Sunflower GQ

The volcano signal is interesting because it neatly illustrates the power and reach of the remarkable Pacific event.

Hunga-Tonga produced the highest ash cloud ever recorded, sending rocky particles more than half way to space.

But the energy involved also shook the atmosphere, despatching so called Lamb waves in all directions.

These are energetic waves in the air that move at the speed of sound, along a path guided by the surface of the planet.

Babylon mixes fact, fiction, and lore with a head-spinning number of historical Easter eggs, making it both profoundly cine-literate and also incredibly dense with references. And while not all of it clicks entirely – it can be too unwieldy and OTT to really lock onto a central thesis much of the time – Babylon is also a film with a series of insightful, gorgeously-wrought, delightfully funny set pieces riffing on real historical issues. In particular, there's one where Nellie tries – and fails, repeatedly – to get a scene right in her first-ever talking picture. Even the wrong sole on a shoe can cause background noise with the primitive sound technology, so movement is suddenly restricted on camera in a way it never was in the silent era; and films can no longer be shot side by side on set, with a western shoot-out within spitting distance of a period romance. Much of this is absolutely correct to the difficulties of early sound tech, and there's a hilariously over-egged moment when the cameraman, locked in an insanely overheated sound-proof box, passes out from the temperature.

This joyous Pixar coming-of-age cartoon introduces a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) who transforms into a giant fluffy red panda whenever she gets stressed. Her fast-moving misadventures are rendered with all the expertise you would expect from Pixar, but Turning Red is more personal than the studio's other releases. From its multi-cultural urban setting to its positivity about being a proudly nerdy teenage girl, everything in it seems to come straight from the heart of its director and co-writer, Domee Shi. It's just a shame that the film went straight to streaming, rather than getting the cinema release it deserved. (NB)

She Said is a film that demands you actively listen to the words, conversations and testimonies of female survivors. It's also about the power of women confiding in each other instead of staying silent, which is the subject of another film that has been making waves this autumn, Sarah Polley's Women Talking. Based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Miriam Toews, and set in 2010, the film centres on a closed-off, fictional colony of the Protestant Mennonite sect, where a group of women must grapple with their faith and the reality that their menfolk have been drugging and ra**ng them for years. Rage, fury, frustration, sorrow, humour, solidarity and empathy lace the varying perspectives of characters played by Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and Judith Ivey, who are tasked with debating and deciding what they must do to live in a community without fear. Polley, like Schrader, never shows us the violent assaults – purposely keeping the abusers in the periphery so there is never any doubt about the importance of women being at the centre of their own stories of survival.