YOUR GUIDE TO THIS WEEK'S NEW CINEMA RELEASES

Five new movies to see this week!

TOP PICK

Top pick this week is SON OF SAUL, a Hungarian drama thriller in which, in the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner who is forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival upon trying to salvage from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son. Both general public and critics are rating this highly. This one could be tough to watch given its disturbing violent content. Variety’s Justin Chang describes ‘The result [as] grim and unyielding a depiction of the Holocaust as has yet been made on that cinematically overworked subject - a masterful exercise in narrative deprivation and sensory overload that recasts familiar horrors in daringly existential terms.’

OTHERS TO SEE

HAIL, CAESAR! is a comedy mystery about a Hollywood fixer in the 1950s who works to keep the studio's stars in line. It’s a Coen brothers film so expect the usual quirkiness. The New York Daily News says this one is, ‘Star-studded and stylish[. T]his addition to the brothers' acclaimed canon is a looker with laughs and, alas, dull stretches. It's fun and entertaining - no more, no less, no exclamation point.’

MAYBE/MAYBE NOT

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI is based on the true story of an American ambassador who is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya. A security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos. Austin Chronicle’s Marc Savlov describes it as, ‘A weird mix of pseudo-jingoism and Bay's usual bombastic firepower[.] 13 Hours ends up being a straight-up war film without an actual war in it.’ General viewers are rating this much more highly than the critics who are describing it as below average.

The zombies are back in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES. It’s about five sisters in 19th century England who must cope with the pressures to marry while protecting themselves from a growing population of zombies. Hmmm… Not sure what this one will be like. It’s another one which the general public are more appreciative of than critics — but only just. Variety’s Andrew Barker says it’s, ‘Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt substantial audiences[.] Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is in fact a moderately entertaining film, not deficient in old-fashioned costume drama when it pleases, nor in the power of being clever where it chooses, but awkward and unsatisfying.’

Finally, GODS OF EGYPT has arrived on our screens. The trailers look spectacular. Mortal hero Bek teams with the god Horus in an alliance against Set, the merciless god of darkness who has usurped Egypt's throne, plunging the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict. Sadly, this one doesn’t even feature any Egyptian actors! I’ve got no information from critics yet, but the general public are rating it as average. Up to you whether you see it or not. It’s also available in 3D.

That's it for this week. See you at the movies!

NOTE Movie summaries are adaptations of movie summary on IMDB. Opinions are mine unless credited. These updates are written from an Australian perspective so openings of the movies in cinemas may vary in other parts of the world.