This week’s movie releases

Regarded for his work with filmmaker Shane Meadows, as well as appearances in the likes of The Bourne Ultimatum, British actor Paddy Considine makes his debut as writer-director with Tyrannosaur. As its title suggests, it’s a raw, unchained monster of a drama that feeds off two tremblingly intense performances from Peter Mullan (Neds) and Olivia Colman (The Iron Lady). Mullan plays Joseph, a boozing widower living in a rundown council estate in northern England who’s unable to control his anger and all too aware of it. In a rage, he one day stumbles into the charity thrift shop run by Colman’s Hannah, a kindly Christian woman herself suffering in an abusive marriage, and the pair strike up a tentative friendship. Painted in blacks, browns and grays, this offers a grim vision of a hostile Britain about as far away from a Richard Curtis movie as you can get. Some moments — notably a dog being kicked to death and a vicious rape — are genuinely hard to watch, but dark humor and the muted warmth generated between the two outstanding leads make it compelling viewing.

Senior moments

More in the Notting Hill vein, comedy drama The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel finds Slumdog Millionnaire’s Dev Patel promising a group of British seniors an idyllic retirement at his Indian retreat. Throwing their BAFTAs into a suitcase before checking in are a top team of British thesps: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup.

Fairytale comedy Mirror, Mirror is just one of three Snow White adaptations — another from Hollywood, another Spanish — heading our way. Time will tell just which will be the fairest of them all, but this stars Lily Collins as the princess trying to regain her kingdom from evil queen Julia Roberts with the help of her seven dwarf pals.

In Man on a Ledge, Avatar’s Sam Worthington is an escaped prisoner out to whip up a media storm to proclaim his innocence by occupying the ledge of a New York skyscraper.

Extraterrestre, meanwhile, is Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo’s much-anticipated follow-up to 2007’s wonderful Timecrimes. Two strangers, Julio (Julián Villagrán) and Julia (Michelle Jenner), wake up in bed together after a wild night out not knowing i) how they got there and ii) what a huge U.F.O. is doing parked over the city.

In El Perfecto Desconocido Ireland’s Colm Meaney stars as a mysterious stranger who moves into an abandoned store in a Mallorca town. The locals hope he’s going to reopen it, but he has other plans, related to an old Polaroid he has carried with him.