TV & Satellite Week – 03 August 2019

Films day-by-day

The Big Lebowski

TCM HD, 9pm/TCM+1, 10pm 4

Sex OOO Violence OOO Language OOO

This goofy comedy from film-making siblings Joel and Ethan Coen is a

gloriously entertaining mess. The film is almost indescribably complicated

• suffice it to say that Jeff Bridges plays a perpetually stoned layabout who
  gets mistaken for a crime lord – but it is populated by a colourful roster of

dropouts and lunatics, played by John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne

Moore et al. Most memorable, though, is John Turturro as a repulsive tenpin

bowler with a taste for ghastly purple jumpsuits. 1998, 18, 117MIN

CRIME COMEDY

Friday 9 August

ROMANTIC DRAMA

The Bridges of

Madison County

Paramount HD, 9pm 4

Sex OOO Violence OOO Language OOO

Actor-director Clint Eastwood has to be

commended for managing to transform

author Robert James Waller’s cringingly

sentimental romantic novella into a

halfway decent movie. Much of the film’s

charm is down to the performances of

Eastwood as a National Geographic

photographer on assignment in Iowa

and Meryl Streep as the lonely housewife

with whom he has a fleeting but all-

consuming love affair. 1995, 12, 130MIN

HORROR

The Possession

of Hannah Grace

Sky Sci-Fi & Horror HD, 11.15pm 3

Sex OOO Violence OOO Language OOO

Shay Mitchell’s jittery ex-cop takes a job

working the graveyard shift at a Boston

hospital morgue. Her first night sees

delivery of the mutilated corpse of a

teenage girl (played by contortionist-

dancer Kirby Johnson) – a charred,

hacked and twisted cadaver that

somehow has the power to heal itself.

This supernatural horror film overcomes

its rote script to create some genuinely

unnerving chills. 2018, 15, 86MIN

CRIME DRAMA

A Most Violent Year

BBC2 HD, 11.35pm 5

Sex OOO Violence OOO Language OOO

Writer-director JC Chandor follows up

the financial thriller Margin Call and the

survival drama All Is Lost, with a superb

crime drama set in 1981 New York. Oscar

Isaac is excellent as a Hispanic immigrant

businessman striving to build up his

fuel-oil company and keep his integrity in

a murky world. There is less violence than

you would expect, given the film’s title,

but the scenes of moral suspense prove

just as breathtaking as the episodes of

physical jeopardy. 2014, 15, 125MIN

ALSO ON FRIDAY

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Sky Premiere HD, 12.10pm 4

Sling your web. See review, page 18.

Zoolander

Sky Comedy HD, 6.20pm 4

Ben Stiller is always in fashion.

Tropic Thunder

Sky Greats HD, 8pm 4

This is war. No, really...

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing...

Sky Thriller HD, 9pm 5

Frances McDormand fights on in Missouri.

Hot Shots!

Comedy Central HD, 11.25pm 4

Take things higher with Charlie Sheen.

John and Jeff were

just waiting for the

canned laughter

ROMANTIC DRAMA

Gloria Bell

Available from Monday 4

Sex OOO Violence OOO Language OOO

Julianne Moore is on glorious form as a

fifty-something divorcée looking for love on

the retro dance floors of Los Angeles in Chilean

director Sebastián Lelio’s classy Hollywood

remake of his own award-winning 2013 film.

Brimming with compassion for its resilient

heroine, the movie also boasts some stonking

late-1970s and early-1980s disco tunes and

power ballads. 2018, 15, 102MIN

PREM

IERE

ON-DEMAND HIGHLIGHTS

Would Julianne

find someone to

ring her bell?

