Four new films to see this week

Directed by Steve McQueen. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Elliott Heffernan, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham. 12A cert, gen release, 121 min
Sprawling tale of the London Blitz featuring Ronan as a mother searching for her mixed-race son (Heffernan) among the burning buildings. McQueen’s extensively researched script alights on racism and looting but, at heart, it’s a boy’s own adventure, replete with ragamuffins and Dickensian villains. You can see the attention to detail in production designer Adam Stockhausen’s ruined interiors. The director’s pedigree as a Turner Prize-winning visual artist ensures that every shot is aesthetically pleasing. But despite its evocative subject matter, Blitz lacks the emotional heft of Hunger or the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. Full review TB
Directed by Dougal Wilson. Starring Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Carla Tous, Olivia Colman, voices of Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton. G cert, gen release, 106 min
The bear is back. A letter from the Mother Superior at a Peruvian Home for Retired Bears brings the Brown family – risk-averse patriarch Henry (Bonneville), his kindly wife (Mortimer standing in for Sally Hawkins), indolent son Jonathan, enterprising daughter Judy, and trusty housekeeper Mrs Bird – to the South American country of the title. There are good sight gags, including a tribute to Buster Keaton’s falling house shot. But neither the action sequences nor the jokes can compete with earlier Paddington films. That hardly matters: a lesser Paddington outing remains vastly superior to most G-rated films. Full review TB
Directed by Malcolm Washington. Starring Danielle Deadwyler, Samuel L Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Erykah Badu. 12A, limited release, 127 min
Berniece (Deadwyler), an African-American widow, squabbles with her tearaway brother Boy Willy (Washington) over the fate of the family piano in Depression-era Pennsylvania. The instrument was, during slavery, bartered for “one and a half” of their ancestors. Now Boy Willy wants to sell it and buy back the land those ancestors once worked upon. That’s a lot of symbolic meaning for one piano to stand. The performances are all first rate, but the latest effort – after Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – to bring an August Wilson play to the screen again feels suffocatingly stagey. Full review DC
Directed by Morgan Neville. Featuring Pharrell Williams, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg. PG cert, gen release, 93 min
The folk behind this documentary on Pharrell Williams will, no doubt, be delighted to hear it described as peculiar. They have, after all, taken the decision to tell his life story through the medium of computer-generated Lego. The peculiarity, however, is how little Piece by Piece differs from the average pop hagiography. All the expected celebrities are interviewed and the footage is then Legoised. Ho, hum. The real problem with this tolerably diverting film is that Pharrell isn’t really that interesting. He’s gifted in so many fields, but he’s essentially an upstage boffin, not a downstage star. Full review DC
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