Pick of the week
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The pizza-loving, crime-fighting quartet get another movie reboot in an animated caper that leans heavily into the innovative sketchy style that Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse brought to the genre. It’s a sparky coming-of-age story in which the heavily armed green teens waste their time, and skills, shoplifting food and hiding out in New York’s sewers – but what they really want is to go to high school like normal kids. To accomplish this they need public recognition, which means taking on evil mutants led by Superfly (voiced by Ice Cube). The zippy, funny plot features copious pop culture references, vintage hip-hop on the soundtrack and a family-friendly lack of dead bodies.
Thursday 1 February, Paramount+
***
Calendar Girls
The true story of WI members and their wildly successful semi-nude calendar ticks all the boxes for a quality British comedy. There’s the clash of propriety and bawdiness, as a group of middle-aged women in a North Yorkshire village strip off for charity. There are meaty roles for the top cast, with Julie Walters and Helen Mirren fabulous as best mates Annie and Chris who lead the project. And there’s a big dollop of heart-tugging, as Annie grieves the death of her husband from leukaemia and thinks up a way to raise funds for the local hospital that cared for him.
Saturday 27 January, 4.15pm, Channel 5
***
The Lost City of Z
Percy Fawcett was one of a long line of explorers during Britain’s imperial age drawn to the world’s darker corners, several of whom faced tragic ends. In James Gray’s period adventure, Charlie Hunnam plays the career soldier with stiff upper lip intact but an innate humanity towards the peoples he encounters. This brings its reward on expeditions into the uncharted Amazon when he learns of a mysterious lost civilisation. His obsession never reaches the monomaniacal heights of a Herzog character, but there’s enough death and derring-do to engage. SW
Monday 29 January, 9pm, Great! Movies
***
God’s Own Country
Francis Lee’s mud-soaked rural love story is the film Brokeback Mountain could have been with a bit more conviction. Josh O’Connor plays Johnny, a sullen young man struggling to cope on his “shitehole” Yorkshire sheep farm with an elderly nan and a father who’s had a stroke. Then along comes Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), a Romanian hired for lambing season, whose patience and tenderness tease out Johnny’s dormant better nature. Amid the loneliness and nitty-gritty of the farmer’s lot, something beautiful emerges.
Tuesday 30 January, 1.50am, Film4
***
Went the Day Well?
A postmistress killing a man with a hatchet might seem like a horror spin-off from Mr Bates vs the Post Office, but Alberto Cavalcanti’s terrific 1942 propaganda film – from a story by Graham Greene – slyly subverts our expectations of the ever-so-ordinary denizens of an English village. When an army unit billeted in their area turn out to be German paratroopers preparing for a sea invasion, the local people, led by the women and children, fight back – and there’s nothing quaint about how they do it.
Wednesday 31 January, 11am, Film4
***
Saturday Night Fever
He’s a dancin’ man and he just can’t lose … John Travolta’s disco maestro Tony Manero has all the moves to make it out of Brooklyn, but the working-class Italian American community he’s been raised in – with its family pressures, religious dogma and gang violence – proves difficult to escape. The phenomenal songs from the Bee Gees and others, plus the extravagant clothes worn by the dancers, give the film vibrancy and period charm, but John Badham’s 1977 drama is just as interested in the messy, distasteful stuff of urban life, so much so that Tony ends up a very ambivalent hero.
Wednesday 31 January, 1.35am, Film4
***
Control
“I’ve no control any more.” The brief life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis was a troubled one, and Anton Corbijn’s stark black-and-white biopic – based on his widow Debbie’s book – is more intrigued by his personal life than the fertile Manchester music scene that gave birth to his influential band. Sam Riley gives an uncanny impression of Curtis, tormented by his epilepsy, a too-young marriage to Debbie (Samantha Morton, exceptional as ever) and his love for another woman, Alexandra Maria Lara’s Annik.
Thursday 1 February, 6am, Sky Cinema Greats
