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Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell seeks redemption in Edward Berger’s high-stakes gambling yarn

Debts, secrets and a cartoonish Tilda Swinton catch up with Farrell’s self-styled ‘Lord Doyle’ as he confronts his own destiny in a chance to win salvation

Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser review – painfully clunky lessons in art

This French bestseller, in which a girl and her grandfather visit Paris museums, aims to be a Sophie’s World for art history – but the conversations are sentimental and simplistic

Humanish by Justin Gregg review – how much of a person is your pet?

From prosthetic testicles for dogs to sociable reptiles, a behavioural scientist explains what we get wrong – and right – about animal minds

The Twits review – Americanised Roald Dahl is gruesome in all the wrong ways

Netflix’s animation mangles and sentimentalises Dahl’s black comedy about a gross and detestable married couple – relocating the action to Texas and introducing a plucky orphan heroine

Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai review – growing up in public

Clambering up bell towers, dancing the night away and falling in love – how ‘saint’ Malala forged a new identity

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett review – remembering terrible men

In the latest novel from the acclaimed avant garde author, the narrator considers the impact of the relationships she’s left behind

Our Fault review – ultra-glossy Spanish step-sibling melodrama is too bland to be annoying

Third film adapted from the romance novels by Mercedes Ron, originally written in Spanish, feels clunky and cliched

Australia: A History by Tony Abbott review – mostly celebratory account of ‘a land built by heroes’

Former PM lauds his country’s progress to egalitarian democracy where ‘only the very unlucky’ miss out – yet judges it ‘materially rich but spiritually poor’

Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa review – behind the scenes at the nail salon

This impressive novel shows how war, colonialism and migration play out in a small room where everyone’s name tag says Susan

After Oscar by Merlin Holland review – Wilde’s grandson on the legacy of a scandal

The playwright’s only living descendant traces the shadow cast by his trial – and his rehabilitation as a gay icon

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

All That We See Or Seem by Ken Liu; When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift; The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell; Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt; Remain by Nicholas Sparks with M Night Shyamalan

Raise Your Soul by Yanis Varoufakis review – an intimate history of Greece

The colourful former minister uses the lives of five female relatives to tell the story of postwar Greek politics

The Woman in Cabin 10 review – silliness of Keira Knightley megayacht thriller tips it overboard

Keira Knightley is twice dunked in the briny as she tries to uncover what’s going on aboard Guy Pearce’s boat in this soggy Agatha-Christie-ish mystery

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen audiobook review – an immersive all-star dramatisation

Actors Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Bill Nighy and Marisa Abela are among the cast in a pacy adaptation that retains Austen’s sharp plotting and comic precision

Seed by Bri Lee – this propulsive, fun eco-thriller is the novelist’s strongest yet

Set in a secret Antarctic seed bank, Seed is a novel of friction and paranoia, of weaponised mistrust and cloistered desire, narrated by a misogynist antinatalist

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