It’s all about the popcorn this week . . . Wonder Woman 84 has been out for a while, but it’s a perfect family film for the half term break.

It’s fifty years since this film first appeared, and it’s still as gritty & tough with a fabulous central performance from Gene Hackman. So much so . . . that he grabbed the best actor Oscar in the 1972 academy awards.

So here we are (at last I hear you cry) several years after this film was completed, we finally get to see it . . . but was it was worth the wait?

Aretha Franklin (played by Jennifer Hudson) had extraordinary musical talent, but her career was slow to start as she struggled to define her own sound, under the influence of her father and her domineering husband.

It’s 2020 and we’re in the midst of an unnamed pandemic . . . a scientist called Martin Lowery (played by Joel Fry) and park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) set out on a trek through the woods to deliver equipment to former colleague of Martin’s – Dr Olivia Wendle (played by Hayley Squires). Aware of the evil spirit – Parnag Fegg that lives in the forest, they decide to ignore it . . . big mistake!

Filmed over nine days last year in Madrid . . . Almodóvar transforms Jean Cocteau’s short play The Human Voice. Tilda Swinton stomps around a beautiful apartment where the décor offers a view into her state of mind in this short, sharp shot of full on Almodóvar humour, passion, emotion & heartbreak. This is Almodóvar’s first short film in over 11 years, and his first to be made in English.

It’s the Cold War and Oleg Penkovsky (played by Merab Ninidze), is a high-ranking Russian, who starts sending important information to British and US intelligence services. To avoid detection, they recruit a British businessman called Greville Wynne (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to act as a courier.

We’re transported to Denmark with four aging teachers played by Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang and Lars Ranthe, who decide to conduct an experiment with 0.5% alcohol constantly in their system.

Enid works as a censor in the early 1980s inspecting films for extreme content during the height of the video nasties era. But the job starts to consume her, as she becomes obsessed with the disappearance of her sister.

During a global pandemic (sound familiar?) that sparks sudden amnesia . . . Aris (Aris Servetalis) is enrolled in a recovery programme designed to give blank people new identities. He is given a Polaroid camera and tasked with creating & documenting fresh memories, a project that becomes complicated when he meets a fellow patient called Anna (Sofia Georgovassili).