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YOUR NAME (12A)
BOYS will be girls and vice versa in writer-director Makoto Shinkai’s charming animated drama.
Mitsuha (voiced by Mone Kamishiraishi) is a schoolgirl, who lives in the mountain town of Itomori with her grandmother Hitoha (Etsuko Ichihara) and younger sister, Yotsuha (Kanon Tani).
The girls’ father is mayor Toshiki (Masaki Terasoma) and they honour the gods by performing religious ceremonies in flowing robes at the family’s Shinto temple, which cruel classmates watch with pitying sneers.
Mitsuha yearns to escape to the thrum of the city and gets her wish when she is magically transported into the gangly frame of Tokyo schoolboy Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who works part-time as a waiter and has a crush on fellow server Ms Okudera (Masami Nagasawa).
Taki is simultaneously transported into Mitsuha’s body and relies on her friends Tessie (Ryo Narita) and Sayaka (Aoi Yuki) to blend in.
In their gender-swapped guises, the teenagers experience each other’s worlds through inquisitive eyes.
ARRIVAL (12A)
TWELVE giant obloid spacecraft enter Earth’s atmosphere and descend over seemingly random locations including Devon, the Black Sea and a lush meadow in Montana.
US Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) leads the American response and he recruits emotionally scarred linguistics expert Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams, pictured) to decipher a coded language used by the visitors.
Banishing painful memories of her young daughter’s death, Louise aligns with military scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to unravel the conundrum, while the CIA considers the terrifying possibility that we are in the calm before an intergalactic storm.
As nations grow nervous, Louise and Ian take potentially lethal leaps of faith to better understand the aliens’ intentions.
AMERICAN PASTORAL (15)
DIRECTOR Ewan McGregor employs the framing device of a 40-year high school reunion, where author Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn) meets his old friend, Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans).
They reminisce and Jerry reveals he has just buried his star athlete older brother, Seymour (McGregor again). Apparently, Seymour’s turbulent relationship with his daughter was at the heart of his decline.
In flashback, we see Jewish American businessman Seymour assume control of the Newark Maid Glove factory established by his father, and marry an Irish-Catholic girl called Dawn (Jennifer Connelly).
Seymour and Dawn raise a stuttering daughter called Merry (Dakota Fanning) on their farm in Old Rimrock, where they are largely cocooned from a changing world.
As shocking images of Vietnam flicker on the TV screen, Merry discovers her voice and lashes out.
A shocking act of violence at Rimrock post office changes the Levovs’ cosy existence forever.