April's top must-see films

With British cinema in love with Downton-style period dramas, it’s rare to find a film that takes its cue from art-house flicks such as Don’t Look Now and Picnic at Hanging Rock. Set in an all-girls school in the 1960s, the film centres around Lydia (Maisie Williams), a troubled and neglected child who forges a friendship with the sexually precocious Abbie (Florence Pugh). But things take an odd turn when Lydia starts suffering from fainting spells, which quickly spread to the other pupils. Those looking for clear resolutions may find The Falling frustrating, but its dreamy atmosphere proves irresistible if you’re prepared to go with it, and there are some fine performances at its surreal core.

Russell Crowe’s directorial debut revisits a familiar topic in Australian history: the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. The film, unusually, tells the story from both the Australian and Turkish perspectives, although mainly through the eyes of Joshua Connor (Crowe), who travels to Turkey to reclaim the bodies of his three sons. The subject is affecting, but too many cliched scenes attest to Crowe’s inexperience behind the camera.

This much anticipated movie adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s gripping novel is yet another chance for British actor Tom Hardy to show off his excellent accent skills. Set in Soviet Russia in 1953, Hardy plays a disgraced MGB agent trying to unravel a string of brutal child murders in Moscow. With the help of his wife (Noomi Rapace) and a steely general (Gary Oldman), the investigation stumbles upon a systemic cover-up.

Following on from the success of 2012’s The Avengers, the world’s finest superheroes reconvene to wage war against Ultron, an artificial-intelligence enemy accidentally created by Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). With bumperto-bumper action, a starry cast and the promise of further Avengers sequels to come, comic-book fans are set to enjoy an almighty long adventure.

A young American going through a personal crisis (Lou Taylor Pucci) takes an impromptu trip to rural Italy, where he starts a relationship with a beautiful woman (Nadia Hilker) hiding a terrible secret. This intriguing low-budget effort combines naturalistic romance with gothic horror to great success, and it also packs quite an emotional punch in its closing scenes.

Family fun as the museum’s artifacts come to life after dark.

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