Check out what's showing at cinemas across the region...

THE HUNGER GAMES: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING CERT 12a (158 mins)
Released Fri 20 November
Starring Joseph Zada, Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning  
Directed by Francis Lawrence

This sci-fi action-adventure prequel film is set four decades after its immediate predecessor in the franchise, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, but 24 years before the events of the original Hunger Games trilogy.

Based on the same-named 2025 novel by Suzanne Collins, the latest movie focuses on the character of 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, a fan favourite who was played as an adult in the original Hunger Games films by Woody Harrelson. 

Reaped into the Games, Haymitch forms an alliance with fellow tribute Maysilee Donner, becoming part of a broader resistance effort to challenge the oppressive control of President Snow (Ralph Fiennes)... 
Most of which will mean precious little to anybody who’s not an actual fan of The Hunger Games!
I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence helms this eagerly anticipated sixth entry. 

BEING HEUMANN CERT 12a (127 mins)
Released Fri 6 November
Starring Ruth Madeley, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney, Ray Fisher, Jon Beavers  
Directed by Sian Heder

At first glance, the subject matter of Being Heumann may seem somewhat dry and uninteresting. Thankfully, director Sian Heder has done an excellent job of corralling all of the true-life story’s essential elements into a cinematic experience that manages to be both absorbing and uplifting.  

The movie chronicles a historic fight for disability rights that took place way back in 1977. Central to the narrative is wheelchair-using Judy Heumann, who inspired more than 100 disabled activists to occupy the federal building in San Francisco for 28 days. 

Their aim? To demand that the government sign and enforce a law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in federally funded programmes... 

Ruth Madeley has earned glowing praise for her powerhouse portrayal of the tenacious Heumann. 

EBENEZER CERT tbc
Released Fri 13 November
Starring Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Sam Claflin, Ian McKellen, Rupert Grint, Andrea Riseborough  
Directed by Ti West

The season of the witch has returned - 28 long years after Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock last stepped into Practical Magic’s world of moonlit mischief and powerful ancestral sorcery. 

The Hollywood A-listers once again play Gillian (Kidman) and Sally (Bullock), sister witches who find themselves having to confront the dark curse that threatens to finally unravel their family...

The original 1998 film, based on the same-named novel by Alice Hoffman, was by no means a resounding success, either with critics or at the box office. However, subsequent decades have seen it achieve cult status, which is nowadays a surefire reason for film studios to back a sequel.   

Kidman and Bullock are co-producing the new movie alongside Denise Di Novi, who also produced the first film.

“I think the big mistake people make with sequels is when they kind of want to reinvent the wheel and be totally original and surprise people,” Di Novi told People.com. She added that they “[get] how important the first movie is to so many people, women in particular, and we want to honour that for sure.”

HOW TO ROB A BANK CERT 15 (112 mins)
Released Fri 13 November
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Christian Slater, Zoë Kravitz, Anna Sawai, John C Reilly, Pete Davidson 
Directed by David Leitch

David Leitch is the man in the director’s chair for a film which focuses on a crew of social-media-savvy bank robbers who not only carry out daring heists but also have the audacity to broadcast them. 

Their viral fame comes at a cost, though, depositing them in the crosshairs of a veteran FBI agent and a brilliant software engineer. Despite the unlikely duo closing in, the crime ring pushes past their limits, putting everything on the line for their most ambitious heist yet... 

The film is being billed as Point Break meets Fast And Furious. Director Leitch has experience of the latter, having helmed the 2019 spinoff movie Hobbs & Shaw. 

FOCKER-IN-LAW CERT tbc (100 mins)
Released Wed 25 November
Starring Robert De Niro, Skyler Gisondo, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Ariana Grande, Teri Polo
Directed by John Hamburg

If you’ve seen the original film in the Meet The Parents franchise, the storyline of Focker-In-Law will be very familiar to you: grown-up child brings home new partner to meet Mum and Dad, only to find that Dad is suspicious as hell of the new arrival. The main plot difference between that first and this fourth installment in the series is that Ben Stiller’s character, Greg Focker, is now the suspicious father. 

In the original film, Greg was the new partner brought home by his girlfriend to meet her sceptical dad, Jack - brilliantly played by Robert De Niro. This time round, Greg and his wife Pam's son, Henry, brings home his new partner - trained FBI hostage negotiator Olivia (Ariana Grande) - and announces his intention to propose. But Greg is seriously concerned that his future daughter-in-law might be a terrible mismatch. Jack, on the other hand - a retired CIA counterintelligence agent - takes rather a liking to her... 

PRIMA FACIE CERT 13 (106 mins)
Released Fri 13 November
Starring Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Ings, Harry Treadaway, Noma Dumezweni, Toheeb Jimoh
Directed by Susanna White

From page to stage and now to film, Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie is best known as the vehicle via which Jodie Comer showed just how brilliant and accomplished an actor she is. The Killing Eve star performed the two-hour one-woman play to universal acclaim both in the West End and on Broadway. 
The film version sees Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo taking on the Comer role of Tessa Ensler. 

A brilliant criminal defence barrister, Tessa is sexually assaulted by a colleague and forced to confront the flaws of the legal system from the perspective of a survivor. 

Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, the movie received a lukewarm response from the critics. The prevailing feeling was that much of the original play’s intensity had been lost as a result of the decision to introduce a supporting cast of characters.
 

A TALENT FOR MURDER CERT tbc (106 mins)
Released Fri 20 November
Starring Olivia Cooke, Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich, Juliet Stevenson, James Faulkner, Brid Brennan 
Directed by Anton Corbijn

Helen Mirren stars as real-life novelist and Talented Mr Ripley author Patricia Highsmith in this mid-1990s-set psychological noir thriller. The storyline sees a young editor named Edward Ridgeway dispatched by a New York publisher to Highsmith’s isolated chalet in the Alps. His mission: to persuade the reclusive and cantankerous novelist to write a final, long-awaited installment in her Tom Ripley book series. 

But Highsmith is having none of it - unless, that is, Edward first agrees to engage in a dangerous and disturbing game of cat-and-mouse, collaborating with her to plot a ‘perfect murder’ that blurs the lines between reality, fiction and psychological manipulation. 

HEXED CERT PG 
Released Fri 27 November
With the voice of Hailee Steinfeld, Tracey Ullman,Walton Goggins, Alan Tudyk, Jodie Foster
Directed by Jason Hand, Josie Trinidad and Fawn Veerasunthorn

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ latest fantasy-adventure film focuses on the character of Billie Doe, an impulsive teenage girl who accidentally unleashes magical abilities that she didn't know she had. 
But that’s not all. Her newly discovered powers rip her out of suburbia and into Hexe - a vast, hidden realm of witches, where wild and unhinged magic positively thrives. 

Along with her mother, Alice, she begins to investigate family secrets connected to the world of witches...
When Hexed was announced by Disney last year, the hero was a teenage boy, but by this summer, the main character had undergone a gender change.

“A parent-child relationship was always the core of the story,” explained director Jason Hand, “and we found the strongest story was between a mother and a daughter. It spoke to the idea of being a witch. It spoke to this empowerment that she was looking for.”