Liam’s one last heist goes wrong... while Chris’s love life is a little bit out of tune
Steve McQueen is best known for the art-house offerings
Hunger, Shame and 12 Years A Slave. Yet here he is suddenly making a crime thriller based on a TV series written by Lynda La Plante in the Eighties. And very good the new
Widows (16) ★★★★ is too, with the story relocated to Chicago and Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn brought in to help with the screenplay.
But the core of the plot is unchanged: a gang of career criminals burn to death in their getaway van when a job goes horribly wrong and, faced with ruin, their hitherto law-abiding widows turn to crime themselves, pinning their hopes on pulling off on the last big job planned by Harry (Liam Neeson) before his death.
Some of the plotting is a little clunky but the acting is wonderful, with Viola Davis on sparkling form as Harry’s resourceful widow, Veronica.
Not so much a romcom as a bittersweet romance with funny bits, Juliet, Naked (15A) ★★★★ is a delicious adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel about two thirtysomethings struggling to make coupledom work.
He (Chris O’Dowd) is Duncan, a college lecturer nerdishly obsessed with missing musician Tucker Crowe. She is Annie (Rose Byrne), Duncan’s increasingly dissatisfied girlfriend, who secretly begins a You’ve Got Mailstyle online relationship with Crowe (Ethan Hawke), who’s not nearly as mysterious – or missing – as people think. Slaughterhouse Rulez (15A) ★★★★ is a truly extraordinary comedy that combines elements of St Trinian’s, If... and er... Creature From The Black Lagoon. It takes a while to find its stride as fracking begins in the grounds of the frightfully posh Slaughterhouse School but is very funny – and spectacularly gory – once it does.
Mirai (PG) ★★★★ (below) is a lovely Japanese animation about sibling rivalry, parenting and magicallypassed-on wisdom, while
Peterloo (12A) ★ is an unwatchable Mike Leigh film about the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 that’s burdened with a surfeit of speeches and some terrible acting.
If it’s working-class heroes you’re after, you’re better off with Nae Pasaran (12A) ★★★★, an unexpectedly moving documentary about the Scottish factory workers who in 1974 refused to work on Rolls-Royce aircraft engines because they had been involved in the bloody coup that brought General Pinochet to power in Chile. It’s crying out for a Made In Dagenham-style remake but, until then, this will do the job very well indeed.