Our guide of what to watch at the cinemas this month.

Breath

Director: Simon Baker
Release: May 3
Running time: 1hr 55mins

It’s based on a Tim Winton novel! It’s based on a Tim Winton novel! They should just put that on the film poster and nothing else.

In his directorial debut, Aussie Simon Baker, star of The Mentalist and those bank commercials where he talks to us without actually looking at us, takes on the Miles Franklin Award winning book.

Breath is set in Western Australia and follows two teenage boys who forge a friendship with a mysterious surfer. Cue the haunting music, dream-like atmosphere, and slow motion underwater footage.
Looks like this film has captured rather impressively the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Impress your friends: Baker organised an acting workshop that was run by Nick Lathouris, co-writer of Mad Max: Fury Road, to whittle down the shortlist of acting candidates. His eventual two teenage leads have never acted in a film before. “It was never going to work in an authentic way with actors,” Baker said at the Toronto International Film Festival.

On Body And Soul

Director: Ildikó Enyedi
Release: May 10
Running time: 1hr 56 mins

Let’s broaden our minds and check out this film from Hungarian director ldikó Enyedi. It’s her first feature film in 18 years and snared the big prize at the Berlin Film Festival, the Sydney Film Festival and received a foreign language Oscar nomination.

It’s the story of two workers at an abattoir who experience the same dream.

Impress your friends: We all know about casting calls for actors, but this director did a casting call for deer.

“You’d think that deer are deer, they are pretty much the same. But they are not,” Enyedi said in January. “It was quite difficult for our animal coordinator to accept to work with the stag we chose. This was an animal living in a wild herd, not used to film crews or human presence. So it was nearly a half year’s work for him to get accepted by this animal.”

Chappaquiddick

Director: John Curran
Release: May 10
Running time: 1hr 46mins

Ask someone of a younger generation what the word “chappaquiddick” means and watch them look at you as though you’ve just invented a word. Yet for a certain age group it instantly conjures up images of a US Senator and a fatal car crash almost 50 years ago.

Thumbs up to the casting of Jason Clarke who is almost a spitting image of the young Senator Ted Kennedy.

Impress your friends: One of the co-writers of the screenplay is Taylor Allen, who has spent eight years in the animation department of The Simpsons.  The first he ever heard of the word Chappaquiddick was watching TV host Bill Maher in 2008 discussing politics.

“What’s a Chappaquiddick?” Taylor asked his then roommate and future co-screenwriter Andrew Logan. “We hopped on the Google machine and misspelled it and were led to a Wikipedia page that did not have nearly the accuracy and facts that, ultimately, we were able to find.”

Tully

Director: Jason Reitman
Release: May 10
Running time: 1hr 36 mins

This is the third film that teams director Jason Reitman with screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult). The comedy drama focusses on motherhood as Charlize Theron juggles her days raising her three children (including a newborn) and receives the help of a night nanny.

Impress your friends: Theron gained 20 kilos for her role and said: “I’ve never really understood people who don’t want to do the transformation. That, to me, is the joy of the job. You get to visit the entire body of someone else. That’s not to say that it’s brave. But I can’t imagine playing this character and not gaining the weight. That exhaustion, the way you feel about your body, the way your face changes. Everything. Your hands, fingers, shoe size.”

Aurore

Director: Blandine Lenoir
Release: May 17
Running time: 1hr 29mins

A 50-year-old Audrey Tabort experiences somewhat of a midlife crisis: she is separated from her husband, loses her job, and learns she is about to become a grandmother. But an encounter with someone from her past jump-starts a rediscovery. Oooohh!

Impress your friends: I know you’ve never heard of the lead actress Agnès Jaoui, so let’s bring you up to speed. With her then partner Jean-Pierre Bacri, they won the César screenwriting Award three times, and the Cannes Award once. She also directed The Taste of Others, a 2001 comedy that was nominated for the foreign film Oscar.

Deadpool 2

Director: David Leitch
Release: May 17
Running time: No idea. But who cares, cause if it’s anything like the first it will be heaps of fun.

One of my most enjoyable cinema experiences of recent times was watching Deadpool in 2016, so I urge you to check that film out first if you haven’t, then run to the cinema to see the sequel. But be warned, it’s a self-deprecating superhero film with a lot of swearing, violence, sexual references – and it’s great!

Impress your friends: The first Deadpool film became the highest grossing R Rated film of all time.
It was written by Rhett (great name) Reese and Paul Wernick, who have also written this sequel. Plus, there’s a new co-writer onboard – Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds.

The Bookshop

Director: Isabel Coixet
Release: May 24
Running time: 1hr 53mins

A sleepy seaside town in Hardborough, England gets its first bookshop, and its run by a headstrong widow played by Emily Mortimer. But not everyone in the village is happy with the new business.
The film also stars Bill Nighy (the aging rocker from Love Actually), and the very fine actress Patricia Clarkson (Pieces of April, The Station Agent, The Pledge).

Impress your friends: The star of the film Emily Mortimer has a family history with literature. Her father, John Mortimer QC was a lawyer, screenwriter and novelist who created Rumpole of the Bailey, and authored Paradise Postponed, and A Voyage Round My Father.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Director: Ron Howard
Release: May 24

We are getting to the character spin-off parts of the Star Wars universe, so brace yourself for a new one every two months.

I’m so happy to see Alden Ehrenreich in the title role here as Han Solo. He was the only redeemable quality of the unfunny 2016 comedy Hail, Caesar!, as the cowboy star trying to branch out into sophisticated dramas. Worth seeing this Star Wars film just to see how he goes as an action hero.

Impress your friends: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed three-quarters of principal photography on the film before being fired for “creative differences”. In stepped Ron Howard for about four weeks of shooting. Howard gets the screen credit as director. Lord and Miller take the executive producers credit.

BPM (Beats per Minute)

Director: Robin Campillo
Release: May 17
Running time: 2hr 20mins

Set in the 1990s, an AIDS activist group demand action by the government and pharmaceutical companies to combat the AIDS epidemic. This film won four awards at Cannes Film Festival, and the main prize at the French César Awards

Impress your friends: The director studied at film school in France, then walked away from the industry for 10 years. He worked as a video editor for a news channel where he kept coming across footage he had to edit for the news of an activist group called Act Up. He joined the group in 1992.

Rhett Bartlett can be heard on ABC Radio Melbourne, and he writes obituaries for The Hollywood Reporter. You can follow him on Twitter.