Picnic at Hanging Rock review – Australian fever dream still dazzling 50 years on

Peter Weir’s 1975 parable of imperial anxiety and sexual hysteria, rereleased for its 50th anniversary, is a classic of Australian new wave cinema

Beartooth by Callan Wink review – an expansive drama of survival

Family relationships are explored in this finely executed tale of two brothers drawn into bear poaching in rural Montana

Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War by Ash Sarkar – identity fraud

A Marxist critique of left-liberal politics that delivers its message with punch and panache

The Monkey review – slapdash splatter comedy is a grating misfire

Writer-director Osgood Perkins follows up horror hit Longlegs with a tiresome, juvenile adaptation of a Stephen King short story about an evil toy monkey

Queen James by Gareth Russell review – all the king’s men

The complicated life and passionate love affairs of Great Britain’s first monarch

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor review – an SF master moves into the mainstream

This book within a book weaves a writer’s struggles with scenes from their Africanfuturist tale of post-apocalyptic robots

Your Life Is Manufactured by Tim Minshall review – object lessons

A deep dive into the world of making things that means you’ll never look at your kettle in quite the same way again

The Violet Hour by James Cahill review – art, secrets and lies

The Tiepolo Blue author’s impressive second novel is an enthrallingly intricate portrait of the art world

September Says review – intense sisterly bond leads to things getting strange in rural Ireland

There’s a lot to grab your attention here, but strong performances struggle to save Ariane Labed’s adaptation of Daisy Johnson’s novel Sisters

Crime and thrillers of the month – review

The scorned woman thriller deftly reimagined, preposterously gripping murders at an ice skating training camp - and a frantic search for a missing daughter

Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell review – a dread-stoking domestic abuse drama

O’Donnell brings the spare intensity of her award-winning short stories to her first novel, a compulsive tale of one woman’s escape intensified by Dublin’s housing crisis

Cross Purposes by Jonathan Rauch review – crises for Christianity and democracy

The Atlantic contributor frets about religion, politics and America – and the questions he poses are existential

Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts review – powerful, poignant and suffused with millennial dread

A young couple encounter catastrophic fires and ruined rivers on a California road trip, searching for art and hope in a darkening world

The Inherited Mind by James Longman review – a moving memoir of mental illness in the family

The TV reporter’s struggles with depression and the suicide of his father, whose own father killed himself, prompt this incisive, highly personal investigation

The Koran and the Flesh by Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed review – the trials of a gay Muslim

This courageous, melancholy memoir, about the author’s struggle to reconcile his faith with his sexuality, argues that homophobia is a cultural phenomenon, not a religious edict