Scream 7 ★★★☆☆
Directed by Kevin Williamson. Starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Anna Camp, Joel McHale. 16 cert, gen release, 114 min
The seventh episode in the long-running meta-horror brings Neve Campbell back to the bloody party. Missing from the last episode, her Sidney Prescott is now running a quiet coffee shop in Indiana. Let’s see how long that lasts. What follows is a reasonably ingenious meld of new-generational tomfoolery and the unearthing of ancient characters whose identities we shan’t spoil. There is little original here, but, as has always been the case in this treatise on repeated tropes, that is precisely the point. Campbell and Cox do good legacy work. The youngers performers get through the knowing cliches with aplomb. Full review DC
Sirat ★★★★★
Directed by Óliver Laxe. Starring Sergi López, Brúno Nuñez, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Richard Bellamy. 15A cert, gen release, 114 min
Searing uncategorisable drama that begins with a father looking for his daughter among nomadic ravers in North Africa and, after a stunning mid-film reversal, ends somewhere much stranger. “Sirat” is an Arabic word for road or path, and, appropriately enough, this is a director with a firm notion of where he is going and what he wants to tell us along the way. Some of those messages are clear from a first viewing. Others emerge as the film settles into the brain. The sort of enterprise both fans and detractors will be talking about for years to come. Full review DC
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Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars ★★★★☆
Directed by Mike Sheridan. Featuring John O Brennan, Louize Carroll, James Clapper, Robert Draper, Aoife Gallagher, Jonathan Lemire, Paul Murphy. No cert, digital platforms, 80 min
Mike Sheridan’s plucky first feature assembles a formidable roster of political insiders, historians, and commentators – including former and current US presidential advisers – to trace the global fallout from one of America’s most potent exports: weaponised rhetoric. Talking heads from the other side of the spectrum are resolute. Beto O’Rourke condemns modern political grifters and their calculated “othering” of minorities. Eric Swalwell recounts a telling encounter with Ted Cruz, realising that for Cruz, politics resembles professional wrestling, and he’s Hulk Hogan. In the post-Epstein era, this bracing documentary chronicles how nefarious forces can capitalise on justified mistrust. Full review TB
All You Need Is Kill ★★★★☆
Directed by Kenichiro Akimoto. Voices of Ai Mikami, Natsuki Hanae, Kana Hanazawa. 15A cert, limited release, 86 min
Kenichiro Akimoto’s returns to Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 source novel, previously filmed as Edge of Tomorrow, leaving a new set of bootprints. Where Tom Cruise’s live-action vehicle offered steely skies and militarised bombast, this animated reimagining opts for Skittle colours, circumspection and a gendered shift in perspective. Sakurazaka’s novel, illustrated by Yoshitoshi Abe, and its earlier adaptations follow Keiji, a raw recruit trapped in a time loop on the day humanity is massacred by alien “Mimics”. She dies and wakes up at the start of the same day. And repeat. The reset becomes both narrative engine and existential trap in an elegant rush of a movie. Full review TB
