The Billie Eilish doco and other new movies everyone will be talking about this week

Hello and welcome to this week’s film review wrap – the big movies landing in cinemas this week.

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PG (114 minutes)

There’s a paradox to the concert documentary Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft, filmed last year in Manchester midway through the tour that accompanied Eilish’s album of the same name. The film is conceived as a massive, overpowering spectacle, shot in 3D by blockbuster supremo James Cameron (co-directing with Eilish herself).

But it’s also meant to be raw, intimate, even minimal. There are no thrusting back-up dancers or elaborate costume changes: mostly it’s just Eilish on her own, marching around in her basketball jersey and baggy shorts, a tiny figure in command of a stadium.

Interspersed with the concert footage is a fair amount of behind-the-scenes material: we get to see Eilish crawling around beneath the stage and doing her own makeup, as further reassurance that she’s just a regular person.

PG (109 minutes)

The Sheep Detectives adds a new dimension to the cosy crime genre. It also redefines the term “woolly headed”. In this murder story, the crime is solved by a flock of sheep whose powers of deduction rival Miss Marple’s.

The film is a rather loose adaptation of Three Bags Full, a 2005 bestseller originally written in German but set in an Irish village. Its author uses the pseudonym Leonie Swann, preferring to keep her real name secret even though the book has been translated into 26 languages, as well as prompting a follow-up.

The screen version, however, is quintessentially English. Its human characters are variations on the types who have populated countless British sitcoms. There’s a dim-witted young policeman, a pious vicar and a butcher who would dearly like to turn the sheep into mutton. The only exotics are the sheep themselves – a diverse selection of breeds who come across as such fierce individualists that the word “sheep-like” becomes as redundant as “woolly headed”.

The other surprise is the identity of the victim – Hugh Jackman, cast as the flock’s shepherd, George Hardy, whose early demise means that Jackman is largely seen in flashback. A vegetarian who detests the butcher, he regards his sheep as his best friends, relaxing every evening by reading them crime stories. On these occasions, Lily, a light-brown Shetland voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, usually manages to guess the culprit – a skill that will prove invaluable in the days ahead.

M (95 minutes)

Don’t Be Prey is a documentary about a group of marathon swimmers who have devoted decades to an extreme and protracted sporting event called Oceans Seven that requires them to complete a total of seven channel swims in separate parts of the world without using a wetsuit or a shark cage.

Designed as a marine equivalent of the mountaineering challenge Seven Summits, it takes them to the Irish Sea, the English Channel, the Mediterranean and the Pacific to tackle a series of waterways chosen with an exquisite regard for their most punishing features.

In the Irish Sea, they are threatened by hypothermia in water that can fall five degrees in 30 minutes. The Cook Strait offers a night swim through kelp forests harbouring various unfriendly sea creatures and in the Hawaiian Islands, if the box jellyfish don’t find you first, you may come across the Cookiecutter Shark. It’s named for a round mouth that is ringed by a row of pointed teeth, and if you attract its interest, it’s likely to take a deep, circular bite out of you.

Hello and welcome to this week’s film review wrap – the big movies landing in cinemas this week.

If you want to stay in touch with all the latest movie news from across the globe, as well as reviews, please be sure to sign up to our newsletter.

Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox.

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