The blue caftan is an award-winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Set in Morocco, it's the complicated love story between two men and a dying woman, played by Lubna Azabal (Incendies). Directed by Maryam Touzani.

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Polite society is the first feature from writer/director Nida Manzoor (We are Lady Parts). Budding teenage stunt-woman Ria sets out to save her sister from an unsatisfactory marriage, but can she defeat Lena's would-be mother-in-law?

Polite Society is a British teen comedy aimed at young Asian women who love teen comedies and full on action movies, but wish they weren't so white.

So, writer-director Nida Manzoor stepped up to the plate.

Nida Manzoor of course stands on the shoulders of giants - Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame, Mira Nair, who made Monsoon Wedding and TV writer Meera Syal, who made Anita and Me.

But they were a previous generation of teen comedy writers, more inspired by Jane Austen and Thackeray than by Bruce Lee. That's certainly not Nida Manzoor.

Manzoor is millennial, UK punk-rock. Following her rock and roll TV comedy We Are Lady Parts, this is her first feature - the story of two sisters with vague but intensely-held dreams.

Lena wants to be an artist, sort of. Though she prefers to go out partying with her equally unemployed mates.

Younger sister Ria worships her though, and has her own dream - to be a stunt-woman. Her sister thinks this is a perfectly cool ambition, and shoots videos of Riar practising.

I have no idea whether Ria's line "I am the Fury!" is an actual quote from an actual Kung-Fu movie, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the two Khan sisters won't stop until they fulfill their dreams.

Or at least that was the original idea.

Ria is shocked when Lena starts dating a smug, middle-class doctor called Salim. Shocked or jealous, wonders Lena?.

But when Ria meets Salim's slightly scary mother, all her rather vague doubts are confirmed.

Ria has two other friends - I suppose I should call them "besties" to get into the high-school vibe - who are essentially a double act. One is black, the other's white, possibly Italian.

The story reaches its first-act climax when Lena - now wearing highly respectable clothes to Ria's disgust - announces to her delighted parents that she and the wealthy Salim are engaged.

This clearly means war.

Ria and the two besties plot and plan all sorts of hilarious methods to extricate Lena. The question is is it all in her head? Is Salim totally harmless and in fact, a perfect fit for the new, improved Lena?

As if! What sort of movie would that make?

Instead the film suddenly takes a turn for a sort of spoof Mission Impossible, with clumsier stunts.

Ria keeps coming up with a new plot. She and her friends carry it out with disastrous consequences. And Salim's evil mum gloats…

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80 for Brady sees four octogenarian football fans - Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno - take off on a road trip to the Super Bowl to see their idol, superstar quarterback Tom Brady.

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Simon Morris looks at three films depending on audiences sharing their enthusiasms - the crime novels of Raymond Chandler, teen comedies blended with action stunts and elderly female football fans.

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Marlowe sees the Irish team of director Neil Jordan and star Liam Neeson attempt to revive the film noir world of private eye Philip Marlowe. Also starring Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange.

American novelist Raymond Chandler literally wrote the book when it came to elevating the private eye to high literature.

His most famous character was called Philip Marlowe.

Fans of film noir tend to identify Marlowe with Humphrey Bogart, though the classic Big Sleep was the only time Bogie played Chandler's tough, honourable private detective.

But he set the scene for other great Marlowes like Robert Mitchum and Dick Powell.

What made Marlowe Marlowe was something specific. Chandler's writing was unique - tough, gritty, violent and sarcastic, steeped in liquor and firmly set in 40s Los Angeles.

But you need all those elements - and without them a film called Marlowe is going to struggle.

The new Marlowe certainly looks like it could deliver to even the most dyed-in-the-wool Raymond Chandler fan.

World-weary Liam Neeson seems a good fit for Bogart's shoes, with fellow Irishman, director Neil Jordan, stepping up to replace noir master Howard Hawks.

So, there's private eye Philip Marlowe set to head off down Chandler's famous "mean streets". All he needs is a client, preferably a dame, and generally in this sort of film, a blonde.

