Pick of the week
Nyad
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who made the exhilarating climbing documentary Free Solo, have produced another tale of extreme single-mindedness. Veteran LA sportscaster Diana Nyad was known in her youth for her long-distance swims, including a failed attempt to cross from Cuba to Key West when she was 28. Now, having just turned 60, she takes it upon herself to try the 103-mile Straits of Florida swim again. This absorbing fact-based drama centres on a magnetic Annette Bening as Diana. Obstinate and self-assured, she is an almost comically driven character, with even the likes of best friend Bonnie (a nicely underplaying Jodie Foster) mere collateral in her need to succeed.
Friday 3 November, Netflix
***
Pain Hustlers
Takedowns of Big Pharma and its role in opioid addiction are all the rage (Painkiller, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed). This new tale “inspired by real events” boldly offers a Wolf of Wall Street comedy-of-excess angle, as Emily Blunt’s jobless single mom Liza discovers a talent for pushing a fentanyl-based cancer drug to doctors when hired by Chris Evans’s pushy sales rep. As the cash rolls in, however, the firm’s owner (Andy García) stretches the legality of the operation and Liza begins to have qualms, with Blunt making the most of her switch from partying to pitying.
Out now, Netflix
***
Under the Skin
With Jonathan Glazer’s latest, the Cannes-garlanded The Zone of Interest, still without a UK release date, we’ll have to make do with his exceptional 2013 sci-fi chiller. It’s a cool, compelling story featuring a blank-faced Scarlett Johansson as an alien who drives around Glasgow in a white van, picking up men then doing murkily horrific things to them. Mica Levi’s on-edge score and the film’s documentary feel (are they real people she’s chatting up?) add to the unease, as her discovery of empathy puts her mysterious mission in jeopardy.
Saturday 28 October, 1.40am, Film4
***
Infinity Pool
Alexander Skarsgård subverts his virile screen persona in this warped horror from Brandon Cronenberg, which picks away at the morality of tourism. He plays James, a failed writer on holiday with his rich wife in an unnamed, corrupt country. When he drunkenly runs over and kills a local man, he pays for a clone of himself, which is then executed in his stead. Egged on by a group of thrill-seeking western tourists, including the seductive Gabi (Mia Goth), the weak-willed James falls into a destructive cycle of orgiastic crime and clone death.
Sunday 29 October, 10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Originally shot and screened live for an audience in Leith Theatre, this black-and-white National Theatre of Scotland production relocates Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic horror novel to his home city of Edinburgh. Director and co-writer Hope Dickson Leach focuses more on the historical and political landscape than the body-morphing, with the animalistic Hyde representing “respectable” Victorian society’s fears of the working class it is trampling underfoot in the drive for profit.
Monday 30 October, 9pm, Sky Arts
***
The Nest
The long-awaited latest from Martha Marcy May Marlene’s Sean Durkin is an 80s-set drama of hubris, with a similar focus on a familial set-up that proves to be anything but homely. Jude Law is superbly greasy as cocky commodities broker Rory, who returns to the UK with his American wife Allison (Carrie Coon) and two kids. He sells her his dream of a country house, her own riding school and his inevitable success in the City – but he’s a self-made man for whom elaboration and fabrication come far too easily. A sly exposé of the emptiness of Thatcherite aspiration.
Friday 3 November, 11.05pm, BBC Two
***
Mean Streets
It is difficult to believe Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough film is 50 years old. It was the New York director’s first foray into the mafia world, which he has been mining fruitfully ever since, and is set in the Little Italy of his childhood, giving it a lived-in authenticity. Harvey Keitel is low-level criminal Charlie, while Robert De Niro burns up the screen as his feckless, volatile childhood friend Johnny Boy. Charlie tries to look out for Johnny, inspired by residual loyalty, but there’s no helping some people. A vivid, heartfelt portrayal of urban life.
Friday 3 November, 11.10pm, Film4
