Woman of the Hour (2024)

The fact that in 1978 an active serial killer once appeared in real life on a dating game television show seems at first a curious car crash moment to ogle in passing, hardly worth extrapolating into a feature-length movie – not without turning real murder and real victims into sideshow spectacle – but in her directorial debut, Anna Kendrick takes that moment and almost succeeds in finding the balance between respecting its grim reality and lampooning a world – then and now – that idly indulges sick male pathology with a sympathetic "there, there", fails to vet men before, say, letting them on camera, and asks women to laugh gaily at male idiocy.

★★★☆☆

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Don't Breathe (2016)

One of a spate of recent confined-space horror-thrillers in which there are no heroes just self-interested, largely unlikeable survivors (Green Room, 10 Cloverfield Lane), this story of thieves who get more than they bargained for when they break into a blind man's home goes places you wish it didn't, abandoning restraint for convoluted nastiness but nevertheless, once it is all over, you'll concede you haven't taken a breath during its tightly-packaged thrill ride.

★★★★☆

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