that transformed his confrontation with death into a stark, luminous statement.

Blending rare archive footage with intimate interviews from collaborators, friends and cultural admirers, the documentary highlights the strategic brilliance and restless imagination that powered Bowie’s final decade. Insightful and moving, it reframes his last chapter not as a decline but as a visionary creative rebirth from one of music’s most endlessly shape-shifting artists.

Mystery, passion and art collide in this compelling cinematic exploration of Caravaggio, one of history’s most enigmatic painters.

Multi-award-winning filmmakers Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff peel back the layers of his turbulent life, examining the hidden narratives woven into his masterpieces and the man behind them. The film traces Caravaggio’s trajectory from revolutionary talent to fugitive, fleeing from Rome in 1606 after committing murder and spending the last four years of his life in exile, moving between Naples, Malta, and Sicily before dying in mysterious circumstances in 1610.

Highlighting the dramatic intensity, bold realism, and striking chiaroscuro that made his work instantly recognisable, the documentary presents each masterpiece as both visual spectacle and psychological clue, featuring testimony from leading art historians. It’s a deeply immersive experience, blending rigorous scholarship with cinematic flair, and showcasing the timeless power of Caravaggio’s art to captivate, unsettle and provoke.

Five years in the making, this film is a thrilling, immersive portrait of a man who lived fast, painted furiously, and left the world mesmerised by his daring vision

From everybody's favourite animation studios, Aardman, comes a smart, hilarious tale of swashbuckling adventure in this family friendly pirate caper.

Hugh Grant brilliantly voices the Pirate Captain whose ambition lies in beating his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the Pirate of the Year'Award. When he and his hapless crew (an all-star batch of sea dogs: Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen) encounter HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin on the high seas, Darwin notices something rather special about Polly, the Captain's parrot, leading the crew on a frantic trip to Victorian London and to the Royal Society itself!

It's a technically brilliant film, as we have come to expect from Peter Lord, David Sproxton and Co (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: Were-Rabbit).

“I think you could treble the IQ of any child, or indeed adult, by putting them in front of an Aardman product like this.” (Guardian)

“Every scene has been embellished with sight gags, funny signs and dizzying amounts of background detail, all enhanced, not obscured, by judicious use of 3D (glorious 2D at The Rex). It would take multiple viewings to drink it all in, but The Pirates! more than justifies it.” (Telegraph) (Simon Messenger) Fab for full-size kids too. Don’t miss.