What films are out in UK cinemas this week? Reviews from Wicked: For Good to The Thing With Feathers
Your weekly round-up of all the films currently showing in UK cinemas.
It's another busy week of new releases for UK cinemas, headlined by a couple of star-studded blockbusters.
The first of those is the anticipated sequel to last year's Wicked, Wicked: For Good. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande return to helm the magical film, with this instalment featuring new songs penned by Stephen Schwartz, stellar performances and stunning production design.
Secondly, we have the Benedict Cumberbatch-led The Thing With Feathers, which follows a father and his two sons as they struggle to cope with the sudden loss of their wife and mother. Here, grief is personified as a large crow, with the film being adapted by writer-director Dylan Southern from the original novel by Max Porter.
We have verdicts on both below but of course, there's plenty else to catch in the cinemas, including Edgar Wright's new take on Stephen King's 1982 novel The Running Man, the third instalment of the Now You See Me franchise, Gurinder Chadha's festive film Christmas Karma, Osgood Perkins's latest horror Keeper, starry true story drama Nuremberg, and Noah Baumbach's even more starry Jay Kelly.
And of course, you can also find our lowdown on other major films released in UK cinemas in recent weeks, from One Battle After Another and to Bugonia and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Die My Love.
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? 21st – 27th November
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
- Read our full Wicked: For Good review
- Read our interview with Wicked production designer Nathan Crowley
Best of the rest still showing in UK cinemas
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
Jay Kelly
George Clooney is the titular A-list movie star in Noah Baumbach’s breezy Hollywood-insider comedy, one that starts well but veers dangerously towards indulgence. After he attends the funeral of the director mentor who first cast him, Jay’s life is thrown into turmoil following an altercation with an old classmate (Billy Crudup).
On a whim, he follows his youngest daughter (Grace Edwards) to Europe to grab some quality time, on the flimsy pretext of picking up a lifetime achievement award at a Tuscany festival. Joining him are his long-suffering publicist (Laura Dern), manager (Adam Sandler) and makeup artist (Emily Mortimer), though none are able to soothe Jay as he undergoes a crisis of confidence.
Baumbach shows none of the edge of earlier films like Frances Ha, aiming instead for broad comic potshots as he explores fame, family and the legacy you leave behind. Some gags land, but the concluding clips of Clooney’s real work make for a queasy homage that doesn’t quite have the desired emotional payoff. – James Mottram
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
Relay
Riz Ahmed heads the cast of a zesty thriller which, while stylistically modern, harks back to paranoid conspiracy dramas of an earlier age. An alcoholic Muslim acts as a maverick broker for whistle-blowers seeking to expose the underhand practices of big corporations. But he bites off more than he can chew when his latest client (Lily James) is pursued by ruthless goons in the employ of a biotech conglomerate desperate to retrieve some incriminating documents.
Consequently, a by-the-book clandestine job becomes a white-knuckle game of cat-and-mouse with a potentially murderous end game. Director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) relishes juggling the myriad players and plot twists in Justin Piasecki’s screenplay, a smart and suspenseful narrative that respects the viewer’s intelligence.
James is perhaps a tad one-dimensional as the woman at the centre of the storm, so thankfully Ahmed has the intensity and low-key charisma to make an understated but effective hero, fast on his feet and sharp of mind. – Terry Staunton
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
The Mastermind
Josh O’Connor plays an amateur art thief in 1970s Massachusetts in this low-key crime tale. The film's quiet approach should come as no surprise, given its writer/director is cult favourite Kelly Reichardt, who has previously deconstructed the western (2010's Meek’s Cutoff) and the environmental thriller (2013's Night Moves), generally leaving the major action off-screen.
A married father-of-two, unemployed carpenter James (O’Connor) plots to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a museum, a plan that swiftly goes awry, causing him to go on the run. Cut to the rhythms of an infectious jazz score, Reichardt’s meandering story is more a character portrait of a desperate man than a tense crime thriller.
Using the Vietnam War protest movement as her backdrop, the director captures well the spirit of rebellion and unrest that characterised the era. O'Connor's downbeat turn channels vintage performances by Elliott Gould, and his compelling work is bolstered by fine support from Hope Davis, John Magaro and Bill Camp. While it's a shame that Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim is somewhat short-changed in the role of James's wife, the film ultimately satisfies with a sublime ending. – James Mottram
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
Roofman
Channing Tatum gives a career-best performance in this poignant, Noughties-set crime caper. He plays true-life career criminal Jeffrey Manchester, who escapes from prison after being sentenced for robbing 45 fast food outlets via vulnerable roof access. Taking refuge in the hidden spaces of a North Carolina toy store, he unwisely begins a relationship with divorced shop assistant Leigh (a top-notch Kirsten Dunst).
Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance stays true to past form by creating a sharply observed, charming crowd-pleaser from the unlikeliest material. While this offbeat romp features all the hallmarks of a romcom, its third act is surprisingly melancholic as the lovers' courtship takes on new dimensions.
Great back-up is supplied by Peter Dinklage as the jobsworth store manager and LaKeith Stanfield as the shady veteran pal whom Manchester asks to forge new identity papers. Both Tatum and Dunst shine at the centre of this fun and bittersweet film, which delivers entertainment through the roof. – Alan Jones
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
The Smashing Machine
In a role not so far removed from his own experience as a one-time WWE wrestler, Dwayne Johnson gives a fine performance as real-life UFC competitor Mark Kerr in this sports-themed drama. Set between 1997 and 2000, Ultimate Fighting Championship – a bruising mixed martial arts combat sport – is taking off with the undefeated wrestler Kerr among its leading lights.
But as his addiction to painkilling opioids takes hold and arguments flare with girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), his world begins to fall apart. Winner of the best director award at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, Benny Safdie (co-director of Uncut Gems) strives for realism rather than triumphalism here.
Authenticity is furthered by casting folk from the real UFC world, including the excellent Ryan Bader as Kerr’s friend/trainer Mark Coleman. While a spray-tanned Blunt and a wig-wearing Johnson are great, the low-key narrative never quite hits the dramatic heights, perhaps because Kerr’s own story isn’t exactly filled with fist-pumping moments. Sometimes too on-the-nose, it’s nevertheless a bold look at a misunderstood sport. – James Mottram
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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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
