Little Amélie review – tender and poignant study of the fragility of early childhood

Based on a 2000 novella, this sweet animation follows a young girl who wakes from a vegetative state on the verge of feral, but begins to bond with others after an intervention by her grandmother

The mother of all meltdowns: Rose Byrne on playing a parent cracking up in her taboo-busting new film

What if loving your child is destroying you and all you want to do is escape? That’s the nightmare the Oscar-nominated Byrne faces in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. The star and its director reveal why backers were scared

The President’s Cake review – toughly revealing story of kid on a baking mission for Saddam Hussein’s birthday

Nine-year-old Lamia is obliged by her school to make a birthday cake for the Iraqi president, and meets a series of vivid characters as she shops for sanctioned ingredients

Method dressing: nine actors who stayed wildly in character on the red carpet

Whether it’s Zendaya in tennis-inspired shoes, Cynthia Erivo dressed in green, Margot Robbie as Barbie or Jenna Ortega in shredded black leather, today’s movie stars rarely disappoint on the promo circuit

Wallace, Gromit and a new use for lentils: blockbuster Aardman exhibition opens at Young V&A

Children are encouraged to get hands-on as the world’s leading stop-motion studio showcases its work in east London

From Melania to Kid Rock’s halftime show: why is Maga art so dreadful?

As the right stokes culture wars, their alternatives to ‘woke’ Hollywood prove to be shoddily made and uninspired

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was never a love story. It was a warning

Watch Michel Gondry’s 2004 time-twister as a hard sci-fi film and you might heed its advice

The far right in power always co-opts culture – in France, it has already begun

Marine Le Pen’s party is concocting plans to replace a vital, vibrant arts scene with a retrograde movement that would glorify the country’s past, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst

Melania drops by 88% to No 62 at UK box office, with £66 site average

The documentary’s second week slump equates to around six tickets per cinema

Whistle review – a smart, sympathetic spin on the cursed-artefact horror

Chiller about a skull-shaped Aztec whistle blends Final Destination-style deaths with a tender portrait of anxious adolescence

The Swedish Connection review – uplifting real-life tale of Stockholm bureaucrat who outwits the Nazis

A genial, lightly comic portrait of Gösta Engzell, the unlikely civil servant who outmanoeuvred Nazi bureaucracy with paperwork

Jimmy and Stiggs review – skull-numbingly silly alien-invasion splatterpunk yarn

Joe Begos’s gross-out aims for sensory assault but delivers only visual noise, numbing gore and a weary joke stretched far beyond endurance

My helicopter went into freefall – inside an active volcano

Christopher Duddy was shooting a film in Hawaii when disaster struck. For 28 hours he choked on fumes near a lava lake, fighting to get to safety

Wuthering Heights review – too hot, too greedy adaptation guarantees bad dreams in the night

Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë is an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire that misuses Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi but makes the most of Martin Clunes

Goat review – noisy, lightning-speed basketball animation does it for the kids

A diminutive young buck aspires to compete with rhinos and horses in ‘roarball’, but this by-numbers tale is not the greatest of any time