Pick of the week
His Three Daughters
In Azazel Jacobs’s charged drama, three sisters gather at their father’s New York flat to watch over him as he lies dying. Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who lives there, spends her time betting on sports and smoking weed, which sets off prickly elder sister Katie (Carrie Coon) and puts Elizabeth Olsen’s more pacific Christina into the role of peacemaker. With the camera rarely leaving the apartment’s few rooms, it’s quite a theatrical setup – a hothouse of delayed grief, sibling resentment and fragile coping strategies. So it’s down to the three very different actors to power the film, and they do so magnificently, their characters’ shifting emotions touching and truthful.
Friday 20 September, Netflix
***
Peterloo
The 1819 massacre in Manchester that inspired the founding of this very newspaper gets the Mike Leigh treatment. A righteously angry drama, it encompasses all levels of society – from the Prince Regent (Tim McInnerny) to a working-class family of textile labourers under matriarch Maxine Peake. Punctuated by energising scenes of leftwing political debate and establishment intolerance, it traces the weeks leading up to the rally demanding electoral reform, which suffered an unprovoked, fatal attack from the yeoman militia and army.
Sunday 15 September, 11.55pm, Channel 4
***
The King’s Speech
The Americans love a good royal story, and Tom Hooper’s 2010 film duly bagged four Oscars. It’s a skilful, rousing drama, wrapping the true tale of the future George VI (Colin Firth) and his struggles with a stammer inside the wider strife of the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, and the impending second world war. Geoffrey Rush is his usual scene-stealing self as Lionel Logue, the unconventional Australian speech therapist who trains “Bertie” up to broadcast quality, with Helena Bonham Carter a jolly sort as Queen Elizabeth.
Saturday 14 September, 8pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
The Stranger
A somewhat forgotten entry in the history of Orson Welles, his 1946 film noir has lots going for it. A Nazi war criminal (played, naturally, by Welles) hides out as a teacher in a small Connecticut town but investigator Edward G Robinson is on his tail. The edgy cat-and-mouse plot would have been newsworthy at the time, especially as it uses actual footage of concentration camps. And there are plenty of trademark Welles touches, from extended, deep-focus shots to the inventive play of light and dark. Danger lurks in every shadow.
Sunday 15 September, 9.25am, Talking Pictures TV
***
Once Upon a Time in China
This 1991 Hong Kong period drama kicked off a series of popular films that mix widescreen action with late 19th-century Chinese history to entertaining effect. Rising film star Jet Li plays Wong Fei-hung, a real-life martial arts master caught in the middle of geopolitical manoeuvrings between his nation and the encroaching powers of Britain and the US. But the power plays are less interesting than the wood-splintering fight scenes – the one with ladders is a doozy.
Monday 16 September, 12.55pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Groundhog Day
Apologies if you’ve read this before … Harold Ramis’s classic 1993 comedy sticks Bill Murray’s misanthropic weather presenter in a time loop, forcing him to repeat the same day in the “hick” town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But it also gives him the chance to indulge the worst aspects of his personality, consequence-free. These bits are Murray at his cynical best as he tries out different scenarios for the lol factor (though he can’t avoid waking up to Sonny and Cher on the radio), so his inevitable Scrooge-like redemption comes as a slight letdown.
Wednesday 18 September, 6.20am, 1.55pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Easy A
Watching this early Emma Stone comedy, a present-day riposte to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s moral novel The Scarlet Letter, it feels inevitable that she would become a big name. As 17-year-old Olive, who becomes the subject of fake news at school that she’s lost her virginity, Stone carries the entire movie – smart and witty but convincingly wounded as she tries to manipulate the gossip mill to her advantage. Of a great supporting cast, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are terrific as the parents we would surely all want – effortlessly funny but endearingly sympathetic.
Thursday 19 September, 9pm, BBC Three
