Pick of the week
Pinocchio
Later this year, Guillermo del Toro will release his version of the classic nosy tale, but Disney has beaten him to the punch with their own remake. With the film’s mingling of live action and animation, Robert Zemeckis is a safe pair of hands as director, having previous with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Inevitably, his old mucker Tom Hanks stars as Geppetto, the carpenter who builds a wooden puppet (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) that is brought to life but dreams of being a real boy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Pinocchio’s insect conscience Jiminy Cricket, while Cynthia Erivo’s Blue Fairy puts her spin on When You Wish Upon a Star and Keegan-Michael Key plays a menacing fox. Simon Wardell
Thursday, Disney+
***
Color Out of Space
Richard Stanley’s psychedelic sci-fi fuses an HP Lovecraft story with classic body horror Society – and then throws Nicolas Cage into the mix to guarantee chaos. He plays an alpaca farmer whose life, and those of his wife and two teenage kids, becomes increasingly nightmarish after a mysterious, glowing meteorite crashes in his garden. Its sickly magenta-purple emanations infect the land, water, flora and fauna, leading to visions, violence and insanity. Cage is a loose cannon but he fits perfectly in a gloriously hallucinatory experience. SW
Saturday, 9pm, AMC
***
The Incredibles
Pixar’s affectionate ode to the superhero comic and James Bond movies gives its heroic couple probably the hardest mission of their lives: childcare. After the “supers” are forced to retire, Mr Incredible and Elastigirl – AKA Bob and Helen Parr – settle down into a humdrum life of office work, wrangling three kids and trying not to use their powers to fight crime. It can’t last, of course, and Brad Bird’s animated adventure has great fun with their faltering return to action, amid secret lairs and island hideouts Bond designer Ken Adam would have been proud of. SW
Sunday, 3.50pm, BBC One
***
Eastern Promises
Before Peaky Blinders, writer Steven Knight had already delved into a criminal empire – that of the Russian mafia in the UK – in David Cronenberg’s murky tale of crime and morality. Viggo Mortensen plays it cool as Nikolai, the London-based henchman to the impulsive Kirill (Vincent Cassel), heir of mobster Semyon (a quietly dangerous Armin Mueller-Stahl). After a 14-year-old trafficked sex worker dies in childbirth, midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) finds herself in Nikolai’s orbit, where the codes of loyalty and violence will be familiar to fans of the Brummie gang. SW
Tuesday, 11.15pm, BBC Two
***
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Photograph: Miramax/Allstar
For his 2002 debut as a director, George Clooney picked a doozy of a story – the memoir of American TV gameshow producer Chuck Barris. The creator of The Gong Show and The Dating Game (AKA Blind Date), Barris was also, he claims, a CIA assassin in his spare time. It’s a fascinating caper, lovingly shot in styles that change with the decades (faded Technicolor for the 60s; hard-edged noir for the 70s) and with a wholehearted Sam Rockwell as the off-kilter Barris. SW
Tuesday, 12.40am, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Thor: Love and Thunder
Comedy is to the fore again in the latest outing for Chris Hemsworth’s winningly obtuse Norse god. This makes for an interesting clash of styles with his arch foe, Gorr the God Butcher, played by Christian Bale. Gorr is a sombre, sympathetic figure, who sets out to take revenge on the deities who let his daughter die. The dynamic is further complicated by the return of Thor’s ex, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). She has terminal cancer but gets respite via Thor’s hammer, becoming Mighty Thor and stealing his thunder, in Taika Waititi’s scattergun but still enjoyable fantasy adventure. SW
Thursday, Disney+
***
Cold Mountain
Anthony Minghella nailed the kind of epic drama that used to be common Hollywood currency with this 2003 historical romance. Jude Law plays Inman, a Confederate soldier who deserts to return to his true love, Ada (Nicole Kidman), in North Carolina’s Appalachians. A well-off preacher’s daughter, Ada struggles to work her farm alone after her father’s death, until the no-nonsense Ruby (a boisterous, Oscar-winning Renée Zellweger) turns up to set her right. A film of sumptuous landscapes and sweeping emotions, with distinct Homeric overtones. SW
Friday, 8pm, Sky Cinema Greats