A blonde like Clare Cavendish, played by Diane Kruger.

Clare Cavendish is what you'd expect - beautiful, brittle and not remotely trustworthy. In fact, it's a given in a Marlowe film that everyone apart from Marlowe is lying through her or his teeth.

Clare asks our hero to find a missing boyfriend called Nico Peterson.

Marlowe visits the Cavendish home, where he meets Clare's mother - former film star Dorothy Quincannon, played by former film star Jessica Lange.

She flirts with Marlowe and drops hints that all may not be what it seems with the missing Nico

Well of course that's an important thing when you're looking for a missing gigolo. Half the people Marlowe meets say he's dead, the other half say he isn't.

There's a mystery here, and like all Chandler plots, the mystery will soon get so tangled up it may never untangle.

Chandler's trick when that happened was to simply write a scene where a guy comes in with a gun. Or where Marlowe gets hit over the head and wakes up tied up.

All of which happens here, along with stock noir ingredients like shady club-owners, suspicious cops and plenty of women complicating matters…

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Simon Morris looks at what's on offer during the downtime between Awards Season and the Winter Blockbusters. They may be small, but there are plenty of them!

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A popular horror-comedy franchise returns with this gory new film shot in Auckland.

A popular horror-comedy franchise returns with this gory new film shot in Auckland.

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https://youtu.be/BqQNO7BzN08

Back in the early 1980s an entertaining - if gory - film called Evil Dead hit the video stores.

It was promptly followed by Evil Dead 2, and a little less promptly by a third one called Army of Darkness.

Unlike your usual splatter movie, the Evil Dead films were both blood-soaked and funny - particularly the performance of their lantern-jawed star Bruce Campbell.

Since then it's been rebooted by its producer Rob Tapert, and often shot in New Zealand where he lives. Bruce Campbell is now an executive producer as is the original director Sam Raimi.

This means the latest in the franchise, Evil Dead Rise, has a new director - Irishman Lee Cronin - new stars - Australians Lily Sullivan and Alissa Sutherland - and a bunch of Kiwis in supporting roles. OK, so shall we begin?

Calling Evil Dead a franchise is slightly flattering. It's hardly a cinematic universe like Marvel's MCU or Tolkien's Middle Earth.

With Bruce Campbell out of the picture, the "Evil Dead" elements are limited to the idea of an evil book, the Necronomicon, that causes demons to take over characters. And there's often a chainsaw somewhere in the proceedings.

But what more do you need in 90-odd minutes of scary movie? Let's meet the Evil Dead Rise family.

There are two sisters - responsible Ellie, and rock and roll Beth. Ellie has three adorable kids, Bridget, Danny and Cassie. Beth is the unreliable aunt. Watch what happens.

The first thing that happens is Danny finds a mysterious book that had been safely locked away. What's it say on the front? "Necro-something or other"?

And before you can say "Leave it alone, Danny!" he's taken the book and a couple of vinyl records back up to the family flat. Then he plays the records.

That doesn't sound good. But what he doesn't know is that Mum - Ellie - popped out that night to pick something up, and on the way back, something picked her up.

Something demonic and bloody.

Ellie has just long enough to tell Beth and the kids what's going to happen, and then it starts happening. Over and over it happens.

The whole movie is essentially keeping "Mum possessed by a demon" outside the flat, while she keeps finding ways to get back in and cause mayhem.

And when she can't get in, she takes it out on the people in neighbouring flats. Out in the corridor, people keep popping their heads out of their doors, saying "Hey lady, what's going on?"…

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Indie queen Lili Taylor and up-and-coming American-Kiwi actor Stephania LaVie Owen play mother and daughter in the American art film Paper Spiders.

Indie queen Lili Taylor and up-and-coming American-Kiwi actor Stephania LaVie Owen play mother and daughter in the American art film Paper Spiders.

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https://youtu.be/OGdqOeuNzOQ

Despite having to commute regularly between NYC and Wellington, Stephania LaVie Owen has managed to rack up a pretty impressive CV, despite her tender years.

