Pick of the week
Luther: The Fallen Sun
Idris Elba’s brooding TV detective gets a movie makeover in Jamie Payne’s expansive noir thriller. With little time for subplots, show creator Neil Cross dumps John Luther in prison, then quickly breaks him out so he can pursue a serial killer/criminal mastermind (played gleefully by Andy Serkis) in disgraced-cop-on-the-run mode. Reunited with his old Volvo and famous grey overcoat in a perpetually drizzly London, Luther and his old-school policing comes up against his target’s cyber expertise and Moriarty-like flair for a set-piece. A couple of fine Bond-like scenes show off the bigger budget, while Cynthia Erivo stars as the DCI on both their tails – and gives as good as she gets.
Friday 10 March, Netflix
No Country for Old Men
Joel and Ethan Coen’s neo-western, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, is surreptitiously profound. Josh Brolin plays a Texas welder who comes across a bag of cash from a drug deal gone wrong and decides to keep it. This error brings down on him the implacable wrath of Javier Bardem’s hitman, while Tommy Lee Jones’s tired old sheriff picks up the pieces. What starts as a crime thriller drifts into a meditation on the persistence of violence in America – and in men – from the wild west to the cross-border cartels of today.
Saturday 4 March, 8pm, Sky Cinema Oscars
Clemency
The messy moral business of state-sanctioned killing is the focus of this affecting drama from Chinonye Chukwu, director of recent biopic Till. Alfre Woodard is alternately febrile and enervated as Bernardine, the warden of a US prison with a death row, who is just about keeping it together despite insomnia and a marriage gone stale. Aldis Hodge is an intense presence as Anthony, a convicted cop killer who shifts between hope and despair as his execution date nears, while Richard Schiff’s worn-out lawyer Marty shows how the death penalty affects all concerned.
Sunday 5 March, 10pm, BBC Two
In the Bedroom
With Todd Field’s brilliant Tár up for six Academy Awards next week, it may be useful to remember that his 2001 drama got five nods – and won nothing. Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson play the parents of Nick Stahl’s student, who has started a relationship with Marisa Tomei’s separated wife and mother of two. However, their worries about his future are forgotten after tragedy strikes and grief leads them in unexpected directions. A fine film that echoes Raymond Carver’s tales of ordinary people on the edge.
Tuesday 7 March, 10.25pm, Sky Cinema Oscars
The Beach
Rumours of a secret Thai island paradise lead Leonardo DiCaprio’s backpacker Richard astray in Danny Boyle’s effervescent version of the Alex Garland novel. There are plenty of stunning vistas and beautiful, sun-kissed people – including Tilda Swinton’s commune leader – to enjoy, and a typically zeitgeisty soundtrack for them to party to. Richard’s inevitable fall from grace – less Lord of the Flies, more I’m a Celebrity – is less impressive but Boyle’s mastery of his craft means it’s never dull.
Tuesday 7 March, 10.40pm, BBC One
Amulet
Romola Garai’s debut as a feature writer-director is a far cry from her usual period drama roles. It’s an eerie horror in which Tomas (Alec Secareanu), an ex-soldier living on the London streets, is lured by Imelda Staunton’s nun into staying with Magda (Carla Juri) in her mouldy, creaky house. But there’s also Magda’s old mother, locked in the attic … The film’s off-kilter menace – from Tomas’s fevered memories of his time at a forest checkpoint to the meaty stew Magda serves up – is exquisitely manifested in a tale that twists the male urge to protect vulnerable women to fiendish ends.
Wednesday 8 March, 11.10pm, Film4
Room
Lead actor Brie Larson won this 2015 film’s only Oscar – and well deserved it was too. But plaudits should also go to director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Emma Donoghue (adapting her own novel) for making a story largely set in one small room so dramatically fulfilling. Larson plays Joy – abducted, locked up and subject to abuse by a man, “Old Nick”, for seven years. She now has a five-year-old son, Jack (the superb Jacob Tremblay), whom she tries to shield from the horror of their situation. Intimate by necessity, it’s heart-tugging, claustrophobic stuff.
Thursday 9 March, 12.10am, Film4
