Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[colinr0380]

Well, the over eager BBC4 continuity announcer managed the impressive feat of talking over the emotional climax of Marguerite, only stopping when the end credits started up!

[colinr0380]

See Me (short), late Tues 26th Feb, Film4.

Three Identical Strangers, Thu 28th Feb, Channel 4.
Inland Empire, starts Thu 28th Feb, London Live.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (followed by Boy), Mon 4th March, Film4.

Filmworker, Thu 7th March, Film4. Followed by The Killing (1956).

Leaving Neverland is being screened on Channel 4, in two parts, on Wed 6th March and Thu 7th March. Apparently Jacko's estate is not happy with this HBO/Channel 4 co-production. I have no idea if there is anything left to add to this story.

It is quite a documentary week next week. Most exciting is probably Sandrine Bonnaire's film on Marianne Faithfull on BBC4 at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday 3rd. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City is on BBC4 at 11 p.m. on Monday 4th. Also on Monday 4th at 9 p.m. BBC2 has the latest Louis Theroux film, The Night In Question, about specialist investigators into sexual misdemeanours in US colleges. As jlnight says, Filmworker is on Film4 at 11.15 p.m. on Thursday 7th.

In terms of fiction films Independence Day: Resurgence, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, is showing on Channel 4 at 8 p.m. on Saturday 2nd. The Guy Ritchie adaptation of The Man From UNCLE is on Channel 5 at 9 p.m. on Sunday 3rd. And the Horror channel has the premiere of the Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie film Maggie at 9 p.m. on Saturday 2nd and Resurrection of Evil at 9 p.m. on Friday 8th.

And Dream Corp LLC is joining Rick & Morty and Robot Chicken in the Friday night Adult Swim block on E4 from 8th March (it looks as if Stephen Merchant is channelling Wheatley in Portal 2 for another sarcastic robot character!)

[jlnight]

Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, Fri 8th Mar, Talking Pictures. Also on Sat 16th Mar.

The Love Witch, Sat 9th Mar, Film4.

The New Girlfriend, Sun 10th Mar, BBC4.

Elle, Mon 11th Mar, Film4.


Bojack Horseman (in a double bill with Archer) started last night on DMAX (Freeview 42). Didn't that used to be the Travel Channel?

[colinr0380]

And also on Channel 5 at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 27th is USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Mario Van Peebles. Which the Radio Times has given the rare distinction of a one star "Poor" rating to (Monster Trucks in contrast gets three!), which almost automatically makes it a must see! I remember really liking Mission of the Shark, the 1991 TV movie version of the same events, starring Stacy Keach and written by Alan Sharp, though if this newer version is anything like that one it will be rather harrowing and nowhere near as fun as the idea of World War II, atomic bombs and sharks would suggest.

Well, this film takes place on a much grander scale than the early 90s Mission of the Shark TV movie that tackled the same material was able to, but the (relatively) big budget treatment causes some of its own problems. The main issue with this film is that it is incredibly heavy handed in its sentimentality and pretty blatantly appears to be trying to occupy the same special effects level as a Michael Bay film (specifically Pearl Harbor, which is presumably why Tom Sizemore makes a rare recent major film appearance among the supporting cast), along with the entire sinking sequence being lifted wholesale from the 1997 Titanic film! (In special effects that make what should be tragic accidentally funny, especially the way that it repeats the 'hanging from railing high above the ship before falling' moment over and over with the exact same shot just having different sailors swapped into position!) That is something that makes this recounting of a true story seem incredibly artificial at the moments when it should be the most moving. Especially when combined with the pretty standard dramatics to introduce us to the characters, where of course there will have to be a comment on racism with a black and white soldier getting involved in a brawl during shore leave before they inevitably overcome their differences and make up with each other as they face death adrift on the ocean.

Yet I quite liked it too, though not enough to recommend it hugely. The fim's heart is (perhaps too obviously) on its sleeve in its attempts to rehabilitate an injustice done to the captain of the Indianapolis, suggested to be used as a scapegoat by a Navy angry that such a disaster jibes against their victory in the Pacific (this is something that Mission of the Shark was not too able to get into, and one of the main reasons for this film to exist is probably that it is able to update events with Clinton posthumously pardoning Captain McVay in 2001). There are a few amusing moments of backroom meetings to ensure that the bad news of the sinking is buried in the small print of the national papers.

