What films are out in UK cinemas this week? Reviews from Project Hail Mary to Ready or Not 2
Your weekly round-up of all the films currently showing in UK cinemas.
Given awards season has only just wrapped up – with One Battle After Another named best picture at last week's Oscars – it seems far too early to be talking about potential contenders for next year.
And yet there's already a lot of strong buzz gathering around new sci-fi flick Project Hail Mary, the headliner of this week's new releases in UK cinemas. Adapted from a novel by The Martian writer Andy Weir, it stars Ryan Gosling as an astronaut who strikes up an unlikely friendship in outer space.
If sci-fi is not your genre, luckily there are plenty of other options to choose from this week: there's horror sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, disturbing black comedy The Good Boy starring Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough and subtle marriage drama Midwinter Break with Lesley Manville.
And that's not all, with new films from Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino and American director Gus Van Sant also arriving, as well as the last film from the best animated feature line-up at this year's Oscars.
You can find our reviews for all seven of those films below, while you can also discover our lowdown on the other major movies released in UK cinemas in recent weeks, including romcom Reminders of Him and Pixar's Hoppers.
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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? 20 - 26 March
Project Hail Mary
Ryan Gosling’s mild-mannered science teacher heads to the far end of the galaxy in search of a solution to a dying sun that threatens life on Earth in this joyful and engaging sci-fi. The reluctant amateur astronaut negotiates tricky hurdles as his craft journeys through space, eventually teaming up with an alien whose own planet is facing a similar plight – a stone-like creature whom he names Rocky.
Drew Goddard’s screenplay is adapted from a novel by Andy Weir, the same pairing that brought us 2015’s The Martian, and there are obvious parallels to be drawn between Gosling and Matt Damon in the earlier film. However, Project Hail Mary morphs into a buddy movie of sorts with the introduction of Rocky, taking the narrative more towards the family friendly sense of wonderment of Steven Spielberg’s extraterrestrial tales.
Gosling’s boyish charm and charisma hold everything together, never allowing the jeopardy of his character’s predicament to overwhelm a heartwarming yarn with a rich seam of humour. – Terry Staunton
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back with a splatter-filled, blackly comic sequel that picks up nicely where the original film left off. Grace (Samara Weaving) learns that her survival in the previous life-or-death game has triggered a legal clause that puts her in the sights of the world's wealthiest families. With the high seat on their council now up for grabs, the race is on to kill Grace before dawn.
This time around, she's joined by her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), while the cast of baddies makes room for the likes of David Cronenberg – as the head of the powerful Danforth family – Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy as his offspring, and Elijah Wood as a lawyer overseeing the new game.
It’s a fun, John Wick-esque expansion of the story, with some fitting twists and turns that distract from a somewhat uninspired plot. The script could be sharper, but the visual wit and zeal of the participants more than makes up for it. Grace feels like a role Weaving was born to play, but the time seems right to give the gal a break. – Emma Simmonds
The Good Boy
A delinquent teenager is kidnapped for social rehabilitation in this queasy Yorkshire-set black comedy. Stephen Graham, so good as the father in Netflix series Adolescence, shows another side to his parenting as Chris, a family man fuelled by his own trauma who takes exception to local lout Tommy (Anson Boon).
Snatching the lad from the streets, Chris chains him up in the basement of his isolated country pile – also occupied by his ailing wife (Andrea Riseborough) and young son (Kit Rakusen) – where he looks to reform this monster. It’s an intriguing set-up, especially as the days roll on and Tommy goes from angry captive to surrogate family member in a twisted take on Stockholm syndrome.
