The week’s new movie releases across all platforms

Lockdown hero Sam Neill turns to flockdown

Thanks to social media, his ukulele and a menagerie of farmyard animals, Sam Neill was one of the big hits of lockdown one, and he’s certainly the best thing in this Australian remake of an Icelandic comedy-drama about two sheepfarming brothers who haven’t spoken to each other in 40 years. Until, that is, a highly infectious sheep disease arrives in their valley, threatening the respective futures of their beloved pedigree flocks. What results is a bit patchy and not helped by our now Covid-honed view of rulebreakers, but it does get there in the end. Most platforms, available now

SIMPLE PASSION Ooh, la la! Fab French romance

This is the sort of film you weren’t sure even the French were still making, with startling amounts of sex, tempting glimpses of crowded Parisian boulevards and scenes linked by the haunting refrains of love songs. Bit of Aznavour, snatch of Brel, even a chorus or two of Dylan. Laetitia Dosch (below, with ‘Sergei Polunin) is fabulous – in that very French way – as the divorced college lecturer who embarks on an all-consuming affair with a hunky Russian diplomat. And if it does all smack of male wish fulfilment for a while, it’s actually directed by a woman, Danielle Arbid. Curzon Home Cinema, available now