Olivia Colman's Fisherwoman Decides to Act in Wicker, Plus the Week's New Films

Wicker, Hall writes, is an ingenious oddity: a fairytale with nothing ethereal about it, and earthy humour that is a large part of its charm. The residents of the medieval village where it is set revere marriage, which leaves unmarried women at the bottom of the pecking order. The Fisherwoman, played by Colman, trails what Hall describes as a briny odour and has long been the butt of the villagers' jokes, learning to ignore them. Hall writes that Colman gives her a guilelessness that conceals her irritation, and that one day she becomes so frustrated with the condescension she endures that she decides to act.

Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh's new film, gets two and a half stars from Wilson. He writes that as a writer of comic dialogue McDonagh relies heavily on one simple technique: if a word or phrase sounds vaguely amusing the first time round, repeat it as often as you can. Wilson says the film is set on Easter Island primarily so the dialogue can include a maximum of references to the big heads, and that its plot retreads McDonagh's first feature, In Bruges. The film features Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich.

Godzilla Minus Zero earns three and a half stars from Hall, who notes it is more than 70 years since Godzilla made his debut on Japanese screens. There were originally no plans for a sequel to Godzilla Minus One, Hall writes, but its box-office returns and its visual effects Oscar made its producers think again. Like its predecessor, the film comes from the Japanese studio Toho and has the same production team led by writer-director Takashi Yamazaki. Hall writes that the franchise's guiding premise, the nuclear threat, has not dated.

Drummer Boy receives one and a half stars from Wilson, who calls it an earnestly sentimental musical pitting brother against brother in the American Revolutionary War, a conscious metaphor for the divided America of today. He writes that the kindest thing he can say is that it more or less means well. Wilson notes that the storyline reportedly also mirrors past tensions between directors Joel and Ben Smallbone, members of an Australian family who moved to Tennessee in the 1990s and grew up to become major players in contemporary Christian entertainment.