Director Jan Komasa keeps the tension bubbling nicely in a story that feels like a latter-day riposte to A Clockwork Orange. The final act doesn't quite pay off, with characters’ motives left frustratingly opaque, but the film is blessed with cast-iron performances, especially from Graham and Boon. – James Mottram
Midwinter Break
A quietly stirring performance from Lesley Manville anchors this intelligently conceived but blandly executed drama, adapted from Bernard MacLaverty’s novel. The film debut of Olivier award-winning theatre director Polly Findlay, it follows Stella (Manville) and Gerry (an affable Ciarán Hinds), an Irish couple living in Scotland whose decades-long marriage has reached a malaise.
Though Gerry seems content with their lot, Stella has evidently become dissatisfied by a dull life, and hopes a city break in Amsterdam might reinject some spark into their waning relationship. In reality, this only further emphasises the emotional and spiritual gulf that has come between them.
There’s something of a travelogue feel to their Dutch adventure, and the film is at its best when digging into its religious themes, as Stella seeks to embrace a more pious existence. There are also references to an incident during the Troubles, though this section of the drama could have used more finesse. It’s occasionally a little lifeless, but as a portrait of a marriage that’s slowly crumbled without any major fireworks, it mostly works. – Patrick Cremona
Dead Man's Wire
Bill Skarsgård leads this thoroughly gripping based-on-fact kidnap drama. He plays Tony Kiritsis, an Indianapolis businessman who, in 1977, snaps and abducts a mortgage broker, Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), after a business deal goes sour. Taking Hall to his apartment in full view of the police, he puts a "dead man’s wire" around his captive’s neck, attached to a shotgun, that will trip if the cops try to intervene.
From here, he tries to negotiate his demands, with TV news crews adding to the chaos. Director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, Milk) pays obvious tribute to fellow film-maker Sidney Lumet, notably bank robbery tale Dog Day Afternoon, especially with the casting of Al Pacino in a pleasing cameo as Hall’s unsympathetic father.
There are potent turns, too, from Colman Domingo and Myha’la (TV's Industry) as, respectively, a local radio DJ and TV news reporter, although its hard to look past Skarsgård, quite sublime as Kiritsis, a man whose headline-grabbing fight against corporate bullies feels timely and resonant. – James Mottram
Arco
Parisian illustrator Ugo Bienvenu makes a stunning feature debut with this sci-fi family adventure that reinvents the Studio Ghibli look with a deliberately French twist. Young Arco lives in the 30th century but ends up travelling through time to Earth in 2075, where people live in fireproof glass domes.
There, he meets neglected Iris, who helps him get back home while unexpected enemies close in on the two vulnerable children. The plot essentially retreads ET the Extra-Terrestrial and shares many of that classic film's charming entertainment qualities.
Natalie Portman, a featured voice on the English-language dub, helped to shepherd this indie project from its rough beginnings through to Oscar-nominated completion, having clearly seen something in Bienvenu's designs.
It's a delight from its visually resplendent start – the streams of rainbow energy that fuel the multiverse flights are rendered beautifully – to its emotionally charged conclusion. Arnaud Toulon's musical score is fantastic, too, making this meditative environmental fable as easy on the ears as on the eyes. – Alan Jones
La Grazia
The President of Italy is caught in a legal and ethical quagmire in this fitfully interesting political drama from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty). Played by Sorrentino’s long-standing leading man Toni Servillo, the principled Mariano De Santis may be a fictional president of the Italian Republic, but his dilemmas are very real.
One of his main tasks is to sanction a law legalising euthanasia. He’s also forced to consider two pardons: a beloved teacher who killed his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife, and a young woman convicted of murdering her husband as he slept. Compared to earlier Sorrentino outings – notably 2008’s Il Divo, in which Servillo played real-life Italian politician Giulio Andreotti – this feels more muted, shorn of the director's more outré stylistic tendencies.
There are still some surprising set-pieces (including an insane rainstorm), and a thoughtful turn from Servillo, who offers up a cinematic rarity: a politician free from scandal and corruption. Ultimately, it’s a quiet character study – aside from the bizarre choice of a techno musical score – but one that never truly explodes into life. – James Mottram
Best of the rest still showing in UK cinemas
How to Make a Killing
The "eat the rich" sub-genre gains a serviceable if unspectacular addition with this thriller starring Glen Powell. Written and directed by John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal), the title has a neat double entendre, as it opens with Becket Redfellow (Powell) recounting to a priest how he murdered his aristocratic family to claim $28 billion in inheritance.
