This week’s movie releases

Time-machine inventor, scientist, Nobel Prize winner, Olympic medalist… the star of madcap digital animation Mr Peabody & Sherman is also, as it happens, a dog. He uses his time-traveling creation to cruise around the centuries with his adopted son Sherman – that is, until the youngster takes it for a spin behind his back to impress his lady friend and inadvertently ruptures the space-time continuum. Together the trio must pick up the pieces, traveling around meeting some of the biggest names in world history to avoid damaging the past, present and future beyond repair.

Ancient Greece is once again brought back to life in gaudy, blood-spurting digital glory in 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to Zack Snyder’s 2006 effects-heavy action fantasy 300 (2006). Again adapted from a Frank Miller graphic novel – Xerxes – new director Noam Murro moves the bulk of the action from land to sea, centering on the efforts made by Greek general Themistocles of Athens (Sullivan Stapleton) to protect Greece from the invading Persians, led by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and Artemisia (Eva Green).

Tommy Lee Jones plays General Douglas McArthur mopping up in post-World War II US-occupied Japan in Emperor. Put in charge of the country in the wake of its surrender, he tasks an expert in Japanese culture, General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox), with investigating whether or not Emperor Hirohito should be tried as a war criminal. Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) directs.

After his San Sebastián-winning In the House (2012), based on a play by Spain’s Juan Mayorga, France’s François Ozon returns with Young & Beautiful. The story concerns a 17-year-old girl (Marine Vacth) who after losing her virginity on holiday starts exploring her sexuality by working as a prostitute, striking up a relationship of sorts with an older client.

Winner of the Discovery prize at last year’s European Film Awards, German writer-director Jan Ole Gerster’s comedy Oh Boy charts the wanderings of a thirtysomething dreamer (played by Tom Schilling) around Berlin over one day and night as he encounters various characters.

Dark moon rising

Released across the pond in 2011, sci-fi found-footage horror Apollo 18, directed by Spaniard Gonzalo López-Gallego, takes as its premise that another secret manned mission to the Moon took place a year after the Apollo 17 trip of December 1972. It purportedly shows film shot by the astronauts on the mission, which explains why we haven’t been back since…