Rock Hudson was built up as a silver screen archetype of heterosexual manhood, with his 6ft 5in frame and muscular physique, but his story has subsequently come to epitomise a Hollywood system built on illusions and delusions. Supposedly the kind of chiselled hunk every swooning female admirer would like to catch her before she hit the ground, Hudson’s private life was based around his coterie of gay friends and his gay agent, Henry Willson.

It must have looked like a funny idea on paper: a mute innocent stumbles into a Hollywood career, is mindlessly fêted by the industry and throws all its idiocies into stark relief. It’s an idea as old as the romances of Chretien de Troyes and Voltaire’s Candide, and was given an earlier Hollywood outing in Being There. But the lack of originality of the basic premise isn’t the problem here. 

Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, skilfully directed by Elliott Nugent. The death-trap mansion in the Louisiana bayous where family members gather to hear the reading of the deceased owner’s will – his niece Goddard inherits it – proved the perfect venue for Hope’s hilariously pusillanimous shtick.

Just about the three toughest tricks to pull off in the theatre are making a musical, making a family show and making characters so charming that even the most cynical in the house are pulling for the little guy (or not so little in this case). So if it takes the armature of a blockbuster Hollywood movie to buttress the production, who cares?

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is an atrocity – a ghoulish biopic of Marilyn Monroe that luxuriates in her maltreatment and misery, culminating in protracted images of the star’s lonely death from barbiturate pills distractedly swallowed like candies and washed down with Scotch in her Los Angeles bungalow.

Disclaimer: it’s a little unfair I’m reviewing Kiefer Sutherland’s third album. He seems alright, left-ish for an American, done his time in the bad boy lane, sense of humour, tried his hand at this and that, even as a rodeo-rider, and has entertained plenty onscreen. Although I’d never heard his music until this month, I knew he’d played everywhere from the Grand Ole Opry to far-flung Glastonbury marquees.

A brief warning to readers: while effort is made to avoid spoilers, I would advise anyone who has somehow missed the massive amount of online speculation about the film’s plot to not read on. See the film first, and please come back. 

For so much of the year, Tenet was cited as the film that was going to save cinema – the tentpole extravaganza that would draw virus-conscious punters back to the big screen. The assertion was always fanciful, the pandemic being too long a haul; with no disrespect to Christopher Nolan, the fanfare around his latest spoke more of industry desperation than reality.

There are films to meet every taste in theartsdesk's guide to the best movies currently on release. In our considered opinion, any of the titles below is well worth your attention.

Enola Holmes ★★★★ Millie Bobby Brown gives the patriarchy what-for in a new Sherlock-related franchise

Whilst New Mutants slips surreptitiously into cinemas, Disney’s live-action spin on Mulan arrives with more fanfare on their streaming platform, even if it does come with a price-tag of nearly £20.