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

Two Americans end up in Dakar, Senegal with bombs strapped to their chests and ten hours to find out why.

Two seemingly innocent American men (Hus Miller and Cam McHarg) wake up in the streets of Dakar, with bombs strapped to their chests. Following the orders of a mysterious voice (the unmistakable Willem Defoe) in their cell phones, they will run a desperate race against time that will set a whole country on fire and, inadvertently, plunge them into a quest for a deeper meaning to their lives. Congolese filmmaker Herbulot is a rising talent on the international action scene who blends his knowledge of his homeland with a deep appreciation of the history of action filmmaking.

USA 2024 Jean Luc Herbulot 88m

Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.

In Athina Rachel Tsangari's (‘Chevalier’, ‘Dogtooth’) tragicomic take on a Western, townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones)and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent (Harry Melling) are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity. The feral spirit of the world is gorgeously evoked throughout, with Sean Price-Williams’ cinematography a standout. Shooting on film, he embraces the organic qualities of the medium: the edge of the frame is ragged and mossy. Music is also part of the tapestry: the women sing hauntingly lovely traditional Scottish folk songs then the fiddles whip up a frenzy of boisterous bad behaviour. There is a wildness and a pagan spirit to this film’s energy.

UK/Germany/USA/France/Greece 2024 Athina Rachel Tsangari 131m

In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other... and him.

At the age of seventy, after years of consolidating his empire, the Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to abdicate and divide his domain amongst his three sons. Taro (Akira Terao), the eldest, will rule. Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), his second son, and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) will take command of the Second and Third Castles but are expected to obey and support their elder brother. Saburo defies the pledge of obedience and is banished. There is not a wasted second in this film, Kurosawa took film spectacle to new heights, continuing to extend his own powers after the acclaim of ‘Rashomon’ and ‘Seven Samurai’. The film celebrates 40 years in 2025 with this new remastered release.

Japan/France 1985 Akira Kurosawa 160m

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