PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS

FIRST MAN (12A) BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (15)

Academy Award-winning director Damien Chazelle takes one giant leap for immersive, nail-biting filmmaking in a thrilling dramatisation of the space race between America and the Soviet Union. Based on James R Hansen’s official biography of Neil Armstrong, First Man shoots for the moon and touches down beautifully by placing us alongside astronauts in their claustrophobic modules or next to nervous Nasa staff as they propel mankind into the great unknown. Handheld camerawork, unobtrusive special effects and dazzling sound design leave us stranded thousands of miles above terra firma in a similar fashion to Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, at the mercy of newfangled technology and Lady Luck. The tension is almost unbearable. Chazelle masterfully encourages us to hold our breath and bite our nails down to the cuticle with bold visual flourishes and unshowy, powerhouse performances from Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy as the husband and wife at the epicentre of the 1969 lunar landing.

At least one guest of a themed hotel, which straddles the state line between California and Nevada, checks out of their room in a body bag in writer-director Drew Goddard’s stylish 1960s-set thriller. Bookmarked into meaty chapters, Bad Times at the El Royale employs a fractured timeline and narrative sleights of hand to piece together an intriguing jigsaw puzzle of subterfuge, self-sacrifice and reckless abandon. Goddard was deservedly Oscar-nominated for his adapted screenplay of The Martian, and here he confirms a flair for snappy dialogue and eye-catching setpieces. His script withholds vital information about characters and their motives, and he confidently revisits key sequences from multiple perspectives to illustrate how the grim fates of hotel patrons intersect. At least one tense interlude relies on incredible luck and split-second timing to thicken the air of intrigue but it’s hard to resist the slippery charm of Goddard’s ambitious design even when the film strains credibility.

VS. (15)

A 17-year-old rebel without a home or a cause finds his voice in an underground community of battle rappers in writer-director Ed Lilly’s assured debut feature. Co-written by Daniel Hayes, Vs. cuts a lyrical swagger to the same beat as the Eminem drama 8 Mile, relocating the lead character’s turbulent rites of passage to Southend-on-Sea. The seafront arcades, cafes and windswept promenades provide a vivid backdrop to a mesmerising lead performance from Connor Swindells as a foster child who has never fully extinguished a flame of hope that he might be reunited with his birth mother. His emotionally wrought journey of self-acceptance and forgiveness unfolds in a world where alienated youths “roast” one another with slickly crafted insults to earn the roaring approval of battle crowds.

Final scenes are too neat to be entirely convincing but dialogue is delivered at such a breathless pace we can forgive Lilly’s film for occasionally fluffing its lines.

SMALLFOOT (U)

Curiosity killed the yak in director Karey Kirkpatrick’s effervescent computer-animated romp, which follows an inquisitive Yeti that comes in from the cold to prove the existence of a race of diminutive hairless creatures called humans. Smallfoot is festooned with far-from-abominable snowmen and snowwomen who live in a thriving mountain-top community hidden from prying eyes by a ring of high-altitude cloud. Ignorance is bliss until one member of the community publicly challenges the veracity of the runes and forces his fellow Yetis to ask probing questions of the people in power. Kirkpatrick’s film is a simplistic but breezily charming adventure, which encourages independent thought rather than slavishly following the herd. Ironically Smallfoot trots in the hoofprints of other (superior) animated features and some of the physical pratfalls are strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Road Runner and Wile E Coyote.

VENOM (15)

Ruben Fleischer, director of Zombieland and Gangster Squad, masterminds this big budget spin-off from the Spider-Man universe, which introduces us to one of the webslinger’s most fearsome adversaries. Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), director of the mysterious Life Foundation, acquires amorphous extra-terrestrial matter called a symbiote, which has the ability to fuse with a host, creating a more powerful single entity. Using vulnerable people as test subjects, Drake secretly experiments with the symbiotes, which alter the human host’s personality. Investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), whose girlfriend Anne