2025 Live Action Version

A hugely entertaining live-action remake of the much-loved 2002 animation, where a lonely Hawaiian girl befriends a runaway alien, helping to mend her fragmented family.

Lilo (Maia Kealoha) is an orphaned Hawaiian kid who keeps accidentally getting in trouble. Her elder sister, Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong), is trying to keep her on the straight and narrow after the death of their parents. Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders, director of the 2002 film) is a genetically engineered alien. When he is banished from his home planet, considered too dangerous to live, he escapes to Earth, envisaging a reign of destruction. Instead, he has to pose as a dog and move in with Lilo to evade the aliens tailing him. As Stitch tries to avoid capture and Lilo risks being taken away by social services, these two misfits form an unlikely bond. This has the charm of an ’80s family film such as ‘E.T.’ or ‘Gremlins’ and is one of the best of the recent live-action remakes. It will be a sure-fire hit for the family.

USA 2025 Dean Fleischer Camp 108m

David Cronenberg’s latest sees an innovative businessman and grieving widower build a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.

Karsh, played by a smirking Vincent Cassel whose face and wiry grey hair make him a dead ringer for Cronenberg, has created GraveTech, a wired cemetery that allows mourners to watch their loved ones decompose in real-time, either with an app on their phones or via the monitors affixed to the top of each headstone. Karsh believes his morbid invention will allow people to maintain a meaningful relationship with the bodies of their life partners, even in death. The film also stars Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce. Cronenberg drew on his own wife’s death for this brilliantly cerebral thriller about the physicality of grief.

France/Canada 2024 David Cronenberg 120m

A husband-and-wife rediscover nature’s beauty and a renewed sense of vitality in this heartstring-pulling adaptation of a true-life tale.

Fifty-somethings Ray Winn and her husband Moth (Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs) receive a bad health diagnosis and court-ordered to vacate the only home they’ve known as a family due to insurmountable circumstances. They decide to walk the South-West Coast Path – the longest (630 miles) uninterrupted footpath in England – from Minehead to Poole along the Devon, Cornwall and Dorset coast armed only with a tent, limited supplies, very few clothes and the travelogue that inspired this trek. Helene Louvart’s excellent cinematography is a real highlight with filming locations including Padstow, Clovelly, Ilfracombe and some of the most beautiful rugged coast in the country, but do see if you can spot the scenes filmed at our very own West Wittering. This portrait of loss, humanity and rebirth is adapted from Raynor Winn’s personal memoir, with Anderson and Isaacs’ intimately textured performances standing out.

UK 2024 Marianne Elliott 115m