Pick of the week
Will & Harper
Any exploration of transgender life on screen is to be welcomed, and Josh Greenbaum’s documentary is an affecting example. Actor Will Ferrell and his old friend Harper Steele – a former writer at Saturday Night Live who recently came out as a trans woman – go on a cross-country road trip to reassess their relationship in light of her news. Both are witty and candid, which makes them terrific company on their drive from New York to California, visiting small-town diners and “redneck” bars as Harper works out where she now fits in society. Of course, with a Hollywood star and film crew in tow, hers is not an entirely universal experience, but there are valuable lessons here for all.
Friday 27 September, Netflix
***
The Big Sleep
Howard Hawks’s 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s notoriously involved crime thriller is a seductive, razor-sharp ride. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are quick-witted and flirtatious as private eye Philip Marlowe and Vivian, the elder, slightly less disreputable daughter of his wealthy client’s two children. Marlowe’s investigation into a blackmail threat against the younger sister Carmen (Martha Vickers) leads him down a rabbit hole of scandal, violence and murder, driven on by his own battered moral compass.
Saturday 21 September, 1.10pm, BBC Two
***
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
For their final film as a troupe, the comedy group returned to their sketch roots for a (very) loosely connected series of musings on humanity. As with their TV shows, it’s a hit-and-miss proposition, but when it works it is brilliantly dark and pointed, even misanthropic. The musical number Every Sperm Is Sacred skewers Catholic attitudes to contraception superbly, while the school sex education class pushes its concept to absurd conclusions. And for pure, gleeful repulsion, not much can top Mr Creosote’s visit to the restaurant. Wafer-thin mint, anyone?
Saturday 21 September, 10.35pm, ITV4
***
Official Competition
Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s film-making satire explores the clash between collaboration and solipsism that is inevitable when a feted director and two top actors meet. Penélope Cruz is the director, Lola, who casts theatre actor Ivan (Oscar Martínez) and film star Félix (Antonio Banderas) in her new work. The two are poles apart in their methods, but are equally vain and self-aggrandising, while Lola has an idiosyncratic approach to her craft. Cue relishable comic backbiting and an excess of thespy emoting, with Martínez and Banderas great sparring partners.
Tuesday 24 September, 9pm, Film4
***
Second Coming
Nadine Marshall’s benefits office worker Jackie discovers she is pregnant. But why is she reluctant to tell her husband Mark (Idris Elba) or son JJ (Kai Francis Lewis)? From that set-up, writer-director Debbie Tucker Green builds an intriguing narrative of a family unit slowly drifting apart. That something else is going on is hinted at by the film’s title and Jackie’s visions of cascades of water in her bathroom – but it’s a sly, evasive film, posing as a tale of domestic life but suggesting so much more.
Tuesday 24 September, 1.25am, Film4
***
One Life
On the eve of the second world war, young stockbroker Nicholas Winton (played by Johnny Flynn) goes to Prague to get involved in the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from the Nazis, who are about to invade Czechoslovakia. But he also has to battle British state resistance to get them all to the UK. This unlikely real-life hero gets his dues in James Hawes’s skilful tearjerker, with the older Nicholas (Anthony Hopkins) regretting his failures in the Kindertransport, rather than celebrating the lives he helped save. That is, until Esther Rantzen hears about him …
Friday 27 September, 10am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Lola
Andrew Legge’s found-footage film is a gripping counterfactual drama and a brilliant editing and visual effects job, seamlessly splicing modern actors into footage from the 1930s and 40s. A cache of home-movie reels found in a Sussex country house tells a story from 1941, about bright young things Martha (Stefanie Martini) and her sister Thomasina (Emma Appleton), who has invented a machine that shows broadcasts from the future. Their predictions about German attacks change the course of the war, but the unintended consequences are far-reaching.
Friday 27 September, 11.15pm, Film4
