What films are out in UK cinemas this week? Reviews from Steve to Happyend

Reception so far has been mixed to say the least (it currently sits on just 41 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) but if you're a fan of the two stars or director Kogonada's previous work, it could still be worth checking out.

Also arriving in select cinemas ahead of a Netflix release in two weeks time is Steve, which sees Cillian Murphy reunite with Small Things Like These director Tim Mielants for a powerful drama about a headteacher at a reform school.

Meanwhile, if you're after something a little different, there's also new Japanese movie Happyend, an interesting high school drama set in near-future Tokyo.

Our reviews for those two films are below, and you can also find our lowdown on other major films released in UK cinemas in recent weeks – from Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and crime flick Caught Stealing to raucous comedy reboot The Naked Gun and acclaimed horror pic Weapons.

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? 19th - 25th September

Steve

Cillian Murphy in in awards-worthy form in this in this responsible, intelligent drama, playing a head teacher at a residential reform school for teenage boys with severe behavioural problems. The pupils’ struggles are mirrored by Steve’s own; a driven educator cum social worker, escalating alcohol and substance abuse enable him to keep numerous plates spinning while all around him falls apart.

The scholastic/babysitting efforts of Murphy and Tracey Ullman – who plays his deputy – are accompanied by integral support from nervous rookie teacher Simbi Ajikawo (AKA rapper Little Simz) and Emily Watson as a (mostly) tranquil counsellor. It’s high drama throughout and not always comfortable viewing, but director Tim Mielants and writer Max Porter use their canvas to shine a light on broader issues of social and educational systemic failure without once stumbling into preachiness.

More important and questioning than boarder dramas like the Oscar-winning The Holdovers and wisely side-stepping the shock value controversies of 1979’s Scum, director Tim Mielants is also to be applauded for making his audience warm to a ragbag collection of ne’er-do-wells. – Terry Staunton

• Read our full Steve review

Happyend

Billing itself as a story about the near future, this unassuming drama by Japanese-American writer/director Neo Sora has much to say about the present. Set in a Tokyo beset by constant earthquake alerts, it follows five school friends led by Kou (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) as they wait to graduate and move on with the next phase of their lives.

While they hang out, fall out and fall in love, the repressive climate at school begins to mirror that of the rest of the country, where fascism is rising. But which of them will have the courage to speak up? Although seemingly little happens over 113 meandering minutes, the film has a lovely, all-enveloping mood that gradually draws you in.

It may lack the fire of Lindsay Anderson’s (ostensibly similar) if... (1968), but this is so sensitively shot, scored and acted that you cannot help but root for the young heroes. After all, trying to find your place on the planet, even as it shifts beneath you, is no mean feat. – Matt Glasby

Best of the rest still showing in UK cinemas

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

In aiming to wrap up one of British popular culture’s most endearing franchises, this slightly muted but still warm-feeling movie has its work cut out. Thankfully it holds back on gushing sentimentality, instead introducing some fun new characters, including Alessandro Nivola’s suave American, Gus Sambrook and the ultra-pompous local Sir Hector Moreland (Simon Russell Beale).

There’s also an encounter with real-life playwright Noël Coward (Arty Froushan), who becomes the toast of Downton after a visit. Director Simon Curtis, who also helmed 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era, doesn’t spare the horses when it comes the requisite glamour, and the costumes by Anna Robbins all look glorious too.

As it should, there are nods to past characters – including Violet Crawley, played by the late, great Maggie Smith – although the nostalgia isn’t entirely tear-stained. It would be unfair to claim this closing film concludes on a whimper, but neither is it quite the grand finale the title would have us believe. More like a pleasant stroll with characters you know and love. – James Mottram

• Read our full Downton Abbey: A New Era review
• Read our interview with creator Julian Fellowes and the cast

The Long Walk

The American Dream of getting rich quickly is given a macabre twist in this searing, yet thoughtful adaptation of Stephen King’s first novel, published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Set 19 years after a crippling war, it posits a United States under totalitarian rule where national pride is inspired via a televised cross-country walking competition between 50 young men, representing each US state.

The winner is promised wish-fulfilling riches, but there is no finishing line, no rest breaks and anyone not keeping up with the pace will receive three warnings, then instant execution. Even stopping to tie a shoelace could be fatal. Petty differences and antagonism gradually give way to exhaustion, delirium and even illumination as the participants strive to be the last man standing, all under the baleful gaze of the merciless Major (an almost unrecognisable Mark Hamill).

Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) and David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) give marvellous performances as the initial rivals whose evolving friendship is the beating heart of an often agonising horror, directed by Francis Lawrence – who knows his way around survival-of-the-fittest dystopia, with three Hunger Games films to his name. – Jeremy Aspinall

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

The hapless heavy-metal heroes of 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap are back in business for one last hurrah, in a belated sequel that’s heavy on nostalgia but light on new gags. Having not spoken to one another in 15 years, the band (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer) is persuaded to reconvene for another gig, but past acrimony is never far from the surface.

Although the full creative team from the earlier movie is in place (with a screenplay by the three main actors and director Rob Reiner), this fresh chapter only rarely hits the heights of what came before. It’s still fairly funny, if lacking the sharpness and full-on charm that fans might be hoping for.

There’s strong support from Brits Kerry Godliman, as the band’s new manager, and Chris Addison as a Simon Cowell-like music biz executive, so it’s a pity when headline-grabbing cameos by Paul McCartney and Elton John burst the bubble of the supposedly fictional premise. There’s still a good time to be had, but the beloved characters deserve a better film than this. – Terry Staunton

• Read our full Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review

The Conjuring: Last Rites

The proposed final instalment in the Conjuring universe doesn’t break any new ground in the demonic-possession arena, but it is an enjoyable enough old-school spine-tingler. Based on the true story of the Smurl family, who moved into a haunted house in Pennsylvania in 1973, this sees paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) reluctantly going in to help, only to discover links to an earlier 1964 case.

Cue night-time levitation, menacing objects and unexpected leaps from the dark, plus the involvement of the pair's daughter, Judy (Mia Tomlinson). Michael Chaves (The Nun II) competently directs the clichéd chills with a smooth efficiency, utilising sudden ghostly images and loud bangs to deliver sufficient push-button scares.

However, the anchor for all the spooky goings-on remains Wilson and Farmiga, whose warm chemistry ensures we care despite the tried-and-true theatrics that litter the finale. While Last Rites hardly matches the pioneering nightmare spirit of the original film, it delivers enough confident creepiness to entertain. – Alan Jones

• Read our full The Conjuring: Last Rites review

The Roses

Can national treasures be nasty? Are beloved public figures capable of convincing us they’re cruel?

The anatomy of a marriage disintegrating into a sea of vitriol and two-way psychological torture is undeniably grim subject matter, a highwire act for a filmmaker who, if the job’s done properly and honestly, leaves little room for the audience to root for either protagonist.

And therein lies the flaw with The Roses; its leads are far too likeable in everyday life to take viewers into a world where bitterness, recrimination and malice reign.

Both Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch have entries on their CVs where a film role has required them to be unsavoury types, yet here director Jay Roach seems to begin the tale with a Year Zero premise of characters who are charming and quick-witted, a filmic reflection of the stars’ familiar personalities from chat shows and awards ceremonies.

Perhaps the intention is to heighten the shock value when the lovebirds subsequently turn on each other, but the viciousness is diluted by polite slapstick and a few too many zappy one-liners. – Terry Staunton

• Read our full The Roses review

Caught Stealing

After his divisive 2022 film The Whale, Darren Aronofsky returns with the most potentially commercial film of his career. It’s certainly the most thrilling. As the title suggests, Caught Stealing is a crime yarn, although theft is the least of the misdemeanours on show here. Set in 1998, in New York’s Lower East Side, this is a story where bruises flourish and bodies pile up. Back in a similar geographical terrain to Aronofsky’s first two movies, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, it has all the hallmarks of a cult 90s indie.

Adapted by Charlie Huston from his own novel, the central figure is Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), a former baseball prodigy now working in a bar run by Griffin Dunne’s owner Paul. The reason he no longer plays won’t become clear immediately, but he regularly speaks on the phone to his baseball-loving mother back in Patterson, California (“Go Giants!” they repeatedly say, nodding to their shared passion for the San Francisco Giants). He’s now facing an existence without the sport that drove him for so long. – James Mottram

• Read our full Caught Stealing review

Eddington

A moustachioed Joaquin Phoenix is the unhinged sheriff at the heart of Ari Aster’s sprawling but dynamic Covid-era neo-western. Set in May 2020, in the titular New Mexico town, Phoenix’s maverick lawman Joe Cross clashes with the mayor (Pedro Pascal) after refusing to wear a mask in shops just as the pandemic is growing.