Its not really as good as Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (though it is dealing with much more difficult, downbeat material than even Pearl Harbor did. I was just grateful that it did not use the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the 'upbeat' equivalent of the Doolittle raid in the Michael Bay film, to let the audience leave the theatre with a problematic spring in their step!), and its messages are far too blatant and underlined a couple of times for good measure (for example the big speech at the end that Cage gives on the witness stand makes even the prosecuting lawyer choke back tears, which is already too much. But then we have to cut to the entire front row of the courtroom full of people melodramatically biting their lips and sobbing a little. Then we go even further to close in on a lady with a single tear streaming down her cheek! And this is before the surprise witness is brought out, who themselves shed big, wet tears in their own scene. The Radio Times states that Cage's performance is bad, but he's actually more subdued than wooden, and this is one of those Nicolas Cage films where he's actually the straight man whilst everything else around him is overly melodramatic. I know the prevailing stereotype is of 'crazy Cage' but I think that is somewhat overblown. It feels more that Cage knows when it is appropriate to let loose, and goes all out when he does, rather than being unable to modulate that elsewhere) But its patriotism seems just about on the right side of iffy. As a historical piece the film is pretty bad, but more for how blatant it feels in trying (and often failing) to tug the heartstrings above all else, rather than for its underlying message. It certainly does not feel as horrible as the recent wave of much more morally dubious films celebrating pro-active militarism against jingoistically manufactured threats, mostly starring Gerard Butler (Olympus/London Has Fallen, White House Down, Hunter Killer etc), which currently concern me much, much more.

[colinr0380]

Oh, and I also watched Commando again for the first time in a few decades, since it was showing in Film4's current Arnold Schwarzenegger season. It is not the best Schwarzenegger film, but I think it may be the 'purest' action film that he has made. Unconcerned with complex plot or dialogue, this streamlines everything into Schwarzenegger amusingly ignoring convoluted attempts to blackmail him into assassinating a ruler of a Central American country to instead make a bee-line to directly rescue his kidnapped daughter! I kind of love the way that the film and the main character just negates all of the attempts by the baddies to have complex motivations and turns them all into one dimensional villains simply by ignoring them and going his own way instead!

Also Commando and The Running Man have an interesting parallel in which the female co-star (Rae Dawn Chong here, Maria Conchita Alonso in The Running Man) start out by being kidnapped by Schwarzenegger's character, then both turn him in to the police only to eventually realise the error of their ways and become the co-partner in taking down the bad guys and eventually the love interest by the end! (We could even further this into Total Recall, but there the split is a more classical one with Sharon Stone taking on the duplicitous aspect in the first half, and Rachel Ticotin the resistance leader turned love interest in the second)

It is also probably the film (after The Terminator of course!) where Schwarzenegger's one liners feel the most appropriate as punchlines: "Remember when I said I'd kill you last...I lied!"

[colinr0380]

The Love Witch, Sat 9th Mar, Film4.
Elle, Mon 11th Mar, Film4.

Its a really strong week of premieres next week. The above The Love Witch and Elle are showing across the weekend as part of Film4's "International Women's Day" season, along with Gemma Bovery on Sunday 10th at 9 p.m. (which in a strangely specific bit of typecasting stars Gemma Arterton in another adaptation of a Posey Simmonds work about sexy shenangians in the rural area (this time France rather than the Home Counties) that was previously novelised in The Guardian, after 2010's Tamara Drewe). The centrepiece of the weekend is *ahem* the all female Ghostbusters adaptation, replacing wit with wittering, at 9 p.m. on Saturday 9th.

Sunday night has the unfortunate equivalent of a multiple train car crash-but with-film pile up of clashing premieres: the aforementioned Gemma Bovery is on Film4, Channel 5 has the premiere of the third in the Tom Hanks starring Dan Brown adaptations Inferno also at 9 p.m., and of course most excitingly BBC4 has Arcadia showing at 9 p.m. followed, as also previously noted by jlnight at 10.20 p.m. by Francois Ozon's adaptation of a Ruth Rendell novel The New Girlfriend.

But perhaps the most exciting film of the whole week (aside from Elle of course!) is James Gray's The Lost City of Z, showing on BBC2 on Saturday 9th at 9 p.m.

