Jacob Elordi (and his pooch) light up this quirky doomsday tale as the Hollywood hunk gives a soulful performance in The Dog Stars

The Dog Stars (15, 118mins)

Rating: 3 stars 

Rating:

Enviably vigorous at 88, Sir Ridley Scott has now directed five films this decade. And, thankfully, there’s no sign of The Dog Stars being his swan song.

Set in 2035, after human civilisation has been almost entirely wiped out by a flu pandemic, it follows Hig (Jacob Elordi), an immaculately stubbled former mechanic and pilot, and his beloved Belgian Malinois Jasper.  A whistle for all dog-lovers to go on immediate high alert until Jasper’s fate is resolved.

Man and dog have carved out a sustainable existence at an abandoned Colorado airfield with gruff ex-Marine Bangley (Josh Brolin), who insists they are living the American Dream: ‘Food, power, water, weapons and a perimeter we can defend.’ Though their stockpile is under threat from ‘reapers’: marauding tribes of lithe, extravagantly tattooed, machete-wielding scavengers who resemble an unusually violent contemporary dance troupe.

But optimistic Hig hankers for more. He sets off in his rickety little Cessna in search of human connection, only to encounter a succession of rather underdeveloped characters: a potential love interest (Margaret Qualley); her suspicious ‘Pops’ (Guy Pearce); a Mennonite community led by Benedict Wong; and Allison Janney’s deliciously creepy former flight attendant, who feels as though she has jetted in from an entirely different movie.

Adapted from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, The Dog Stars isn’t out to redefine the crowded end-of-the-world genre. Yet there’s a warming, ‘celebrate the simple things’ quality to it: the timeless joys of a morning coffee, a cigarette, playing fetch with your dog, and living in a world where people still know how to fix things.

Then there’s the pleasure of basking in Jacob Elordi’s star power. The unfeasibly handsome Saltburn breakout gives a soulful performance that should bump him even further up the next-generation leading-man rankings – although some admirers of his work in Wuthering Heights may find him disappointingly overdressed.

For two-thirds of its running time, this is an enjoyable, slightly melancholy post-apocalyptic hang-out movie.

Then Scott suddenly floors the accelerator, unleashing a couple of tense, thunderous and bloodthirsty set-pieces that remind you that this is the man who made Alien, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. It’s minor fare compared with those, certainly. But when The Dog Stars takes flight, helped enormously by Erik Messerschmidt’s sweeping aerial cinematography, it still soars.

Bitter Christmas (15, 111mins)

Rating: Three stars 

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Bitter Christmas (the title refers, among other things, to a classic Mexican break-up song) is a similar late-career gift from an old master.

And though director Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Volver) has called it ‘the riskiest film I’ve ever made’, fans of the 76-year-old Spanish auteur will find themselves on familiar, gorgeously cinematic ground.

It’s a typically lush melodrama, which flickers between two time periods.

In 2026, ageing filmmaker Raul (Leonardo Sbaraglia, sporting a deliberately Almodovarian shock of silver hair) is struggling to finish a script – until he mines a personal tragedy in the life of Monica (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), his loyal, long-suffering PA, for his ending.

The story he is writing takes place at Christmas, 2004, and centres on Elsa (Barbara Lennie), an advertising director suffering migraines and panic attacks amid unresolved grief over her mother’s death.

This being an Almodovar film, Elsa has a hot boyfriend, Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), who is a fireman by day and stripper by night.

She is also surrounded by a colourful clutch of glamorous, highly neurotic women – all, naturally, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Sex, drugs, death and emotional Drama with a capital D: this is unmistakably Almodovar, if the volcanic palette of tomato reds and hot pinks didn’t already give it away.

What makes Bitter Christmas distinct, though, is that a veteran filmmaker has made a film about a filmmaker...making a film about a filmmaker making a film. Phew.

And if that artistic hall of mirrors sounds off-putting, rest assured Almodovar isn’t flattering himself. Calling it ‘the film where I’ve been the cruellest to myself’, he turns the lens on his own vampiric creativity.

Stick with this one. The ending takes a while coming – but it’s brilliant.All films reviewed here are in cinemas now.