It’s been nominated for five Oscars, it’s the only film in the running this year where both leads have a chance of collecting a golden statuette – it’s no surprise that The Theory Of Everything has proved to be a big draw at Royston’s Picture Palace this weekend.

Demand for tickets has been so strong that an extra showing was slotted into the schedule, so if you booked early to see a much-praised movie which has been nominated as Best Picture on top of the nods for Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones in the acting categories you can pat yourself on the back for your foresight.

Those other two Oscar nominations, by the way, are for original score and adapted screenplay, just so you know.

Redmayne has earned plaudits galore for his portrayal of noted scientist Stephen Hawking as his health is devastated by motor neurone disease, but the experts have also singled out Jones for her less eye-catching but still crucial performance as his wife Jane.

If you’re not able to get tickets to one of this weekend’s shows, then it’s time to plan ahead.

Next weekend you can catch a film which some say has been cruelly overlooked by the Oscars judges – Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, with Timothy Spall on standout form as Britain’s finest artist and a fascinating character as well as an undoubted genius. That’s showing on the evening of Friday, February 20.

It’s unlikely to be p-p-p-picking up anything on the Oscars podium but The Penguins Of Madagascar, showing at 3.30pm on Saturday, February 21, is an amiable animation that offers lots of family fun, and also showing next weekend is Testament Of Youth, the new film take on Vera Brittain’s landmark story of a woman growing up surrounded by the devastation of the First World War.

Alicia Vikander takes the lead and it’s a handsome if slightly heavy-handed take on a familiar tale, nudged into big screen prominence by the commemorations of the centenary of the start of that cataclysmic conflict.

You can catch it on the Saturday evening at 7.30pm and again on Sunday afternoon at 5pm.

Visit www.roystonpicturepalace.org.uk to reserve tickets for all shows.

On the multiplex front, the attention is firmly fixed on the film version of the naff and naughty erotic bestseller Fifty Shades Of Grey, which would be a bold choice of Valentine’s Day date movie.

Much more rewarding, and nothing to do with kinky sex, is Love Is Strange, in which Alfred Molina and John Lithgow play a gay married couple forced apart by economic crisis and struggling to come to terms with their lot.