Daisy Ridley stars in the true-life tale of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the Channel, in a drama that stretches the truth somewhat

You wait years for a stirring feminist true-life endurance swimming drama, then two come along within 12 months of each other. Young Woman and the Sea stars Daisy Ridley as Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle, the plucky butcher’s daughter from New York who, in 1926, became the first woman to swim the Channel. It follows Nyad, starring Annette Bening as Diana Nyad, who in 2013 swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64.

What we learn from watching both in relatively quick succession is that there are only so many ways that directors can inject tension into the inherently monotonous act of ploughing through the ocean for hours on end. Jellyfish peril figures prominently in both films, as does unprocessed childhood trauma. In the case of Ederle, a close brush with death as a young child battling measles means that she was subsequently treated as the runt of the family, and later her all-girl swimming team.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Marija Kavtaradze’s affecting film explores the relationship between a passionately physical woman and a man who is asexual

Two people can be seemingly made for each other and still find themselves out of kilter in a relationship. The attraction between dancer Elena (Greta Grinevičiūte) and sign language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas) is immediate. Elena is sensual and physically expressive, both professionally and in her many relationships. Dovydas, meanwhile, is asexual. But the fact that he doesn’t need or even want to have sex with Elena doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with her.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but for a while it seems that love might conquer all, even the fundamental differences in their needs. Tensions between them are evocatively captured in this Lithuanian drama: an awkward, uneasy coupling between the pair is kept in a restrained mid shot, but the sequence that follows, showing Elena dancing with two colleagues, is filmed so intimately in closeup that the sweat and skin almost becomes abstract. The second feature film from director Marija Kavtaradze (Summer Survivors), Slow is terrific – an honest and affecting portrait of an atypical romance.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Voiced by Samuel L Jackson and Chris Pratt, this latest animated take on the plus-sized moggy is the cat’s whiskers

It’s a bit of a monkeys and typewriters situation: if you make enough Garfield movies, eventually one will turn out to be worth watching. This animated take on the adventures of the plus-sized ginger sourpuss is a refreshing step up from the lazy, lasagne-based humour of the live(ish) action versions. Directed by Mark Dindal (The Emperor’s New Groove) and co-written by David Reynolds (Finding Nemo), Paul A Kaplan and Mark Torgove, this feline adventure combines a frantic, Looney Tunes energy with some genuinely sharp comedy. Garfield (Chris Pratt) is reunited with his estranged father Vic (Samuel L Jackson) and discovers that he has inherited more than just a taste for Italian food.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

George Miller’s world-building spectacle is an assault on the senses that’s given a human heart by its remarkable star

“The question is: do you have it in you to make it epic?” Garrulous and utterly deranged despot Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) is making small talk with Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is in no mood for idle chatter. The moment comes towards the end of the movie; by this point in the film, Furiosa is a single-minded, flint-eyed avenger with a customised power tool for an arm. It’s a great line, which Hemsworth delivers with a lip-smacking relish. But given the barnstorming action onslaught that has preceded the exchange, it’s a question that is probably redundant. This is a George Miller picture, after all. Epic is all part of a day’s work. But even by the standards of the previous films in the Mad Max series (Fury Road is the closest in tone, but there are marked differences between the two pictures), this is a huge, marauding monster of a movie. See it on the biggest screen if you can; let the thunderous rumble of customised war rigs shake your seats, and the sandblasted angry ochre colour palette grind itself into your pores.

As the title suggests, we follow the backstory of Furiosa, the character played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron. Here, she’s performed as a child by Alyla Browne and as a young woman by Taylor-Joy. On the physical resemblance alone, it’s superb casting – the two look almost uncannily similar. Beyond that, they are both independently impressive in the role. Browne lets us see the wily calculation beneath the shell of trauma in the little girl ripped from her mother and her community and forced to see things no child should witness. And Taylor-Joy is a pleasure to watch in the action sequences, which take up probably 90% of the film. Her lithe agility and cunning is a refreshing counterpoint to all the lumbering muscle and firepower. She’s tiny in comparison with most of the cast, but give her a grappling hook and a set of wheels and you genuinely believe she could best any of them.

Sometimes a film, gig or sex-positive puppet show is so excruciating that awarding it one star just isn’t damning enough. How do writers who’ve written zero-star reviews feel about the worst shows they’ve ever seen now?

It’s harder to write about something you love than something you hate. But what is often forgotten is that the axiom can loop back on itself. Trying to write about something that leaves you bewildered, wondering how you sat through something with no redeeming features, can mean staring at a blank page for quite some time. It is under such conditions that the zero-star review is born.

The challenge is to stop it becoming a torrent of fury about the waste of your time and the talents of the people involved (or the corruption of civilisation itself, if you are dealing with a reality show, which is frequently the case). It’s best to get that out of the way in a first draft or a WhatsApp screed to a patient friend, family member or spouse. Then you can try to create a piece that is worthwhile – even if its subject is not.