This sets in motion a deadly chain of events, as Black Lives Matter protests also gather on the streets in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Featuring Emma Stone as Cross’s ailing wife, Austin Butler as an unnerving online guru and British actor Micheal Ward as the deputy sheriff, the film is overflowing with ideas.

Aster takes his time to build the tension, but when shots are fired you won't know what's hit you. Phoenix, following his turn in Aster’s balmy 2023 psychodrama Beau Is Afraid, once again shows he’s an actor willing to take some wild risks. – James Mottram

• Read our full Eddington review

Sorry, Baby

This melancholic and darkly amusing debut feature from American writer/director/actor Eva Victor is set in a Massachusetts university town, where twentysomething English Literature academic Agnes (Victor) is struggling to process having been sexually assaulted by her thesis supervisor years before.

Split into a series of achronological and archly titled chapters, Sorry, Baby chooses not to depict the violence in question, concentrating instead on how the traumatic incident has impacted on Agnes’s everyday life and sense of self. Still living several years later in the same cluttered cottage, she receives empathetic support from former fellow graduate student Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who’s now married in New York, and from a sweet-natured neighbour (Lucas Hedges).

While Victor reveals the inadequacy of the institutional responses to Agnes’s ordeal, there’s also an amusing wryness in the film's tone, exemplified in Victor's often deadpan line readings. Despite the crisp running time, there’s a leisurely feel to this carefully framed film, which offers a resolution that fittingly combines tenderness and humour. – Tom Dawson

The Life of Chuck

In the spirit of The Shawshank Redemption – if not quite the class – writer/director Mike Flanagan’s non-horror Stephen King adaptation is a reflective, crowd-pleasing drama with cosmic undercurrents. The three-act plot tells a life story in reverse, beginning at the world’s demise – where a teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) keeps seeing posters thanking a man named Chuck Krantz for 39 great years.

Act two introduces Chuck as an accountant and exuberant dancer (Tom Hiddleston), before the final section explores young Chuck’s formative triumphs and traumas. Following Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, Flanagan’s third King movie shares the writer’s generous feel for character and dialogue. The director’s way with actors matches the material well, with Hiddleston, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Benjamin Pajak and Matthew Lillard providing winning turns.

Meanwhile, an affirmative meditation on life-changing choices takes gradual shape between the diffuse character strands. Even if The Life of Chuck can get schmaltzy, there are plenty of poignant, well-crafted pleasures to be had from its richly imagined and heartfelt fable of life’s joys and mysteries.

• Read our full The Life of Chuck review

Materialists

Modern dating comes under the microscope in this sexy, smartly written New York story from Past Lives writer/director Celine Song. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a singleton who makes a lucrative living matchmaking professionals for an upmarket agency. But then her own romantic life is thrown into chaos. At the wedding reception of her latest success story, she meets the groom's brother, wealthy financier Harry (Pedro Pascal), but also runs into her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), a waiter and struggling actor.

What’s a girl to do? Examining the way so many too easily choose potential partners by algorithm – by status and looks rather than personality – this nails the sometimes callous nature of contemporary couplings. Pascal and Evans are expertly cast, both playing fundamentally decent men and providing subtle twists on their public personas. But it’s Johnson who leads the line, the Fifty Shades of Grey star finally grabbing an adult role that befits her skills. The result is a highly satisfying romantic tale that stimulates the brain and the heart. – James Mottram

Nobody 2

Bob Odenkirk returns as family guy Hutch Mansell, whose unassuming exterior belies his skillset as a retired government assassin. In this pacey action sequel, Hutch has relocated with wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and his children after tangling with Russian mobsters in the first film, but is co-opted by an old handler to execute more barely survivable assignments.

Demanding a break, he takes the trio and his geriatric dad (Christopher Lloyd) to his favourite childhood holiday spot – a small-town amusement/water park – to relive happy memories. Naturally, for Hutch, he soon falls foul of corrupt lawmen and the minions of a vicious local crime queen (Sharon Stone, scenery-gnashing with gusto), forcing the Mansell clan (including a katana-wielding RZA) to get involved in the holiday havoc.

