Robert Pattinson and Zendaya’s romantic drama with bite and other new movies to watch this week

(98 minutes) PG

I can accept Disney princesses as a convention, but I’m starting to find the royalist propaganda scattered through the Super Mario cinematic universe a little grating.

The original animated Super Mario Bros Movie, a smash in 2023, introduced us to the girly yet formidable Princess Peach, voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy, who rules wisely over her kingdom of mushroom people and is more than capable of kicking butt to protect them, even if she occasionally has to be rescued by her platonic admirer Mario (Chris Pratt) and his still more self-effacing brother Luigi (Charlie Day), a pair of mustachioed tradies who have teleported in from Brooklyn.

Directed like its predecessor by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenik, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie introduces us to Princess Peach’s long-lost sister Rosalinda, who looks like Elsa from Frozen with a Veronica Lake peek-a-boo hairdo, and has been exiled to a planet far, far away (the Star Wars homages are frequent in this one).

(MA), 106 minutes

Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli has already proved himself a trenchant analyst of the kind of attention-seeking behaviour that fuels the cult of celebrity.

His last film, Dream Scenario, had Nicolas Cage as an unassuming academic who acquires an addiction to fame after he starts appearing in the dreams of people he’s never met. The outcome is not pretty.

And now, with The Drama, Borgli takes his scalpel to the romcom. For Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson), a British expat working as a curator at a Boston museum, it’s love at first sight when he spots Emma Harwood (Zendaya) in a cafe. Pretending to be a fan of the book she’s reading, he makes his approach and after a few dates, they’re planning their wedding. His close friend, Mike (Mamoudou Althie) and his wife, Rachel (Alana Haim) are to be best man and matron-of-honour and all is well until an idle after-dinner game of What’s The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done? unearths an ill-considered revelation which threatens everything.

(M) 105 minutes

When Iranian cinema began coming back to life after the 1979 Revolution, some filmmakers focused on stories about children. By viewing the country and its way of life through a child’s eyes, they were able to make implicit comment without falling foul of the censor.

I thought of this while watching The President’s Cake, shortlisted among this year’s Oscar entries for Best International Feature. It was inspired by Iraqi writer-director Hasan Hadi’s memories of his childhood during the early 1990s when Saddam Hussein was still in power. International sanctions meant food was scarce yet, each year, Iraq’s schools were forced to celebrate the dictator’s birthday by making their pupils bring fresh fruit, festive decorations and a birthday cake. Tasks were assigned by ballot and nobody wanted to be chosen for the cake making.

Nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) lives with her beloved grandmother, Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat) in southern Iraq’s marshlands where the tranquil beauty of the landscape and its waters contrast poignantly with the harshness of the living conditions. She goes to school on the day of the ballot hoping desperately that luck will be on her side.