Pick of the week
Toy Story 5
Not particularly hot off the production line – Toy Story 4 was seven years ago – Woody, Buzz and their boxful of plastic friends are back, but WALL-E director Andrew Stanton maintains the franchise’s beguiling focus on the joys and pitfalls of childhood. With the retired Woody (Tom Hanks) absent, Joan Cusack’s Jessie is the new sheriff in town/bedroom. But she faces an existential threat when her owner, Bonnie, ostracised by her tech-savvy peers, gets a tablet – the superior Lilypad “Lilly” (Greta Lee) – and loses all interest in play. While having a dig at society’s digital obsessions, it’s also a nostalgic eulogy to a world where pure imagination and the capacity to be silly are cherished.
Wednesday 23 September, Disney+
***
Hamlet
There is little Riz Ahmed can’t turn his hand to, so it’s no surprise that he gives a bravura performance as Shakespeare’s tragic hero in Aneil Karia’s modern-day adaptation. The royal Danes are now a wealthy British Hindu family of property developers, but the film retains the Bard’s language while cutting down the text to focus exclusively on Hamlet’s trauma. It’s a bold move that largely pays off, as we follow the heir to the firm as he descends into angst, rage and revenge after discovering his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) murdered his father.
Saturday 19 September, 10.05am, 6pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Wasteman
The brutal realities of prison life in Britain are dissected in Cal McMau’s claustrophobic, sweatily tense drama. David Jonsson, soon to be the next Black Panther, plays a very different hero here: Taylor, a drug addict incarcerated for manslaughter. He’s soon to be eligible for parole so he’s trying to keep his head down. Unfortunately, his new cellmate, Dee (a menacing Tom Blyth), will do anything to take over the jail’s drug trade from Paul (Alex Hassell, definitely not in Rivals mode) and forces the desperate Taylor to assist him.
Sunday 20 September, Netflix
***
How to Live on Earth
Benedict Cumberbatch’s measured tones introduce “the world’s greatest how-to video” – Fredi Devas’s suggestion box of solutions to the climate crisis. The documentary sweeps across the globe from China to Chad, Brazil to Singapore, with chapters focusing on ways to protect and respect nature, create sustainable agriculture, even put a monetary value on biodiversity. It’s all tentatively optimistic despite the devastation on display, and the praiseworthy activists and scientists profiled offer at least some hope for the future.
Sunday 20 September, YouTube
***
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
This mockumentary is a sequel to a 2007 Canadian web series and 2017 Vice TV sitcom you probably haven’t heard of. But don’t let that get in the way of enjoying a gloriously silly Back to the Future rip-off. Endearingly inept Toronto musicians Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (playing themselves) decide to skydive from the CN Tower to promote a gig they haven’t even secured. But an inadvertent trip in a time-travelling RV throws their plan into comic chaos.
Sunday 20 September, 6.45am, 6.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
The Love Hypothesis
Weirdly, the bestselling novel on which Claire Scanlon’s campus romance is based started life as Star Wars fan fiction about Rey and Kylo Ren. Not that you’d know it, save for the involvement in this film of Tom Bateman, Daisy Ridley’s husband who stars as Adam, AKA “Dr Evil”, a loathed Stanford biology lecturer. He is persuaded by doctoral student Olive (Lili Reinhart) to pose as her boyfriend, so her best pal, Anh (Rachel Marsh), will date a boy Anh thinks Olive still fancies. In return, he will look more committed to the university and have his funding renewed. Love among the lab coats ensues.
Wednesday 23 September, Prime Video
***
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
For the second instalment of the post-pandemic horror trilogy, Nia DaCosta takes the directorial reins from Danny Boyle for a poignant yet surprisingly funny tale, which largely shuns the series’ rabid terror in favour of pathos and a tiny sliver of hope. Teenager Spike (Alfie Williams) has been captured by Jack O’Connell’s disturbed Satanic cult leader Jimmy and his gang. Meanwhile, Dr Kelson (the inestimable Ralph Fiennes) develops a bizarrely moving relationship with an infected man, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry).
Friday 25 September, 9pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