Indonesian film-maker Timo Tjahjanto (Headshot) here makes his Hollywood debut and delivers the familiar Nobody ingredients of bone-crunching brawls, grisly comeuppance, droll deadpan humour and a bloodily explosive climax. Just a pity a bit more flesh wasn’t added to the characters this time around. – Jeremy Aspinall

Together

In this curious hybrid of body horror and relationship drama, Alison Brie and Dave Franco star as a couple who move to the country to re-energise their faltering romance, but fall prey to an unknown, malevolent entity. After drinking water from a remote pool in the woods, they awake to find themselves stuck together at the legs by a bizarre gooey substance.

It's just the first of increasingly grotesque instances in which the pair are, literally, forced to stay together. While the film has an element of absurd humour, its graphic effects aren't for the squeamish, as debut director Michael Shanks settles into his task as a kind of marriage counsellor with a David Cronenberg fixation.

The added mystery thriller motifs arguably add to a pot that risks becoming too full to stir, but the end result is a tricky fable that motors along nicely. Events benefit from the casting of real-life spouses Brie and Franco, whose rhythms and chemistry go a long way to selling an outlandish premise and its gleefully dispatched shocks. – Terry Staunton

Weapons

Writer/director Zach Cregger follows his 2022 hit Barbarian with this unnerving and thunderously entertaining horror epic. It follows events in the aftermath of a deeply troubling incident in a suburban US town: one night, without explanation, all but one student in the third-grade class of a new teacher (Julia Garner) vanished from their homes. Divulging further plot details would severely dampen the viewing experience.

The non-linear structure employed by Cregger – we follow events from six unique perspectives – allows the film to explore the complex ways people's psyches are affected by broken communities, traumatic events and surrounding public storms. Each chapter gradually teases more information about the bizarre events engulfing the town, resulting in a propulsive, perfectly paced thriller that leaves things tantalisingly mysterious until a reveal that will appeal to fans of 2024's Longlegs.

There are frights aplenty, with Cregger tapping into nightmarish, fairy tale-esque imagery, but also evidence of the director's comedic roots. The deft way in which he juggles those tones makes Weapons a refreshing triumph. – Patrick Cremona

• Read our full Weapons review
• Read our interview with star Josh Brolin

Freakier Friday

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reprise their roles from the 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday for this fun fairground ride of a sequel. Now a single mother to Harper (Julia Butters), Anna (Lohan) is about to marry English ex-pat Eric (Manny Jacinto). However, there's family friction in the fact that Harper doesn't get along with Eric's daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons).

After a visit to a fortune teller, bodies are swapped again, as Anna and Harper trade, as do Lily and Curtis’s Tess. With the men – including Anna’s ex, Jake (Chad Michael Murray) – blithely unaware, chaos ensues. Directed by Nisha Ganatra (The High Note), the film is ambitious in delivering a four-way body swap. While this does amp up the lunacy of the original, it is also the film's slight downfall.

The performances aren’t distinct enough (with the exception of the ever-reliable Curtis), and the payoff from all the identity confusion isn’t as strong as it could be. Yet there are some very funny lines (generation-gap gags about Coldplay and Facebook), a bouncy soundtrack featuring the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, and a colourful, carefree vibe that ensures the film is still fun. – James Mottram

• Read our full Freakier Friday review
• Read our interview with star Manny Jacinto

The Naked Gun

The return of the spoof franchise sees Liam Neeson take on the mantle from Leslie Nielsen, playing the son of Frank Drebin. As far as the plot goes, narrative threads aren’t especially important when director Akiva Schaffer and his co-screenwriters busy themselves front-loading the hilarity and giving the parody movie genre a much-needed shot in the arm.

References to what went before are par for the course legacy sequels life this, and in a franchise that was fond of sight gags and one-line asides from the start it’s no surprise to find a generous helping of nods to days of yore. But this reboot also has the clout and cavalcade of laughs to announce itself as its own beast.

Neeson confidently treads a fine line between vigilante and vaudevillian, while Pamela Anderson shows she’s admirably skilled at knowing when to serve as the perfect foil and when to land a gag herself. The Naked Gun is a near 90-minute hoot that bodes well for more to come, a gun that feels like it still has several bullets to fire. – Terry Staunton

• Read our full The Naked Gun review

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