Thrillers, chillers and true fighters

WE’RE all familiar with the acronym “MAD”, or mutually assured destruction, where countries with nuclear weapons are in stalemate.

However, in new film A House of Dynamite (15), out today at the Regal Picturehouse in Henley, director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Noah Oppenheim pose a chilling question: what if the threat of a deadly missile came true, and it was launched seemingly out of nowhere?

As a nuclear warhead approaches a city in the United States, those in the higher echelons of American defence, headed up by Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), have to make life-or-death decisions which will have an impact on millions of lives. The film has a running time of just under two hours.

In thriller The Dead of Winter (15), Barb (Emma Thompson) travels to snow-covered Minnesota to scatter her late husband’s ashes in the place where they went ice-fishing together. When she gets lost and stops at a strange house, she comes across a man chopping wood — and blood on the snow.

Things get even more concerning when she discovers the man and his wife are keeping someone prisoner. However, Barb has outdoor skills of her own… The film has a running time of an hour and 38 minutes.

The true story of Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson is told in I Swear (15). Davidson was first diagnosed at the age of 15 in Eighties Britain, when the syndrome was largely unknown. Struggling with his symptoms and feeling alienated from friends and family, he perseveres in order to be accepted.

Davidson appeared in the 1989 documentary John’s Not Mad, helping to raise Tourette’s awareness.

With a cast including Shirley Henderson, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan and Steven Cree, John is played by Robert Aramayo and the film has a running time of two hours.