It helps that she looks rather younger than those years - particularly in Paper Spiders, where she plays the 17-year old New Yorker Melanie.

We meet Melanie and her widowed mother Dawn as they're shown around a California university. Melanie's excited, but Dawn is tense about it.

Is Melanie ready to leave the family home for the other side of the country? It turns out Melanie isn't the one to worry about.

Dawn - played by indie queen Lili Taylor - gets increasingly neurotic. Not adorable, New York-movie neurotic, like mum in Lady Bird. More "you need help" neurotic.

And since Dawn won't go to a psychiatrist herself, Melanie has to report on her to the school counsellor.

My hopes for the film were raised slightly with the hilariously self-absorbed Mr Wessler but sadly those sorts of comic touches proved few and far between in Paper Spiders.

The story starts when Dawn becomes convinced that the next-door neighbour is out to get her.

Melanie doesn't immediately see the signs. Maybe Mum's right. There are some creepy people out there, why shouldn't the neighbour be one of them? Maybe Paper Spiders will turn into Rear Window.

Melanie even compares notes with friends at school.

When things escalate to the point where her mother hires a private detective - one she can hardly afford, by the way - Melanie starts to realise that things are getting out of hand.

Paper Spiders was made by husband and wife film-makers Natalie and Inon Shampanier and predictably it's based on Natalie's real-life experience with her own mother.

This means that the script follows many of the paths that, I assume, she did herself. Like finding a nice, sensible Mr Right to take Dawn's mind off things. Someone like Howard in this case.

Even if such a thing could help Dawn, Melanie takes her eye off the ball when she becomes involved with her own potential "significant other".

His name's Danny, he's fresh out of rehab, with rich, frankly useless parents. So, not Mr Right then…

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A Palestinian hairdresser blackmails her clients into spying for the Israeli Secret Service in this fraught thriller.

A Palestinian hairdresser blackmails her clients into spying for the Israeli Secret Service in this fraught thriller.

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Huda's Salon takes place in Bethlehem on the Occupied West Bank in Palestine. Outside that region, the setup of the movie requires a little more explanation - I imagine it needs none at home.

In short, the town has been under Israeli rule since 1967, though the wall separating it from the rest of the country only went up in 2002.

The opening scene - an extraordinary 10-minute single shot - takes place at a hairdressing salon run by divorcee Huda.

Her friend Reem has made an appointment for the first time in ages. Her husband won't let her out of his sight, she complains. He suspects she's having an affair.

The sort of gossip, in other words, that goes on in salons everywhere. Except unexpectedly Reem feels faint and passes out. A young man comes out of hiding, and he and Huda take Reem out the back, where they strip her and take compromising photographs.

Huda is about to blackmail her friend into spying for the Israeli Secret Service. Reem is bewildered and horrified.

And we're on the back foot too. Why would a friend do such a terrible thing? Reem goes home in a panic. Can she tell her husband Yussef what happened and hope he believes her?

Well, like most husbands in Middle East films, Yussef doesn't seem someone whose support you can count on. But maybe he'll surprise us and break the mould.

Meanwhile, Huda is about to get her own surprise. It seems she was already under surveillance by the Israeli Secret Service's sworn enemy, the Palestinian Resistance.

A squad invades the salon, arrests Huda and prepares to interrogate her with extreme prejudice,

So the film Huda's Salon - written and directed by the award-winning Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad - alternates between the fate of Huda at the salon, and that of Reem desperately trying to find a way out of her predicament.

It feels at times like a good stage play. Abu-Assad is very keen on long dramatic shots, particularly for the interrogation scenes between Huda and her Resistance captor, Hasan.

It's clear that Huda's fate was pretty much sealed before they arrested her. The only question is can they make her talk first?

Meanwhile, Reem may not be imprisoned, but that's about all you can say for her. She has almost as little choice as Huda. She can't tell her husband Yussef. Can she confide in her family? Can she simply take her baby and leave town?…

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