10 of the best films to watch this May

With the cinematic debut of the Mandalorian and his sidekick Grogu and the return of the iconic Miranda Priestly, these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.

In George Orwell's novella, a farm is taken over by its four-legged inhabitants, only for their newfound freedom to be crushed when a pig named Napoleon becomes a brutal dictator. Published in 1945, Animal Farm is a bleak allegory for the Russian revolution and the rise of Stalin. But the new adaptation is a wacky cartoon, directed by Andy Serkis, and with Seth Rogen providing the voice of Napoleon (the voice cast also includes Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Woody Harrelson and Steve Buscemi). The film has a lot more jokes than the book did – although some of Orwell's political convictions are in there, too. "Alternately funny and frighteningly perceptive," says Pete Hammond in Deadline, "this gorgeously animated version is a 'toon with much to think about – and to fear. And, oh yeah, it is also wildly entertaining."

Released on 1 May in the US and Canada

Twenty years after The Devil Wears Prada sashayed into cinemas, a suitably glitzy sequel is here. Directed by David Frankel and scripted by Aline Brosh McKenna, the same team as the original, The Devil Wears Prada 2 stars Anne Hathaway as Andy, a journalist who cares more about hard-hitting stories than cerulean jumpers. Meryl Streep is the iconic Miranda Priestly, a magnificently waspish New York magazine editor inspired by Vogue's former editor, Anna Wintour. Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt complete the quartet as Miranda's loyal right-hand man and her former assistant. But now that the franchise has been embraced by the fashion industry – Wintour included – can the new comedy have the same satirical edge as the first one? The BBC's Caryn James says the marketing campaign has "left question marks around whether the sequel will turn out to be a shadow of the original, without its bite".

Released internationally on 1 May

Of all the characters in Disney+'s recent Star Wars television shows, the most popular are The Mandalorian, a bounty hunter played by Pedro Pascal, and his little green sidekick Grogu, aka Baby Yoda. Now they've got their own spin-off – the first new Star Wars film to reach multiplexes since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. The trailer promises big battles, bigger monsters, X-Wing Fighters and AT-ATs. But as the characters have been on television for three series, can they justify their place in cinemas? "We gotta up our game now for the movie theatre, and that means taller aspect ratios for Imax, building sets that take full advantage of that," the director and co-writer, Jon Favreau, told Games Radar. "We want to take you on an adventure, and that adventure has to fill up the screen."

Released internationally on 22 May

One of two films this month to feature talking barnyard animals, The Sheep Detectives mixes live-action settings with cuddly CGI sheep to make the cosy crime genre cosier than ever. Hugh Jackman plays a shepherd who reads whodunnits to his adoring flock every evening; so, when he is killed, they know how to investigate. No, it doesn't sound promising, but The Sheep Detectives has a surprisingly thoughtful and funny murder-mystery plot – and it's as warm and well-crafted as a woolly jumper. The sheep's human co-stars include Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun and Nicholas Galitzine, and the animals themselves are voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Chris O'Dowd. The Sheep Detectives is "a rare family entertainment happy not to follow the herd", says Guy Lodge in Variety.

The classical music throbs with emotion in the latest French melodrama from Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale) – and the same could be said of the characters. François Civil stars as a Mathias, a once-promising piano virtuoso who has spent the last few years teaching in Japan. His former teacher (Charlotte Rampling) summons him back to his hometown to play alongside her in her final concerts before retirement. But his feelings crescendo when he bumps into an old flame (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), and spots a young boy who looks just like him. Two Pianos is "a characteristically rhapsodic piece about love, death, music and memory, with just the occasional glimmer of the uncanny", says Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily. It has "unmistakable flourishes of [Desplechin's] signature bravura style, putting music as ever to the expressive fore".

Released on 8 May in the US

If you need someone to adapt an all-American bestseller involving aquatic wildlife, Olivia Newman is the film-maker for you. Following 2022's Where the Crawdads Sing, Newman has co-written and directed Remarkably Bright Creatures, a drama based on Shelby Van Pelt's octopus-centric novel. Sally Field stars as Tova, a grieving aquarium cleaner, alongside Lewis Pullman as Cameron, a troubled young man who comes to work with her. The film's narrator is Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who observes the two new friends. And, in a stroke of casting genius, Marcellus is voiced by Alfred Molina, who played Doctor Octopus in two Spider-Man films. Don't expect any superheroics, though. "Remarkably Bright Creatures is a story of love and grief," Van Pelt said on Netflix's official site. "Those are two emotions that everyone who walks this planet feels at some point, so the themes are very widely resonant."

Released on 8 May on Netflix

This isn't just a concert film, or even a 3D concert film. It's a 3D concert film co-directed by a Hollywood legend, James Cameron, who has been obsessed by cutting-edge 3D technology for decades. That means that Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft should appeal to cinema lovers everywhere, and not just to pop fans who want to experience one of Eilish's spectacular arena shows. Still, for all of his technical expertise, Cameron has stressed that Eilish is as much the director as he is. "She and I are directing that together, so we will be in the cutting room together," he told ET. "I figured she created the show, she was the architect of one of the most amazing live shows I have ever seen. She earned her director props already."

Released internationally on 8 May

In 2019, 4Chan users began posting photos of shadowy empty rooms and corridors. A mythology soon developed: these "Backrooms" were part of an endless maze in another universe. In 2022, the 16-year-old Kane Parsons turned that mythology into a short film called The Backrooms (Found Footage), which has had 75 million views on YouTube. Now he's made a full-length horror film – and he's still only 20! Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as the owner of a furniture store which contains a portal to the Backrooms, and Renate Reinsve (Oscar-nominated for Sentimental Value) plays his sceptical therapist. "The Backrooms is not – and never has been – something that I think about as an internet trend or a meme," Parsons told Dazed in 2024. "It's just a story I genuinely care about, with characters I genuinely care about."

Released internationally on 29 May

Boots Riley, the rapper-turned-film-maker who pioneered his own brand of socialist surrealism in Sorry to Bother You (2018) and the Prime Video series I'm A Virgo (2023), returns with another eccentric political comedy, I Love Boosters. Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige and Poppy Liu play The Velvet Gang, a group of shoplifters who steal designer clothes and then sell them in a local flea market at knock-down prices. But their favourite designer, played by Demi Moore, is determined to fight back. "No one is making movies like Boots Riley," says Kristy Puchko in Mashable. "I Love Boosters is an unreservedly anti-capitalist satire… about the glory to be found outside the box."

Released on 22 May in the US, Canada and Australia

When Raynor Winn and her husband were left homeless, and her husband was diagnosed with a rare neurogenerative disease, the couple embarked on a long hike around the south-west coast of England, hoping to distract themselves from their desperate plight. That, at least, is the story that Winn tells in The Salt Path, her bestselling, award-winning 2018 memoir. But after the screen adaptation was released in the UK last year, a series of newspaper stories revealed that the book wasn't quite as non-fictional as the blurb suggested. Does that undermine the film, which stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs? Maybe so, but before the revelations, Wendy Ide said in the Observer that The Salt Path was "rather lovely", adding: "There's something of the generosity of spirit and gentle humour of David Lynch's The Straight Story in this celebration of the kindness of strangers, endurance of the spirit and the healing power of the wild."

Released on 22 May in the US and Canada

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Source: BBC
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