Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, The Moment, Cold Storage and more

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

(113 mins, 15) Directed by Mary Bronstein; starring Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald 

The latest addition to the rapidly expanding “unravelling mother” genre, the actor and director Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a gut-churning panic attack of a movie. It taps into the corrosive effects of guilt and the perennial maternal fear of failing your child, and is one of the most stressful experiences you can have in a cinema without the building catching fire. In the central role, the Oscar-nominated Rose Byrne gives a performance so exposed and raw, it seems as though the camera, uncomfortably tight on her strained and twitching face, observes her on a cellular level.

Byrne plays Linda, who is juggling the solo parenting of a very sick child (her navy officer husband Charles is three weeks into a two-month deployment) with a demanding job as a therapist. It’s a challenging, soul-sapping situation at the best of times. Then her home floods and the ceiling in her bedroom collapses, leaving an ominous (and extremely symbolic) hole.

Linda is forced to relocate to a grim motel, where her brittle manners and sharp edges start to leave their mark on the world around her. She is met with open hostility: from her own therapist and colleague (Conan O’Brien), who dislikes her so intensely that he can barely look at her; from her daughter’s passive-aggressive doctor (Bronstein); from the surly motel receptionist (Ivy Wolk). Inventive, needling use of sound and the blurring of reality and fantasy take us under the skin of a woman at breaking point. It’s an impressive, immersive piece of film-making – and a profoundly uncomfortable watch.

The Moment

(103 mins, 15) Directed by Aidan Zamiri; starring Charli XCX, Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette

Pop phenomenon Charli XCX’s campaign for world domination continues apace with this uneven but sporadically amusing mockumentary. It follows an exaggerated version of the Brat star as she navigates her newfound success and grapples with the prep for a concert movie of her first stadium tour.

Created by the music video director Aidan Zamiri (a regular collaborator of Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, FKA Twigs and others), The Moment is a blunt-edged satire that doesn’t always seem clear about the point it is trying to make, or to have much of a grasp of pacing and structure.

But Charli XCX is a captivating presence who has no problem skewering the absurdities of celebrity. And Alexander Skarsgård – playing Johannes, the rampaging ego in yoga pants who has been hired by the studio to direct the concert movie – is preposterous, overblown and the only consistently funny element in the film.

Cold Storage

(99 mins, 15) Directed by Jonny Campbell; starring Joe Keery, Georgina Campbell, Liam Neeson 

The squelchy alien fungus comedy horror we didn’t know we needed, Cold Storage is a blast of pure popcorn fun. With multiple instances of exploding heads, this is the kind of robustly gross picture that begs for the big-screen experience and can hold its own against the rowdiest of late-night cinema audiences.

Stranger Things star Joe Keery is endearingly hapless as Teacake, an ex-con turned minimum wage employee at a self-storage facility converted from a top-secret military base. Together with new colleague Naomi (Georgina Campbell) and a grizzled former bio-terrorism expert (Liam Neeson), Teacake must face a gooey green threat to the future of humanity as we know it. What the film lacks in budget (some of the special effects are on the schlocky side), it makes up for in propulsive energy and sizzling chemistry between the leads.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die(134 mins, 15) Directed by Gore Verbinski; starring Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña

Sam Rockwell stars as a time-travelling warrior from the future who barges into an LA diner hoping to recruit a team who can help halt the development of an all-powerful AI. The customers are resistant. Understandably so: he’s clearly deranged and looks like he sleeps in a bin. But somehow, he assembles a group of volunteers  that includes a woman who is allergic to wifi (Haley Lu Richardson), a teacher whose students are malevolent, phone-obsessed zombies (Michael Peña), and a mother who recently lost her son in a school shooting (Juno Temple).

They embark on a raggedly plotted adventure that feels like a knockoff of a middling Black Mirror episode. A film about the perils of technology for people who are intimidated by the control panel on their toaster.

Wasteman

(90 mins, 18) Directed by Cal McMau; starring David Jonsson, Tom Blyth, Robert Rhodes

Superbly acted but almost unbearably brutal, Cal McMau’s Wasteman captures the realities of life behind bars with such intensity that you can practically taste the testosterone. The excellent David Jonsson (Industry, Rye Lane), who is looking more and more like a generational acting talent with each new performance, plays Taylor. A decade in prison has left him with a heroin habit and the look of a dog expecting to be kicked. But parole, and a chance to form a relationship with his teenage son, is tantalisingly close.

Then Taylor gets a new cellmate. Dee (Tom Blyth, utterly terrifying) has a confrontational swagger and a wholesale drug-dealing business. McMau’s lean, light-footed direction combines handheld camera with phone footage to visceral and nerve-racking effect.

Photographs by Logan White/A24/Reiner Bajo