GODNESS, we’re spoilt for choice this week. There’s Glenda Jackson’s final screen appearance, possibly Michael Caine’s too, and a return to the demonic world of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Take your pick or see them both. It’s one heck of a double bill.

Just three months have elapsed since the sad passing of Glenda Jackson. A force in both acting and politics, the Oscar winning MP will long be remembered.

It was a rare role that peaked Jackson’s interest in her final years. There was a bit part in 2021’s Mothering Sunday, from French director Eva Husson. A further two years before that, Jackson bowed out of television with the BAFTA winning BBC miniseries Elizabeth is Missing.

For her final folly on the silver screen, not that such was the intention, Jackson plays Irene, the wife of Michael Caine’s WWI veteran Bernard Jordan. As based on the true events of June 2014, The Great Escaper depicts the break out of his nursing home that Bernard staged in order to attend the 70th anniversary of D-Day in France.

It’s a funny and moving film, this. Oliver Parker directs - his first feature since 2018’s Swimming with Men - with a script from Made in Dagenham’s William Ivory. Having turned 90 back in March, Caine too has intimated the film may be his last. If that be the case, it’s a fine farewell for two acting greats and a grand escape from an industry they’ve long served well.

Also this week, a revival for The Exorcist. There have been four follow ups to Friedkin’s original masterpiece since 1973, two sequels and two prequels. As directed by David Gordon Green, Believer ignores all but the first. Wise move.

Believer is the first in the series to see original star Ellen Burstyn return as Chris MacNeil, mother of the formerly possessed Regan (Linda Blair). It’s a casting coup akin to the return of Jamie Lee Curtis to the Gordon Green’s other notable revival of recent years: Halloween.

When the daughters of both Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Miranda (Jennifer Nettles) succumb to the possession of Pazuzu, the pair turn to Chris as the one living woman who has experienced his evil and survived.

Gordon Green did the unthinkable in directing a legitimately worthy follow up to Halloween five years ago. Hopes are high.