Pick of the week
Bottoms
Anyone looking to see more of Ayo Edebiri after her Golden Globe and Emmy wins for The Bear would do well to start here. Unlike The Bear, which is billed as a comedy despite really being a drama, Bottoms is an out-and-out comedy about two high-school lesbians who attempt to set up a fight club to help them lose their virginity. Edebiri plays one, Rachel Sennott – who co-wrote the script – plays the other. The resulting film is exactly what you want from a high-school comedy. It’s a galloping, violent, horny and unhinged movie of the sort that used to be made around the time of Superbad, without ever losing its sense of smart modernity. Perhaps the best comedy released last year.
Friday 26 January, Prime Video
***
This Is Spinal Tap
If you’re nervous about the sequel (yes, one is coming, and it’ll feature cameos by Paul McCartney and Elton John), soothe yourself with this broadcast of the original. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer play a hapless British hard rock band slowly losing their marbles on tour in the US. But you knew that, because This Is Spinal Tap is one of the most celebrated comedies ever. Everyone will have their favourite moment, from Stonehenge to Saucy Jack. It has stood the test of time incredibly. Even if the sequel tanks, we’ll still have this.
Saturday 20 January, 1:45am, BBC Two
***
Train to Busan
Netflix’s recent data dump revealed the immense global popularity of South Korean output, so it makes sense that the streaming service would bring us the country’s all-time greatest horror film. Train to Busan is a zombie movie set on a high-speed train heading from Seoul to the titular seaside city. The beauty of this film is how compact it is. There is a train. The train is full of zombies. What do you do? A hurtling, propulsive, action-packed and genuinely terrifying film, Train to Busan is an absolute classic of the genre.
Tuesday 23 January, Netflix
***
The Founder
John Lee Hancock’s fast food biopic has all the hallmarks of Oscar bait, but the fact that it was roundly ignored on its release speaks to just how satisfyingly weird it is. Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, the man who turned McDonald’s into a megabrand, and for much of the film he’s presented as a typical American wide-eyed striver. But if you know anything about Kroc, you’ll know the trail of destruction he left by chasing his dreams. The Founder, then, is a film where the lead is a hero and villain at the same time. It’s a complex knot of a movie, and all the better for it. SH
Sunday 21 January, 5pm, AMC
***
No Hard Feelings
Photograph: Sony
On paper this is the last film you would expect Jennifer Lawrence to make. At this point, logic dictates that she should be chasing worthy awards bait. Instead, she signed up for this comedy about a woman hired by a worried couple to try to have sex with their nervous young son. What’s amazing is how well the film works, thanks to Lawrence’s committed performance. One scene, in which she suplexes a teenager on the beach, is as daring as anything she attempted in Mother.
Thursday 25 January, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
The Magnificent Ambersons
The story behind The Magnificent Ambersons is almost as good as the film itself. A year after the triumph of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles wrote, directed and starred in an even more ambitious project: an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel about a wealthy family living through the dawn of the automobile. However, fearing the film’s downbeat ending, the studio hastily reedited it, and a fire ensured that it could never be put back together according to Welles’s wishes. Incredibly, even in this brutalised condition, it remains a masterpiece – even if Welles was never quite the same again.
Thursday 25 January, 8:30pm, BBC Four
***
The Underdoggs
There is a Snoop Dogg cookbook. There are Snoop Dogg NFTs. You can go to a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine that has Snoop Dogg’s face on it. So it stands to reason that there is now a Snoop Dogg inspirational children’s sports comedy movie. In The Underdoggs, Dogg plays a former NFL player who, after a car crash, is forced to coach a youth football team as part of his community service. It’s The Longest Yard, but with children instead of prisoners and the man from the Just Eat adverts instead of Burt Reynolds. What could possibly go wrong?
Friday 26 January, Prime Video