The pick of the

week’s films on

Sky, Virgin &

other platforms

Alita: Battle Angel

4

James Cameron (producer and

co-writer) and Robert Rodriguez

(director) team up for a visually

spectacular sci-fi adventure

based on a 1990s Japanese

manga series. Rosa Salazar plays

the story’s cyborg heroine, an

amnesiac teenager put together

by Christoph Waltz’s robotics

expert. Get ready for hyper-

kinetic fight scenes and a thrilling

Rollerball-style sport. 12, 122MIN

Ben Is Back

4

Exposing a side of herself we

rarely see on screen, Julia

Roberts is fiercely good in this

compelling drama. She plays a

mother whose drug-addict son

Ben (Lucas Hedges) turns up for

Christmas. Over the coming

hours, though, the troubled Ben

puts his whole family through

the wringer. Writer-director

Peter Hedges (father of Lucas)

puts us through the emotional

wringer, too. 15, 103MIN

Capernaum

4

Lebanese director Nadine

Labaki’s searing drama tells the

story of a scrappy, resourceful

12-year-old street child (Zain

Al Rafeea) as he struggles to

survive amid the slums of Beirut,

eventually suing his own uncaring

parents for bringing him into the

world. The film is undoubtedly a

tough watch, but one that blazes

with humanity and compassion.

Subtitled. 15, 126MIN

Domino

1

PREMIERE (Available from Mon)

Veteran auteur Brian De Palma

has truly lost the plot with this

shockingly bad Euro thriller,

which sends Nikolaj Coster-

Waldau’s Danish cop in pursuit of

a terrorist who is secretly being

manipulated by a shifty CIA agent

(Guy Pearce). The slack script

fails to work up any tension or

excitement, underlining how far

De Palma has fallen. 18, 86MIN

Dumbo

3

Tim Burton takes the helm of this

live-action remake of the Disney

animated tale of the tiny elephant

with more than jumbo-size ears.

Colin Farrell stars as a former

trick rider, entrusted by Danny

DeVito’s circus owner with the

care of the misfit baby elephant.

Like most of Disney’s recent

live-action makeovers of its

animated classics, this one

struggles to recapture the charm

of the original film. PG, 111MIN

Eaten by Lions

3

Orphaned after their parents fell

victim to the tragic mishap of the

title, half-brothers Omar

(Antonio Aakeel) and Pete (Jack

Carroll) set off from Bradford to

Blackpool years later on a

bumbling mission to find Omar’s

biological father in this quirky,

multicultural British comedy.

The film is a bit naff around the

edges, but it is also good-

hearted and amusing. 12, 95MIN

Gloria Bell

4

PREMIERE (Available from Mon)

See review, above. 15, 102MIN

Happy As Lazzaro

4

In a corner of rural Italy, the local

Marchesa exploits the peasants

who harvest tobacco on her land,

while they in turn take advantage

of a guileless, open-hearted

young man, Lazzaro (Adriano

Tardiolo). Writer-director Alice

Rohrwacher takes this beguiling

magic-realist fable in directions

you cannot predict, creating a

striking parable of innocence and

greed. Subtitled. 12, 127MIN

Missing Link

3

PREMIERE (Available from Mon)

A good-humoured comedy

adventure from Laika, the

stop-motion animation studio

behind Coraline, The Boxtrolls

and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Hugh Jackman voices a doughty

19th-century explorer who is on

the hunt for a legendary beast in

America’s Pacific Northwest, with

Zach Galifianakis as the very

curious, bigfoot-like creature he

finds and Zoe Saldana proving a

worthy foil as a fearless fellow

adventurer. PG, 95MIN

Us

4

Get Out director Jordan Peele

pushes more buttons with a

psychological chiller in which a

holidaying family face off against

uncanny doppelgängers of

themselves. Lupita Nyong’o

and Winston Duke play both

the understandably spooked

parents and their scary doubles,

while Elisabeth Moss and Tim

Heidecker co-star as their

similarly ill-fated friends and

neighbours. 15, 116MIN

The White Crow

4

PREMIERE (Available from Mon)

Ralph Fiennes direct a gripping

biopic, which recreates the

moment when young Russian

ballet star Rudolf Nureyev

defected to the West during the

Kirov Ballet’s 1961 visit to Paris.

Fiennes also co-stars as

Nureyev’s dance instructor back

in St Petersburg, but he cedes

centre stage to dancer Oleg

Ivenko, who captures Nureyev’s

fierce will and fiery temperament

■ Full listings start on p93 in the lead. 12, 127MIN