[colinr0380]

Rather strangely E4 started off Dream Corp LLC from its second season rather from the very beginning (only Rick & Morty appears to have been afforded that honour of starting from the very beginning so far). Which does unfortunately mean that it entirely misses out the arc of Stephanie Allynne's character, who only appeared in the first season. Allynne appeared around the same time in the quite tonally similar Dave Made A Maze (recently released by Arrow and could maybe be described as a cardboard House of Leaves) and as "Soccer Mom" in season 3 of Twin Peaks.

Also I forgot to note that Channel 5 is showing the TV movie Hidden Intentions (aka yet another film entitled Buried Secrets!) on Monday 11th at 2.20 p.m., which is notable for starring Ashlynn Yennie, who appeared in the first two Human Centipede films!

[colinr0380]

Film4 have just trailed their "Lone Wolf" season starting from the 21st March, which is going to feature the premieres of Oliver Stone's Snowden and Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here.

[reaky]

Aw, I thought it was going to be the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

[colinr0380]

The big film of next week is the premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Our Little Sister on BBC4 at 11.30 p.m. on Monday 18th. I have already talked about it in detail (with spoilers) here.

The rest of the week's new films are quite eclectic: ITV1 has a rare premiere that is not a Harry Potter, Star Wars or Hobbit film with Gangster Squad at 10.45 p.m. on Saturday 16th. Channel 5 is showing Magic Mike XXL at 9 p.m. on Sunday 17th. And there are a couple of lower key premieres on BBC2 with Stealing Cars, starring John Leguizamo and William H. Macy at 11.55 p.m. on Sunday 17th and The Ones Below at 11.05 p.m. on Friday 22nd.

The centrepiece of BBC4's "30th anniversary of the World Wide Web" season is probably The Cleaners, showing at 9 p.m on Tuesday 19th.

Repeat-wise, Film4 is showing Downfall in tribute to Bruno Ganz at 9 p.m. on Monday 18th and there is a relatively rare screening of Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel at 3.45 p.m. on Tuesday 19th.

[jlnight]

Heartless (Philip Ridley), starts Thu 14th Mar, London Live.

The Big Noise, Sun 24th Mar, Talking Pictures.

[colinr0380]

You Were Never Really Here is showing on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Thursday 28th.

Otherwise the big day next next week is Saturday 23rd, where three premieres end up clashing together. Duncan Jones' take on World of Warcraft, Warcraft: The Beginning (which I mostly know from the amazing moment during the livestream of the premiere when YouTuber Jesse Cox interviewed superfans Jamie Lee Curtis and her son in full orc cosplay gear!) is showing at 8 p.m. on Channel 4 and the historical romance-culture clash film A United Kingdom at 9 p.m. on BBC2. Though the film that has most caught my interest is the Icelandic horror film I Remember You on BBC4 at 9 p.m.

[jlnight]

West 11, Sat 30th Mar, Talking Pictures.

Mustang (2015), Sun 31st Mar, BBC4.

Out of Season, Thu 4th Apr, London Live.

[colinr0380]

Mustang (2015), Sun 31st Mar, BBC4.

It is really good next week - jlnight has noted the premiere of Turkish film Mustang on BBC4 at 11.30 p.m. on Sunday 31st, and BBC4 is also showing the most recent Dardenne Brothers film The Unknown Girl at 9 p.m. on Saturday 30th. Also on BBC4 is the feature documentary The Trial of Ratko Mladic at 10 p.m. on Monday 1st.

BBC2 is repeating Christian Petzold's Phoenix at 2.30 a.m. in the early hours of Sunday 31st (after the clocks have gone forward) and also have a rare showing of Look Back In Anger at midnight on Sunday evening/Monday morning, as well as the premiere of Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston, at 11.05 p.m. on Friday 5th (though unfortunately Trumbo directly clashes with the E4 Adult Swim block).

The Horror Channel is showing Escape Room at 9 p.m. on Friday 5th, though this of course is still too soon for it to be the more recent high profile film under that title. It is from 2017 but even then it is not the other, slightly more promising looking film from the same year under the same title, but instead is an entirely different film featuring appearances from Skeet Ulrich and Sean Young(!)

