What’s new in cinemas this week: All-star cast in wedding from hell; Homegrown horror, Ryan Gosling’s space epic, Italian drama

Perhaps fortunately, De Santis has other, more pressing questions to deal with before his term runs out. There’s a bill legalising euthanasia which he has to decide whether to sign into law, a matter of special concern to his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), also his chief of staff. There are also two convicted killers he has to decide whether to pardon: the title of the film means “pardon” or literally “grace”, a concept he spends some time mulling over.

In one of the most memorable scenes, Dorotea pays a visit to one of these prisoners (Linda Messerklinger), a self-possessed woman with large sky-blue eyes, who insists that while she may have killed her abusive husband she did so out of love. Despite her unpleasantly smug manner, it seems we’re meant to take her seriously, or as seriously as we’re meant to take anything else.

Either La Grazia is Sorrentino’s best movie in a while, or it’s taken me this long to acquire a taste for the strange flavour of his work, where the studied weirdness masks the actual weirdness beneath. As usual, magic realism is the order of the day: it’s barely a surprise that a subplot concerns an astronaut trapped in zero gravity, or that the staid De Santis abruptly starts rapping in public.

More vital is Sorrentino’s willingness to throw realism out the window on an emotional level, substituting an eccentric form of sentimentality that relies on never letting us know how far he’s kidding.

Still, as an heir to the grand tradition of Italian art cinema, he takes his responsibilities at least as seriously as any politician could.

He himself feels only half awake. Then his memories gradually resurface, and we’re treated to a series of flashbacks revealing the nature of his mission. A mysterious infestation is sapping the sun’s energy to the point where Earth’s population is facing extinction. Grace’s job is to find a sample of the infestation elsewhere in space, analyse it and come up with an antidote. In other words, he must save the world. And there’s a postscript. He has a one-way ticket. Lacking the fuel for a return journey, he is destined to die in space.

This grim prospect is lightened by Gosling’s comic timing. Enthusiastically playing the nerd, he delivers what amounts to a slapstick routine with his attempts to master the ship’s control panel along with the differing gravitational conditions in each of its compartments. Nor is he well versed in the workings of a space suit.

Maybe it’s too much, but it does help to get you through the intricacies of his research into the mystery organism and its potential for catastrophe. And there is plenty to look at. The film glories in the expanses afforded by an IMAX screen. Its vision of space is effectively vast and frighteningly lonely – an endless ocean of blue with the Hail Mary floating precariously within it – until Grace suddenly realises that he has company. The ship is being stalked by a strange construction unlike anything he’s ever seen.

In between these discoveries are more flashbacks explaining the reasons for his recruitment to the space mission. Contentedly employed as a middle school science teacher, he’s approached by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), project Hail Mary’s administrator. Aware of his former life as a microbiologist whose controversial views brought his career to a premature end, she’s determined to have him aboard, and a determined Sandra Hüller is a fearsome prospect.

The weird craft approaching Hail Mary produces Rocky, an engineer from another planet who happens to be on the same mission as Grace.

An assemblage of rocky bits and pieces rather like a reduced version of The Thing from The Fantastic Four, he’s voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz, and his droll delivery soon makes up for his lack of a face. As for the pair’s language difficulties, they’re solved with miraculous speed. Rocky is now Grace’s ET and their collaboration soon puts them on the way to a series of Eureka moments.

The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose credits include The Spider-Verse franchise, and I doubt that it’s going to do much for Weir’s reputation for “hard” sci-fi. At 2½ hours plus, it also has its longueurs but there are some spectacularly beautiful moments and Gosling makes an engaging companion who makes something poignant as well as funny out of Grace’s unwelcome elevation to hero status.

The sequel opens straight after the scene which concluded the original. Grace (Weaving) is in hospital, where she has an unexpected visit from her younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), from whom she’s been estranged for seven years. They have many old guilts and grievances to analyse but they’ve barely begun before the first of Grace’s would-be assassins shows up. Now they’re both on the run, with Faith too marked down as a target.

The success of the first film has attracted an intriguing cast for this one. Canadian director David Cronenberg, a pioneer in the art of body horror, makes a brief but potent appearance as Chester Danforth, the patriarch of the most powerful of the four families. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is here too, playing for the dark side this time as his Machiavellian daughter Ursula, and Elijah Wood from Lord of the Rings is the families’ lawyer, a character rather like the Corleones’ consigliere in The Godfather. He’s the keeper of the satanist bible which sets out the rules of engagement in the lethal game Grace and Faith are forced to play.

The first one was set in the house belonging to Grace’s in-laws. This one expands the action across a family compound, complete with gothic castle, golf course, forest and satanist temple. Hostilities open on the golf course and swiftly proceed to an industrial laundry where the most gruesome of the film’s many deaths takes place. Although the hunters are armed with everything from sabres to bazookas, they’re remarkably poor shots and Grace and Faith can run very fast.

It’s clear that everyone involved had a great time making the film. Its directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, together with one of its screenwriters, Guy Busick, have worked on the Scream franchise, are well versed in the business of producing satirical horror movies and there are plenty of laughs. Even so, the ferocity of the violence often overpowers the fun.
Reviewed by Sandra Hall

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is in cinemas from Thursday, March 19.