A light-on-its-feet 105 minutes follows, as Becket "prunes a few branches from the family tree" with schemes involving yachts, a bow and arrow and teeth-whitening kits. Powell is a charismatic presence, while Bill Camp and Zach Woods provide the strongest comedic passages as two of his ill-fated kin.
Despite aiming to be keenly modern, though, the film can't escape its roots as a wholesale remake of 1949 classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, which ironically leaves it feeling more like a distant relative than an heir apparent to that superlative Ealing comedy. – Max Copeman
Reminders of Him
Vanessa Caswill helms romance novelist Colleen Hoover’s third big-screen literary adaptation, which arrives largely as expected. Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) has just been released from prison following a tragic mistake, and has returned home hoping to earn some forgiveness and reconnect with her young daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic), whom she has never known.
On the way, her head is turned by Ledger (Tyriq Withers), an NFL player-turned bar owner whose connection to her, of course, runs deeper than she first realises. There’s neither a great deal to remark on or to ridicule here, with some solid performances and convincing chemistry from the well-cast Monroe and Withers the most impressive aspects of the film.
Despite moments of cliché and a fairly regular script, Reminders of Him still offers a dash of sweetness, a dose of cheesiness, and a fun country twang. Its predicable, tear-jerking path proves engaging enough, ultimately delivering a sentimental – if unremarkable – date-night tale of love, family and forgiveness that will almost certainly satisfy fans of "CoHo". – Chezelle Bingham
Resurrection
Chinese auteur Bi Gan is best known for pushing the boundaries of film-making, and this is his most ambitious effort yet. Dedicated to the "dream of cinema", it plays out effectively as an anthology picture, with nested stories that span the 20th century, each dedicated to its era’s film-making techniques and loosely based on one of the five senses.
Jackson Yee excels in each of the segments, which touch on silent cinema, noir, the crime caper and more. The gangster-cum-vampire love story shot in a single take is worth the price of admission alone. Gan’s staging is never less than impressive – operatic yet understated, thrilling yet soporific, poetic yet stiff – and Resurrection is a work of great contrasts and greater beauty.
While it is formally staggering and fascinating to look at, it’s frequently perplexing, too. Few films require so much set-up. But, then, few films devote themselves so thoroughly to exploring life, death, love, art, artifice and the magic of the movies quite like this one. – Sean McGeady
One Last Deal
Set in a single room with a single actor on screen, this one-man meltdown thriller inevitably has the feel of a play. Smartly directed by Brendan Muldowney from a breathless script by Peter Howlett, it stars Danny Dyer as football agent Jimmy Banks, who’s fresh out of rehab and fielding endless calls in search of the next big score.
His only client, Matt Gravish (Elliott Rogers), is on trial for rape, putting a big contract in jeopardy, and he’s forgotten his daughter Stephanie’s birthday, so it’s no wonder he’s "sweating like a prince at Pizza Express". Then a blackmailer phones, claiming to have new, highly incriminating evidence about Gravish, and Banks has to navigate the first of many escalating moral dilemmas.
Dyer is well-cast as the wheeler-dealing Banks, and having the drama play out in real time adds palpable tension to his plight. However, there’s something unsavoury about the way the film uses sexual abuse as a plot point, and some overly on-the-nose dialogue doesn’t help. Still, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. – Matt Glasby
The Love That Remains
A fractured family in rural Iceland form the heart of this gentle tragi-comic marital tale. Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason), who works on a fishing trawler, is estranged from his artist wife Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir), who specialises in crafting earthy but startling metallic works.
