This story of two sisters, played by Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers, returning home to sort their dead mother’s belongings avoids predictable genres, narratives and characters

British indie director Jon Sanders creates another of his low-key, thoughtful movies developed through improvisation; it is a static, eccentric chamber piece in some ways, but engaging and pregnant with ideas about mourning and grief. Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers play Dot and Phoebe, two sisters who have come to the seaside home of their late mother, a singer and entertainer, to confront the daunting task of sorting out all her belongings and theatrical memorabilia.

This opens up painful memories and psychic wounds: however much they loved her, their mother was serially unfaithful to their father – once with a boyfriend of Phoebe’s – and now they don’t know how to feel. These themes of sexual transgression are strangely echoed in the present action,...

Bob Goody, veteran British stage and screen actor and co-writer of 1985 BBC1 comedy Wilderness Road, has died at age 71.

He passed away March 5 after a long battle with cancer that he chronicled in a book of verse.

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Born in Brighton in 1951, Goody trained at Rada and became known as a charismatic actor and poet. He fronted his own ITV children’s sketch show, Smith & Goody, in the 1980s with writer and comedian Mel Smith before penning Wilderness Road, a sitcom set in a seedy London pub, with Richard Cottan.

Goody’s TV acting roles included appearances in Bleak House, EastEnders, Lovejoy, the Lock Stock and Two...

Evocative music and a poignant subplot put a shine on Jon Sanders’s story of a marriage cracking up in the south of France

The latest, and most ambitious film from Jon Sanders (Back to the Garden, Painted Angels), A Change in the Weather takes a semi-improvised, organic approach to a story of a failing marriage and a creative partnership that fractures during a theatre workshop in the south of France. Anna Mottram is magnetic in the role of Lydia, the actor wife who gradually realises that her marriage to her playwright husband Dan (Bob Goody) is over. A tendency towards navel-gazing improvised dialogue is balanced by evocative use of music and a poignant supernatural subplot.

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A dramatic impresario enlists his wife and two other women to play avatars of the same person in Jon Sanders’ intriguing work of miniaturism

Director Jon Sanders and his loose ensemble of actors, led above all by his wife, Anna Mottram, who basically improvises all her own dialogue, have been tending their own little peculiar plot of cinematic garden for few films now, starting with Painted Angels and progressing up through Late September and Back to the Garden.

Most of the time, these ultra-low-budget, ultra-rarefied films are about people like, one presumes, Sanders and Mottram themselves: highly educated, haute bourgeois Brits and Europeans with cultural capital to spare, endlessly fascinated with examining themselves, their relationships, their art. Here, the result is more contortedly self-reflexive than usual as regular player Bob Goody plays a dramatic impresario who has enlisted his own wife (Mottram) and two other women (Meret Becker and Maxine...

The Rocket | Under The Skin | The Zero Theorem | Suzanne | Veronica Mars | Need For Speed | Plot For Peace

The Rocket (12A)

(Kim Mordaunt, 2013, Aus/Thai/Laos) Sitthiphon Disamoe, Loungnam Kaosainam, Thep Phongam, Bunsri Yindi. 96 mins

Children are often the best ambassadors for world cinema and so it proves here, in a Laos-set tale that's sympathetic but never condescending. The story centres on a displaced boy burdened by a perceived "curse". But it's told with documentary-like conviction and distinctly local details, from James Brown-worshipping war vets to the unexploded ordnance littering the landscape.

Under The Skin (15)

(Jonathan Glazer, 2013, UK) Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan. Krystof Hádek. 108 mins

Glazer's delectably mystifying sci-fi makes Glasgow look like another planet – as seen through the eyes of Johansson's alien seductress, on the prowl for unsuspecting males. It sounds like a highbrow Species, but the imagery and sustained strangeness put it in a realm of its own.

The Zero Theorem (15)

(Terry Gilliam,...

British live action and animated shorts to screen in cinemas from 28 February.

BAFTA has revealed that a feature-length package of films nominated in the British Short Film and British Short Animation categories at this year’s Ee British Academy Film Awards will screen in UK cinemas from Feb 28 and will tour internationally.