Other than that the rest of the week belongs to Film4, starting with the premiere of Oliver Stone's Snowden at 9 p.m. on Monday 1st (the Radio Times review makes rather a backhanded compliment that "the film flatters Guardian journalists by getting more charismatic actors to play them"!) and a repeat of Ken Loach's Jimmy's Hall at 1.20 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 2nd. Alexander Payne's Nebraska is premiered at 11.40 p.m. on Tuesday 2nd. And The Purge: Election Year is showing at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 3rd.

[jlnight]

The Return of the Musketeers, Fri 5th Apr, Film4. (Royal Flash gets another screening on Thu 11th Apr on Talking Pictures)

Poor Cow, Sun 7th Apr, Talking Pictures. Also on Fri 12th Apr.

[colinr0380]

Interestingly eclectic stuff next week: the big Hollywood films are X-Men: Apocalypse on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 6th and Labor Day (which I initially thought was another in the Gary Marshall "Day" series, but it looks a lot darker with its romantic-drama take on Stockholm Syndrome!) on Film4 at 11.15 p.m. on Thursday 11th.

BBC2 has a strong showing with Lady Macbeth at 10.25 p.m. on Saturday 6th, and The Fits at 11.05 p.m. on Friday 12th.

A couple of notable horror films: Film4 is showing the 70s period styled Ouija: Origin of Evil at 10.50 p.m. on Saturday 6th. The 2010 Irish film Outcast with Kate Dickie (later in Prometheus and The Witch) and Karen Gillan (at the same time that she was one of Doctor Who's companions) is on the Horror Channel at 9 p.m. on Saturday 6th. Perhaps even more exciting (enough for me to overlook the 'dark and moody' version of Leaving On A Jet Plane in its trailer!) is another English language (but non-Grudge!) film from Takashi Shimizu, Flight 7500, on the Horror Channel at 9 p.m. on Friday 12th. That film does not appear to have had any UK disc release at this point. I cannot exactly tell what the monster it is that is picking off people on a plane fight though given the director's pedigree I would assume ghosts. Though I am holding out a vain hope that the trailer is willfully misleading us away from killer rabbits, in the manner of the Night of the Lepus trailer! ("How did this furry, rapidly multiplying menace get onto a passenger plane?"). At the very least it cannot just be snakes again!

But the real curio is Beauty and the Dogs, a Tunisian-French film tucked away on Film4 at 1.55 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 9th. According to imdb it was filmed in nine uninterrupted takes. It does not appear to have had any UK release outside of a London Film Festival screening in early 2018 and does not appear to have been certified by the BBFC either, so no UK disc release.

[jlnight]

Fear is the Key, Sun 14th Apr, Talking Pictures.

Lost Horizon (1973), Thu 18th Apr, Talking Pictures. Also on early Sun 5th May. (The first episode of Thames Television's Van Der Valk follows on Thu 18th Apr)

Love, Honour and Obey, Fri 19th Apr, London Live.

The Boys From Brazil, Sat 20th Apr, Talking Pictures.

[colinr0380]

Pretty quiet next week, with Andy Samberg starring in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping on Film4 at 11.05 p.m. on Thursday 18th, and Fallen, which is not to be confused with the late 90s Denzel Washington film but instead a romantic drama directed by Scott Hicks of Shine and Snow Falling on Cedars fame, and looks a bit too post-Twilight-y for comfort! That is on BBC2 at 10.30 p.m. on Good Friday. Rick & Morty also reaches the end of Season 1 on E4 on the same day, and I will be curious to see if they move straight on into Season 2.

But the big film of the week is probably the premiere of Doctor Strange at 8.30 p.m. on ITV1, also on Good Friday.

[jlnight]

The Anderson Tapes, Sun 21st Apr, Talking Pictures. Also on Thu 25th Apr.

Berth 24 (British Transport Films short), starts Mon 22nd Apr, Talking Pictures.

Wild Wings (British Transport Films short), starts Tue 23rd Apr, Talking Pictures.
Blue Pullman (British Transport Films short), starts Tue 23rd Apr, Talking Pictures.

Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, Wed 24th Apr, Talking Pictures.

Robin and Marian, Fri 26th Apr, Film4.
The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (aka Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation), Fri 26th Apr, Horror.
Everybody Wants Some!!, Fri 26th Apr, Film4.

The Villain (aka Cactus Jack), Sat 27th Apr, Talking Pictures. Also Fri 3rd May.
Oklahoma Crude, