5 movies and TV shows to watch while cursing the school holidays

There are too many eight-year-olds around. Term needs to start again. Pop into a shop? Full of eight-year-olds. Go into the park? Full of eight-year-olds. Head to a secret location in the middle of an impenetrable forest, known only to you? Stephanie’s having her birthday party there. Hey kids, you know what's great? Education. Go back to school.

While you small idiots figure that out, might as well pop something on…

Zoey Deutch stars in this tale of a lie that snowballs wildly out of proportion. A bit of Photoshopped Instagram bullshit about a glamorous holiday abroad coincides with a terrorist attack, and an initially reasonably harmless lie becomes something else entirely. A darkly funny look at the lengths people will go to for online approval and the addictive rush of Likes, while never entirely siding with the increasingly unjustifiable machinations of the central character, it’ll have you questioning how far you’d go to avoid owning up to something terrible.

Available now on Disney+.

You know how people have been clamouring for years for a movie about Superman’s dog Krypto and Ace the Bat-Hound? No? No, they haven’t really, have they? Nevertheless, we have one. This is the wold we live in. And it’s fun, marking about the tenth project for the double-act of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. (A lot of the success of their umpteen screen pairings is that – get this – one of them is very big and one of them is quite small, so they’re really taking a risk doing an animated one, in that “they aren’t really, though, are they?” kind of way.) Animated animal slapstick, a fun supporting voice cast – great choice for Batman – and some fun visual touches ensue. It’s a funny animal cartoon, you know?

In cinemas now.

For anyone who spent too much time on the internet around 2010, the name Hunter Moore, and his website IsAnyoneUp, will spark a shudder of recognition. The website was largely dedicated to people sharing nude photos of former partners – revenge porn before revenge porn had a name – and was an unspeakably grim thing in basically every way. Lives were ruined, reputations and relationships destroyed, all to the apparent glee of Moore, an absolute piece of shit. This documentary, from the makers of Don’t Fuck With Cats, is an unpleasant look back at a deeply odd time on the internet, and knowing how it ends (spoiler alert: prison) doesn’t take away from the sheer nastiness of it all and the casual cruelty of so many people involved.

Available now on Netflix.

The second series of the ridiculously over-the-top, sweary as anything historical kinda-drama is here. It’s 18th century Russia, but a bit more fabulous costume-wise and with a lot more C-bombs flung around. Princess Catherine (Elle Fanning) has failed in her attempt to overthrow her husband, emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult), a ruler in equal parts useless and terrifying, governed by impulse and whatever the classy historical term for ‘a perma-boner’ is. Fanning and Hoult are fantastic, the script is laden with elegant swearing and cutting one-liners and dear god, the food looks fucking incredible.

Available now on All 4.

You wait ages for a “hey, aren’t people on the internet dreadful?” project and three come along at once. This BBC doc looks at Caroline Calloway (who also has a cameo in Not Okay), the infamous phoney Instagram influencer who attempted to turn fake online fame into cold hard cash by teaching wannabe-influencers her methods, with legendarily disastrous results. Maybe we should just, like, turn the internet off for a bit. Turn it off and go back to phone calls and Encarta. Glorious times.

Available now on BBC iPlayer.

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