Gareth Edwards’ low-budget post-apocalyptic thriller, Monsters, hits UK cinemas after nine long months on the road at festivals from South By Southwest to Edinburgh. A brooding, even-paced road movie with a love story at its core, it takes place six years after a NASA space probe carrying extraterrestrial lifeforms back to Earth broke up on re-entry, scattering its alien cargo across Central America, where the creatures have now made their home.

We follow Andrew (Scoot McNairy) and Samantha (Whitney Able), a photographer and the daughter of his editor, as they attempt to make their way through the infected zone back to America when all other routes to their homeland are cut off. Shot in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala by a crew of four, the authentically dilapidated locations together with Edwards’ computer generated effects, which include the tentacled CGI creatures that seem to glow and pulsate with energy, give the film an atmosphere of serene gloaming. Unique, adventurous and hard-to-define, Monsters is guerilla filmmaking at its best.

Monsters is released in UK cinemas this Friday, 3 December.

Jacques Tati’s character Monsieur Hulot was France’s answer to Charlot (their fond nickname for Charlie Chaplin) in the 1950s. If you’ve seen The Illusionist (Chomet, 2009) you’ve been introduced to Monsieur Hulot in animated form. The incongruously tall raincoat-clad clown with a hunched gait is the uncle-like protagonist of Tati’s seminal films Playtime and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Les Vacances de M. Hulot). Both films have been re-released by the BFI on DVD and Blu-Ray with immersive extras.

Monsieur Hulot’s fantastical modernist world is filled with machines, overturned social conventions and futuristic portholes. His bumbling charm causes inadvertent and hilarious chaos wherever he steps in a precise pantomime that achieves boffo levels for the first time since James Agee lamented its death in his essay Comedy’s Greatest Era.

The new release of Playtime is complemented with extras including a rare audio interview with Tati, a short biographical film, and both DVDs include alternative ‘international’ soundtracks revised by Tati himself.

Both titles are available for pre-order from the BFI Filmstore & Amazon UK, and are released this Monday, 29 November.

Last week I interviewed Gareth Edwards, director of Monsters, for Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Click here to read it.

Monsters is released in UK cinemas on Friday 3rd December.