Alexis Bloom’s documentary captures the sheer charisma of the actor, model and 60s rock survivor, though little of her background

The terrifying magnetism of Anita Pallenberg – the German actor, model, style icon, muse and, according to some, murderer who dated two Rolling Stones and epitomised rock chick cool – is captured in Alexis Bloom’s suitably enigmatic documentary portrait. Composed of interviews with those in Pallenberg’s orbit, and home movies that crackle with chaotic energy, Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.

But Pallenberg was, it becomes clear, a self-created creature; a woman who kicked back with equal force against the restrictive gender roles prevalent in 60s and 70s society, and against the misogyny of the music scene. The girlfriend of Brian Jones, then Keith Richards, with whom she had three children, she did everything on her own terms; be it acting (Performance, Barbarella) or parenting, her approach was unconventional. But even Pallenberg’s formidable strength of character was no match for the drugs that were ubiquitous in the world in which she moved.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Who will take over the family drug business? Cue violence, treachery and too much shouting

The future of a south London crime family hangs in the balance. Mick Roman (Gary Webster), the cool head controlling a viper’s nest of warring egos, is gravely ill. But the question of succession in the family business (mostly drugs, some violence, lots of shouting) is hotly contested. Mick’s son Jimmy (Charlie Clapham) assumes he’s a cert, but his adopted brother Henry (Michael Head, who also directs) disagrees. And that’s before you factor in the treacherous women of the Roman family. This crime comedy has plenty of energy, as expected from a film that seems to be largely powered by cocaine, but it’s erratic and rather grating.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Great scenery and a joyous Kristin Scott Thomas are outweighed by one infuriating lead character in Marc Fitoussi’s friends reunited French comedy

The closest of schoolfriends in 1989, despite their wildly contrasting personalities, risk-averse introvert Blandine (Olivia Côte) and gobby showoff Magalie (Laure Calamy) fell out spectacularly (full details are hazy, but it involved a boy) and lost touch. Now, thanks to the adult son of Blandine, who worries that his divorced mother is in danger of closing herself off from the world, the pair are reunited and find themselves embarking on the trip they dreamed of as teenagers: to the Greek island of Amorgos, location of the film The Big Blue. Except that, owing to erratic nightmare Magalie, they are kicked off the ferry for fare-dodging on to another island.

Two Tickets to Greece has some appeal: stunning scenery, Instagrammable taverna chic and the unexpected pleasure of seeing a cast-against-type Kristin Scott Thomas letting her hair down as a boho jewellery designer. But the character of Magalie is so enraging that you would chuck yourself into the Aegean Sea rather than spend two weeks in her company.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

Actor-director John Krasinski’s animated tale of an anxious tween and her make-believe buddies is not in Pixar’s league, but it boasts a heartfelt sweetness and an engaging young star

What if imaginary friends didn’t vanish into the murk of forgotten memories as soon as the child who conjured them grew up? What if the invisible bestie lingered on, trying hard not to be wounded by the rejection and waiting in vain to be of use once more? If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The central premise of American actor-director John Krasinski’s IF – his first family film after the horror movie double of A Quiet Place and its sequel – is borrowed from several Pixar films.

There’s an obvious parallel with the subplot of Bing Bong in Inside Out. A heartbreakingly cheerful pink cat/elephant/dolphin mashup in a too-small top hat, Bing Bong is the long-discarded imaginary friend who still lurks in the subconscious of Riley, and who’ll do anything, even sacrifice himself, for the girl who dreamed him into existence. But there’s also an almost too close for comfort overlap with Toy Story, and the idea of an intensity in a child’s imagination that is potent enough to breathe life into inanimate objects, and of the bruising transience of the period in infancy in which disbelief is fully suspended and magic is real.

Saura Lightfoot-Leon stars as a traumatised, rubbish-fixated teen in British director Luna Carmoon’s admirable, if hard-going debut

There are certain films – Michael Haneke’s original version of Funny Games is one, Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi’s The Tribe another – that I acknowledge as singular, visionary works of art, but which I never, ever want to watch again. Hoard, Luna Carmoon’s profoundly uncomfortable directorial debut, fits this category. It isn’t harrowing in the same way as the other works mentioned. But Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.

Saura Lightfoot-Leon is magnetic as Maria, a teenager who has lived with a foster mother in south London for the past decade. Her birth mother (Hayley Squires), a compulsive hoarder who channelled her fierce love for her daughter into offerings of scavenged foil balls and chalk, was crushed by a falling pile of rubbish when Maria was eight. The memories had been neatly tidied away, but when she encounters former foster kid Michael (Joseph Quinn), older by 10 years but odd in the same abrasive, unsettling way that she is, Maria starts to delve into the detritus of her past. In practice, this means that she stops washing, starts collecting humming bags of rubbish and enters into a teasing semi-sexual game with Michael (shades of the malicious playfulness of Yann Samuell’s Love Me If You Dare). It’s impressive, up to a point, but having taken the character to the brink of breakdown, the film doesn’t know what to do next. The ending is rather too clean for a story about mess.

In UK and Irish cinemas now