Pick of the week
Aftersun
What an utterly lovely, delicately heartbreaking film Charlotte Wells has made. The mysteries of adulthood and the loss of innocence are all wrapped up in a summer holiday in Turkey taken by 11-year-old Sophie (a cheeky, adorable Frankie Corio) and her dad Calum – a superbly layered performance by Paul Mescal. Amid the lazy days by the hotel pool, all-inclusive buffets, boat trips and excursions to ancient ruins, Calum’s hidden melancholy surfaces. It’s mitigated by the tenderness and comfort of his relationship with his daughter, but there’s something gnawing at him we struggle to fathom, in a superbly made tale with all the warmth of a tightly held memory.
Sunday 11 February, 10pm, BBC Two
***
The Falling
Our cinematic introduction to the great Florence Pugh was in Carol Morley’s dreamlike, sensual 2014 work. She plays charismatic girls’ school pupil Abbie – an object of envy to her peers and teachers, even best friend Lydia (Maisie Williams). But when Abbie has a sudden and inexplicable seizure, it sets off a chain reaction of mass fits among the other students. Is it rebellion, collective grief or just overactive teen hormones? Edging towards folk horror, and with nods to Picnic at Hanging Rock and the dislocating films of Nicolas Roeg, it’s an unsettling experience.
Sunday 11 February, 11.35pm, BBC Two
***
Frost/Nixon
Adapted from Peter “The Crown” Morgan’s play, Ron Howard’s film tells the fascinating true story of the 1977 interview British talkshow host David Frost secured with the disgraced former US president Richard Nixon. Michael Sheen plays Frost as an ambitious, self-preening media operator desperate to become a success in the US again. Frank Langella is Nixon, bitter about his downfall and keen to rehabilitate himself. The battle of wits and wills between the performer and the politician makes for sparky drama.
Sunday 11 February, 5.55pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Past Lives
Celine Song’s wonderful, wistful movie asks the question: what if your first love was the greatest love of your life? That’s the doubt facing Nora (Greta Lee), who moved from South Korea to Canada when she was 12 and lost touch with the boy she’d got close to, Hae-sung (Teo Yoo). Twelve years later, they reconnect through a series of video calls – but without being able to meet in person, where can the relationship go? Song’s film sidesteps melodrama to ponder the sometimes painful weight of history on the present, and the decisions we make about who to love. SW
Thursday 15 February, Netflix
***
This Is Me … Now: A Love Story
As befits someone as practised in the acting world as the pop realm, Jennifer Lopez’s new album is accompanied by an ambitious feature film. Helmed by music video director Dave Myers, it combines tracks from This Is Me … Now with autobiographical drama and epic scenes of colourful, intricately choreographed fantasy. Cameos from her new spouse Ben Affleck, Post Malone, Sofia Vergara and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson give a flavour of the broad sweep of J-Lo’s interests.
Friday 16 February, Prime Video
***
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
There is no stopping Tom Cruise. The seventh instalment in the big bucks espionage series is largely identical to the previous six but is almost embarrassingly easy to like. With imaginative action sequences (the train scenes are vertiginous), extreme stuntwork, often by Cruise himself, desirable global locations (Paris, Rome, the Orient Express), convoluted plotting – he and his rogue agents basically fight the internet – plus new faces in Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff, it’s exhilarating business as usual for the Cruiser.
Friday 16 February, 11.15am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
The Thing
John Carpenter’s entertainingly gruesome 1982 horror remake has the alien that invades an Antarctic research station able to imitate any life form (rather than just being a lumbering man in a creature suit, as in its predecessor The Thing from Another World). Paranoia reigns as the staff don’t know who’s infected and who’s not – but Kurt Russell’s helicopter pilot MacReady is certain it isn’t him and tries to make a survival plan. Cold war-style “reds under the bed” fears mingle with Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None as the mutating ET picks the men off one by one.
Friday 16 February, 10.50pm, Film4