Selected screenings will be followed by a Q&A with nominated filmmakers who will discuss their working process and creative inspirations. The activity is part of BAFTA’s ongoing work to spotlight British-based filmmaking talent.

Following the first-ever theatrical release of nominated shorts in 2013, BAFTA is partnering for a second year with specialist distributor the Independent Cinema Office (Ico), which will handle all UK theatrical bookings, and the British Council, which will tour the nominated films internationally through their network of offices in 110 countries.

The UK-wide rollout of BAFTA Shorts 2014 begins with a special screening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Ica) in London on Feb...

It’s with deep sadness and no little shock that we must report that comedian, writer, actor, director and producer Mel Smith has died at the age of 60 following a heart attack.Smith will likely be best remembered for his iconic comedy partnership with Griff Rhys Jones, appearances on shows such as Not The Nine O’Clock News and directing several comedy films including Bean.Born and brought up in Chiswick, he attended New College, Oxford and then began a stint in theatre at the Royal Court and Bristol Old Vic. Initially, he was a director and producer, working behind the scenes, but had performed at the Edinburgh Festival while at university, and had met several of the Cambridge Footlights team.From there sprang Not The Nine O’Clock News, followed by comedy collaborations with Bob Goody and his time with Rhys Jones. The latter pair also founded TalkBack Productions,...

Rock Of Ages (12A)

(Adam Shankman, 2012, Us) Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones. 123 mins

Doing for 1980s hair metal what Mamma Mia! did for Abba, this glossy musical gives you the broad pleasures of pantomime rather than rock'n'roll danger, with theatrical star turns and a playlist of power ballads hung around an archetypal tale of a smalltown girl and a wannabe rock star boy on La's Sunset Strip. You can stop believin' now.

Cosmopolis (15)

(David Cronenberg, 2012, Fra/Can/Por/Ita) Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon. 109 mins

Don De Lillo's prescient novella makes for a cool Manhattan odyssey, centred on Pattinson's jaded banker and the Occupy zeitgeist.

Polisse (15)

(Maïwenn, 2011, Fra) Karin Viard, Joey Starr, Marina Foïs. 128 mins

A Wire-like approach to a French child protection unit reaps dividends for this docu-style procedural.

Red Lights (15)

(Rodrigo Cortés, 2012, Us/Spa) Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro,...

This British ensemble piece about a 65th birthday party gone wrong is an interesting and high-minded experiment in improv acting

Jon Sanders's zero-budget British ensemble piece is an interesting and high-minded experiment in improv acting: a melancholy, autumnal drama about an ageing married couple, Jim (Bob Goody) and Gillian (Anna Mottram), who throw a family party for Jim's 65th birthday that ends in disaster. Sanders allows the actors to devise the scenes on camera; sometimes the resulting dialogue is clunky, but sometimes brutally and all too plausibly real. Late September is arguably comparable to the recent work of Joanna Hogg – but with much lower production values, looking at times like a moody and startlingly depressing daytime TV drama from yesteryear. But there is something uncompromising in its pessimism, something that another kind of dramatist or film-maker would have tried to dissolve, or sweeten, or explain away.

Rating: 3/5

DramaPeter Bradshaw

guardian.

Director: Yann Samuell.

Writers: Eva Ibbotson (novel), and David Solomons (screenplay).

Cast: Kevin McKidd, Steven Mackintosh, Emma Fielding, Anthony Head, and Bill Ward.

DVD Release Date: October 4, 2011.

Humphrey was once an ordinary boy with an ordinary life. Well, that is, until he died—quite by accident, really. But don't tell his best friend, Barnabas, that. His death quite literally sets in motion The Great Ghost Rescue, a tongue-in-cheek horror comedy from the UK about dislocated spirits looking for a new home.

This movie made a quiet release on this side of the pond with very little fanfare as a Halloween season DVD release. Also, this film is by no means a faithful adaptation of Eva Ibbotson’s original novel of the same name, published 1975; that is a shame. This film is easy to share with young ones before going out for trick or treat.

While children may not get all of the jokes,...