Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for a shrieking retreat from consensus reality for the next four and a bit years – I mean, I don't actually need to be here to watch everything collapse and burn, do I? Luckily anyone contemplating this kind of much-needed escape/craven abnegation of personal responsibility at the moment has some pretty good films to watch before welding themselves into their shelter.

First up, a film which has already had a bit of Oscar buzz around it, which is doubly unusual considering that a) it's a horror movie and b) the performance attracting all the attention is from Hugh Grant, who – as any fule kno – always plays the same character in the same kind of film. Only not this time. The film is Heretic, from the writers of A Quiet Place and 65, though it's rather more to my taste than either of those.

Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher play a couple of keen young Mormon missionaries intent on converting the Pacific Northwest to their creed. On their list for an evangelical visit is British visitor Mr Reed (Grant) who lives in a house just outside of town. The missionaries receive a warm welcome, and Mr Reed is plainly very interested in discussing the finer points of theology with them – he seems to be rather better versed in it, too. Soon enough they decide to make their excuses and go, but find the front door is on a time lock and finding the back door will involve negotiating the labyrinthine interior of the house, where Mr Reed has prepared various surprising experiences for them. . .

Grant's performance is as good as the hype would suggest, rather startlingly modulating his standard cheery, quirky, mannered persona into something entirely creepy and disturbing. What makes it all the more impressive is that he basically spends the first half of the movie delivering a lecture on the anthropology of religion, complete with visual aids and musical accompaniment, yet Grant makes it magnetic to watch. I should say the two main actresses also have their moments to shine and are impressive when they arrive.

I admit there is a distinct possibility that the hard-core horror audience who make up the most likely audience for Heretic will find all this chewy intellectual stuff to be borderline tedious, and a speedbump on the way to the gory bits (which do eventually arrive, though the blood is not particularly lavish). But I found it really quite refreshing to encounter a film with such a challenging and stimulating thesis and the boldness to put it across so engagingly. A really interesting and impressive film.

If you had told me that this would be a week where a new Pedro Almodovar movie wasn't one of the best films I saw, I would have been very startled – now, it must be said that there are some extremely fine films out there at the moment, but the fact is that The Room Next Door is not really the great man firing on all cylinders.

Tilda Swinton plays Martha, a war reporter who has been diagnosed with cancer; Julianne Moore plays Ingrid, a novelist who is an old friend of hers. Martha decides she can't face the prospect of a painful and humiliating decline and death, and manages to acquire medication which will allow her to euthanise herself – she asks Ingrid to be near her when she eventually decides to use it; not with her, but in the room next door. Ingrid is somewhat horrified, having issues of her own on the subject, but eventually decides to accompany her friend.

Not quite as heavy as it sounds, or indeed could have been, but this is certainly an attempt at a profound and thoughtful film on a very timely topic. It treats it as a moral issue rather than a political one, and while in places it is a bit lacking in subtlety – the main anti-euthanasia character is described as a 'religious fanatic' – it mostly treats it as an issue human dignity and choice. Moore and Swinton are both excellent, and Almodovar's powers of composition and the use of colour are as impressive as ever.

But set against that. . . this is Almodovar's first full-length film in the English language, and that's rather obvious in most of the dialogue scenes. The opening scenes in particular are sodden with clumsy exposition, as Swinton and Moore tell each other things they both already know at great length for the audience's benefit. The sense that normal people just don't talk like this never completely recedes, even once the tale is well underway – Almodovar is the sole credited writer, but one wonders if Google Translate also deserves some recognition. This is before we consider some of the wilder narrative diversions in the first act of the story – there's a fairly elaborate flashback concerning gay monks in Iraq which contributes almost nothing to the main plot. This is still is a very watchable film, but for whatever reason it feels emotionally muted in a way one wouldn't have expected if this had been a Spanish-language picture.

'Makes Pretty Woman look like a Disney movie!' is one of the more striking claims made about Sean Baker's Anora, though it rather overlooks the fact that Pretty Woman was made and distributed by companies established by Walt Disney himself. Of course, you can't expect film critics to do their research about things like that. But the point still generally holds. Mikey Madison gives a phenomenal performance as Anora, also known as Ani, a New York sex worker who makes the acquaintance of Vanya, the young and immature son of a couple of insanely wealthy Russian oligarchs.

Vanya puts Ani on a retainer to be exclusive with him – they even essentially recycle some of the dialogue from the Gere-Roberts movie – and during an impulsive trip to Las Vegas he proposes to her; she says yes. (The only weakness in the film is that he's so obviously an idiot and she's so obviously a tough and smart cookie it's a little difficult to understand why.) But their connubial bliss is short-lived once Vanya's parents learn of their union and the local Russian-speaking heavies turn up at his mansion. . .

You'd look at the trailer for a film like Anora and maybe read part of the synopsis and probably come away thinking 'wow, that looks like it's going to be intensely grim and depressing.' And there is a definite element of sadness woven into the story, not to mention the fact that the early scenes of privileged children running amok with their trust funds make an excellent argument for Marxism. But just when you think it's going to get really, really bleak, the film executes a flawless turn into the realms of absurd black farce – the scenes of Ani contending with the Russian and Armenian goons, plus their leader (the local Orthodox priest) are as funny as anything I've seen at a cinema this year.

The film continues to confound expectations and entertain, while never losing track of the fact that this is fundamentally a deeply serious story about the capacity of the very wealthy to inflict massive damage on the lives of ordinary people while facing no consequences in return. Karren Karagulian is excellent as the increasingly harassed priest, and Yura Borisov gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as one of the goons – but Mikey Madison outshines everyone else in the movie, raw, vivid, funny and tender from scene to scene. This won the big prize at Cannes this year and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's in a lot of Oscar conversations for next year, too. An outstanding movie.

And finally, Tim Mielants' Small Things Like These, which despite having Matt Damon and Ben Affleck amongst its producers is a small, low-key, seemingly rather personal film. It's a drama about the Magdalene laundries scandal in Ireland and the abuse of the young women effectively imprisoned there, following The Magdalene Sisters in 2003 and Philomena in 2013.

This time around it presents a male perspective on the story, as Cillian Murphy plays a coal man named Bill Furlong, living in a small town in (apparently) Northern Ireland in the mid 1980s. Bill is a quiet, introspective sort of a fellow, doing quite well in his business, and happily married with a large number of daughters. However, his dealings with the local convent gradually lead him to suspect that deeply unpleasant things are occurring within. But the nuns wield considerable influence around town and raising a fuss could cause his family trouble without achieving anything. Isn't it better just to keep quiet and forget what he's seen?

Murphy's performance – which involves a lot of soulful looking at things from a distance and silent brooding – is predictably good; Emily Watson, as the chief nun, doesn't have much screen time but is understatedly chilling while she's on. The film is plausible and naturalistic but not a very great deal actually happens in terms of plot, and what eventually does take place is just a bit predictable.

As a slightly arty character piece it is certainly watchable, perhaps all the moreso because it is ultimately a story about not looking away, not thinking solely in terms of self-interest, and standing up and doing the right thing when the crunch arrives. That's always a valuable moral, especially at the moment.

Awix

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