CAT PERSON 15

★★★★★ OUT 27 OCTOBER CINEMAS

Courtship can be a minefield, as college student Margot (CODA’s Emilia Jones) discovers when a flirty encounter escalates into a round-the-clock, text-based relationship. Is Robert (Nicholas Braun, AKA Succession’s Greg Hirsch) the man of her dreams, or is she making the biggest mistake of her life? Based on a 2017 short story that became the most-read piece of fiction ever published in The New Yorker, Cat Person uses a 20-year-old’s doubts and fears as a springboard for a perceptive, funny and occasionally terrifying delve into the potential hazards of modern dating. Isabella Rossellini co-stars.

SAW X 18

★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS

Set between the first and second Saws, this lacklustre 10th instalment of the horror saga sees the return of John ‘Jigsaw’ Kramer (Tobin Bell), who heads to Mexico in hopes of receiving radical treatment for his terminal cancer. Realising (long after the audience) he’s been duped, he embarks on bloody revenge, employing fiendish contraptions that demand a series of set-piece self-surgeries, staged with ghoulish aplomb. The bits in-between, though, are talky and dreary; there’s also an unexpected descent into sickly sentimentality. Bell’s comeback may please some, but it’s not a sufficient X-cuse to see Saw resuscitated.

FOE 15

Clone on the range…

★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER CINEMAS

Why does the unknown have to be a burden?’ asks Terrance (Aaron Pierre, The Underground Railroad), the handsome government operative who arrives at the Midwest farmhouse of Henrietta (Saoirse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal). It’s 2065, and Junior has been selected (or conscripted) to try out for off-world habitation; the planet is dying, and humanity is looking for a way off this rock before the dust storms kill us all. So far, so Interstellar.

Much to the couple’s initial horror, Terrance suggests Junior’s protracted two-year absence in space will be eased by the arrival of a ‘human substitute’, an exact AI copy. ‘We set out to create consciousness,’ he beams, seemingly unconcerned by the moral implications.

Adapted from Iain Reid’s 2018 novel by the author himself and director Garth Davis (Lion), Foe is less interested in what lies beyond than in tensions beneath the surface. This three-hander is at heart a relationship portrait, in which Hen and Junior must deal with issues of jealousy. Meanwhile, Terrance’s presence – like an on-tap marriage counsellor – becomes increasingly unsettling. Ronan and Mescal make for a convincing, volatile couple, although it’s Pierre’s mysterious interloper who steals it. Admittedly, the film’s oddly paced, elliptical middle section may leave you scratching your head. But then the twisty third act pulls it all together, sending shivers down the spine.

THE VERDICT Thoughtful, provocative and powerfully acted, Foe is a cunning drama that you’ll want to puzzle over.

THE PIGEON TUNNEL TBC

★★★★★ OUT 20 OCTOBER APPLE TV+

David Cornwell - the late author better known as John le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) - gets the docu-portrait treatment from veteran filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line). The result is an at times revealing tête-à-têteslash-duel between two great thinkers, though you wish Morris had dug deeper. He does a competent job of raking through Cornwell’s background (the influential-but-shady dad; recruitment by the British Secret Service). But it’s clear who’s in control - not least when Morris is stonewalled by Cornwell over his private life.

CASSIUS X: BECOMING ALI TBC

★★★★★ OUT 13 OCT CINEMAS

Rather than take the conventional route of recounting Muhammad Ali’s rise to sporting greatness, Muta’Ali’s documentary explores the ‘secret spiritual journey’ undertaken by a young Cassius Clay that led to him changing his name. Influenced by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and friend Malcom X, Clay’s evolution from trash-talking boxing amateur to politically aware cultural icon is charted via interviews and arresting archive footage. But in limiting the focus to the period 1959-64, this ultimately feels like more of a snapshot than a complete, fully satisfying portrait.