Bad Apples (15, 100 mins) Verdict: Core excellence Rating: Four stars Rating:A satirical black comedy, Bad Apples is all the more mischievous for being played dead straight, above all by the superb Saoirse Ronan as a teacher at the end of her tether.The film is inspired by a Swedish novel and directed by a Swede, Jonatan Etzler, but he has set it in a West-of-England primary school where Maria (Ronan) feels that teaching is her vocation but doesn’t have a clue how to deal with the unruly Danny (Eddie Waller). He is a damaged, angry 11-year-old whose insolence and disobedience are disrupting every lesson. Her pleas for Danny to be removed are disregarded. ‘Handling the behaviour of difficult children is your job,’ the head tells her, bluntly.At the start, Maria is supervising a class trip to a local cider factory. Thousands of apples are being shunted through the cider-making process but making the journey with them is a single shoe, a trainer that Danny has chucked into the works. It’s a peculiar, arresting spectacle, beautifully choreographed. A satirical black comedy, Bad Apples is all the more mischievous for being played dead straight, above all by the superb Saoirse Ronan as a teacher at the end of her tetherSoon, Danny has transgressed further by pushing the class swot, Pauline (Nia Brown), down the stairs. Maria appeals to the boy’s father but finds that he too is powerless to deal with Danny’s mood swings.A chain of misadventures then ends up with Maria locking up Danny in her basement, a somewhat improvised exclusion strategy that has two striking consequences: at school, Maria comes into her own with manifest benefits for the kids, while in the basement she is able to give Danny the focused attention he desperately needs. Yes, the police are leading a hunt for a missing child, but he’s safe and finally learning stuff.That this far-fetched situation unfolds almost plausibly owes much to Ronan, but also to young Waller, marking his screen-acting debut with a powerful, tremendously natural performance. Brown is similarly fine as Pauline, whose crush on ‘Miss’ ends up unravelling in spectacular fashion. The film is inspired by a Swedish novel and directed by a Swede, Jonatan Etzler, but he has set it in a West-of-England primary school where Maria (Ronan) feels that teaching is her vocation but doesn’t have a clue how to deal with the unruly Danny (Eddie Waller)Bad Apples strains more and more credulity the longer it goes on, but never to snapping point, and tackles the nightmare of child abduction in a boldly subversive manner, which not everyone will find palatable. But I enjoyed it enormously and suspect that plenty of teachers will too, while perhaps also thinking: if only.Shaun The Sheep: The Beast Of Mossy Bottom (U, 80mins)Verdict: Sets a high baaRating: Five starsRating:As for a rather more overt and indeed ovine comedy, Shaun the Sheep is back, leading his flock on yet another improbably nutty escapade, brilliantly rendered in stop-motion clay animation.The third movie in the series, Shaun The Sheep: The Beast Of Mossy Bottom is an exuberant horror-film pastiche in which Shaun himself takes on the mantle of the mad scientist, developing a rapid-growth serum with which he intends to produce pumpkins for Halloween. Unfortunately, the Farmer mistakes it for hair restorer and turns into a shaggy orange yeti, rampaging round mainly because he can’t see where he’s going.As always with Aardman films, every frame is calculated to appeal to children or grown-ups or both. There’s the hilarious sight of the Farmer’s loyal sheepdog, Bitzer, trotting out of his kennel to solemnly dispose of his own poo bag. And I adored a playful reference, if you can imagine such a thing, to the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho. The screeching string music, designed by Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann to evoke violent stabbing, here turns out to be merely the sound of a sheep flossing its teeth.Resident Evil (15, 90mins)Verdict: Monstrously silly Raing: 3 stars Rating:The horror in Resident Evil is almost as silly, I think intentionally although it’s hard to be sure with this franchise based on a Japanese video game. This is the eighth movie in the series, and if you interpret it as a cheeky allegory of the Covid pandemic then it’s kind of fun.Bryan (Austin Abrams) is a courier, who late one snowy night is rushing an organ to Raccoon City hospital when a woman staggers in front of his car. This unleashes a right carry-on in which Bryan must see off a multitude of virus-infected humans, metamorphosed into alarming monsters. It’s beyond daft, but Abrams is engaging company and it’s all over in 90 minutes – the same length as a Premier League football match and in some respects less horrific.