Despite their separation, Magnús is a frequent presence at the home that Anna shares with their two sons, one daughter and a beloved sheepdog, played by the scene-stealing (and rightly credited) Panda, who belongs to writer/director Hlynur Pálmason.
Spanning twelve months in the family’s life, this good-natured work is light years from Pálmason’s 2022 breakout film, the austere period drama Godland. Humour is ever-present, not least when Anna, who is struggling with the financial side of her art, spends a day with a Swedish gallerist and imagines his plane dropping from the sky.
Featuring strange dream sequences, including a giant rooster that haunts Magnús, it’s a sometimes meandering but often charming meditation on emasculation and the stresses of divorce. – James Mottram
A Pale View of Hills
Lives are fractured by personal and historical suffering in this slippery but sometimes uninteresting melodrama, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1982 debut novel. Events unfurl between two decades, framed by the return of 20-something writer Niki (Camilla Aiko) to her family home in 1980s Britain after her sister’s suicide.
As Niki interviews her mother Etsuko (Yoh Yoshida) about life in early-50s Nagasaki, Etsuko recalls how, as a younger woman (played by Suzu Hirose), she befriended free-spirited mother Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido) – but are these memories reliable? A tale of psychic projection is implied, in which Sachiko resembles a figment of Etsuko’s pain, frustration and remorse.
Director Kei Ishikawa crafts the 1950s sequences elegantly, balancing restrained portraits of domesticity with hyperreal landscape shots to suggestive effect. In the 1980s sequences, clunky dialogue and flat compositions tend to stifle the film’s power to haunt and move. But the story comes to fitful life in the hands of Hirose and Nikaido, whose mirrored turns tease out themes of trauma and selfhood with absorbing subtlety. – Kevin Harley
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Cillian Murphy returns as Tommy Shelby in an explosive continuation of the BBC TV drama, following its sixth series. It's 1940, and after years of self-imposed exile, the charismatic mob boss is back in Birmingham to re-take the reins of family business, after learning his illegitimate son Duke (introduced late in the series and here played by Barry Keoghan) is mixing with the wrong crowd: a Nazi sympathiser (Tim Roth) planning to crash the UK economy with £70 million in counterfeit banknotes.
Meanwhile, Tommy's still haunted by thoughts of the tragedies that led him to leave town in the first place. The switch from a six-hour narrative arc to a single feature-length release results in incident and characterisation being truncated, but writer/creator Steven Knight and returning director Tom Harper nonetheless manage to construct a satisfying story that doesn’t necessarily require viewers to have deep knowledge of Peaky Blinders lore.
Murphy and Keoghan are well matched sparring partners, and Roth’s manipulative businessman is a casually nasty piece of work. – Terry Staunton
The Bride
Maggie Gyllenhaal playfully re-imagines 1935 Universal masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein, boldy relocating the action to mid-1930s America, where the Monster or “Frank” (Christian Bale) has reached the end of his tether after being alone for over a century.
His desire for a mate brings him to the door of Chicago scientist Dr Euphronius (Annette Bening), whose work in reinvigorating the dead offers lovelorn Frank the chance to have a companion just like him. Enter Jessie Buckley as Ida, whose sudden transformation from glum gangster’s moll to dangerously gobby harridan is all down to being possessed by novelist Mary Shelley (also played by Buckley).
In her second film behind the camera, Gyllenhaal attempts to harness multiple elements, while adding in plenty of genre-mashing moments. Buckley is mesmerising as the Bride and Bale gives a restrained, sympathetic performance, while Gyllenhaal should be applauded for her ambition, stylish flourishes and obvious respect for the original film. Unfortunately all of the elements don’t cohere entirely, but there's still much to admire. – Jeremy Aspinall
Hoppers
Pixar blends body-swap chaos with a story about empowering environmentalism in this film directed by We Bare Bears creator Daniel Chong. Teenage activist Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) is determined to save a forest glade from being bulldozed by Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm). After uncovering the clandestine experiments of her biology professor (Kathy Najimy), Mabel transfers her consciousness into the body of a lifelike robotic beaver.
She befriends a real beaver, King George (Bobby Moynihan), who calls on the assistance of other animal rulers – including Meryl Streep’s formidable Insect Queen – to protect the glade, before things go horribly wrong. Pixar’s take on beavers is as cute as you’d imagine, and the ferociously principled Mabel makes a fascinating hero.
The sparkling script from Jesse Andrews (Luca, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) boasts a meaty, moderately complicated story that engages without becoming too confusing. It’s not quite up there with the studio’s finest but this is still witty and wonderfully entertaining, with a positive message about coexistence and not judging our fellow humans too harshly. – Emma Simmonds
Scream 7
As macabre as it may seem, the sound of a shiny blade slicing into human flesh has rarely sounded so reassuring. The seventh spin of the Scream carousel represents a kind of homecoming, with the return of both the franchise’s most enduring heroine (Neve Campbell) and the man who created the whole business 30 years ago (Kevin Williamson) contributing hugely to a horror that’s by no means perfect but isn’t short on pizzazz.
Naysayers might be of the opinion that no matter the changes in location or victims, the Scream series has a tendency to repeat itself; and while there’s more than a smidgen of truth in that, the seventh chapter at least displays more style and wit than the last couple of so-so outings.
The mystery elements could have been handled more effectively, and while the grisly attacks and fight scenes are choreographed with flair they don’t offer viewers much in the way of jaw-dropping shocks they haven’t seen before. But despite undeniable faults, plot holes and a dubious ending, it’s still a crowd-pleaser executed with zest. – Terry Staunton
Sirat
Taking its name from the Arabic word for a bridge between heaven and hell, this mercilessly tense thriller from Galician writer/director Oliver Laxe holds its audience in a vice-like grip. It follows Luis (Sergi López), a middle-aged Spanish man who takes his pre-teen son and dog to an illegal rave in the Moroccan desert, having heard that his missing daughter might be there.
When it gets shut down, he continues his search by following a group of partygoers (played by non-professional actors) towards the Mauritanian border. A perilous road trip follows, and as Luis becomes a fish increasingly out of water, nods to Heart of Darkness or Mad Max give way to the four-wheeled hallucinatory kicks of William Friedkin thriller Sorcerer.
There are breathtakingly cruel bumps in the road and a political backdrop that may feel inelegantly plotted, but such concerns give way to the overall sensory experience – and an existential edge to the survival story. As an electronic music score sends basslines throbbing and the ravers’ subwoofers pulsing, this utterly exhilarating film becomes a parable for our relationship with fate and the sublime. – Max Copeman
The Secret Agent
This pleasingly unclassifiable 1970s-set Brazilian tale follows a man with a mysterious past who seeks to reconnect with his young son. Wagner Moura (TV's Narcos) is fantastic as Marcelo – just one of the names the character goes by – who arrives in sweltering Recife, having fled the north of the country.
His lad is obsessed by Steven Spielberg's Jaws and his father-in-law runs a local movie theatre, but these are just a sprinkling of the elements that go into a complex story dealing with corruption, chaos and carnival. Kleber Mendonça Filho (Bacurau) won the best director award at Cannes, and deservedly so: he conjures up a consistently surprising and inventive look at a bygone era, dotted with nicely rendered period detail.
This is a world where death permeates every frame, from a rotting corpse on a garage forecourt to the gruesome sight of a man’s severed leg inside a dead shark. Filled with weird asides (like the aforementioned leg, starring in its own exploitation flick) and even a present-day wraparound story, this is unusual, and sometimes extraordinary, film-making. – James Mottram
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Motherhood is a mountain to be exhaustingly climbed in this scathing, innovative comedy drama from American writer/director Mary Bronstein (who also pops up to play a patronising paediatrician). Rose Byrne is sensational as Linda, a woman whose life, and ceiling, is tumbling down around her. She’s grappling with the demands of her daughter (a largely unseen Delaney Quinn) whom she feeds via a gastric tube, while trying to maintain her career as a psychotherapist.
Her ship-captain husband Charles (voiced by Christian Slater) is away with work, and her own therapist (Conan O’Brien) seems to despise her. Things get really ugly when Linda is forced to move herself and her daughter into a motel (run by A$AP Rocky’s James) and she starts behaving recklessly, while a client’s crisis touches a nerve.
Bronstein confronts the depth of Linda’s depression and the judgements she faces in imaginative, interrogatory style, punctuating her film with sometimes wildly funny farce. A never-better Byrne, deservedly Oscar-nominated, thrives under the film’s intense focus, juggling comedy and tragedy with aplomb. – Emma Simmonds
The Moment
Pop sensation Charli XCX rips into the music industry, and the success of her 2024 brat album, in this amusing, zeitgeist-tapping mockumentary. Set in the run-up to a gig at London’s O2 Arena, Charli is pushed by Rosanna Arquette’s spiky record company exec into participating in an accompanying tour film.
Overseen by Alexander Skarsgård’s pretentious film-maker, it’s the antithesis of the anarchic brat, full of compromise. Worse still, Charli’s team, led by manager Tim (Jamie Demetriou), is orchestrating a queasy deal for a "brat" bank card.
Debut director Aidan Zameri delivers a typical mock-doc flavour, with an overzealous use of handheld camerawork, but does well in capturing the energy and egos that surround artistic innovators.
With cameos from Kylie Jenner, Julia Fox and Rachel Sennott, all playing themselves, this is an insider peek at the way record companies can bleed artists dry of any creativity. Credit Charli for biting the hand that feeds, even if the result isn’t quite as scathing or insightful as it thinks it is. – James Mottram
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë’s gothic romance gets a radical revamp in this sizzling and wonderfully flamboyant screen adaptation from Emerald Fennell (Saltburn). Childhood friends Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) and Cathy (Margot Robbie) fall in love as youngsters, but become separated after Cathy marries their rich neighbour Edgar (Shazad Latif).
Five years after fleeing, Heathcliff returns as a mysteriously moneyed gentleman and the couple begin an affair. Boasting an outrageous, often irresistible sense of fun, Fennell's film is a visual riot, with this sexed-up version of the story love-bombing the screen with reds, pinks and whites.
The sincerity with which the love story is told and performed is impressive, too. Elordi channels Sharpe-era Sean Bean, Robbie gives a fully fleshed-out turn that blends brattiness with tragedy, and Hong Chau shines as watchful housemaid Nelly.
On one hand, this is the cinematic equivalent of "go big or go home", with the fantastical sets occasionally distracting. On the other hand, it's an emotionally impactful adaptation for the ages that captures the depth, passion and destructiveness of Heathcliff and Cathy’s bond. It will almost certainly provoke pearl-clutching among the purists. – Emma Simmonds
My Father's Shadow
Two young Nigerian brothers bond with their estranged father in this beguiling coming-of-age story, set in 1993. Living out in a village with their mother, siblings Aki (Godwin Chimerie Egbo) and Remi (Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) are shocked when their long-absent dad Fola (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) returns, only to whisk them off to Lagos, where he is aiming to collect months of unpaid wages.
There, they get to see the big city, at a time when political tensions are rising due to an impending and contentious presidential election. Debut director Akinola Davies, filming this semi-autobiographical tale from his brother Wale’s script, creates a strong sense of place, his Lagos teeming with life, possibility and danger.
Only subtly do we glimpse something of Fola’s life apart from his boys, not least in a telling interaction with a waitress. But this is mostly a day-in-the-life film, in which these two boys come to realise the strengths and flaws of their father. Beautifully performed all round, this pulsates with energy and vibrancy. – James Mottram
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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.
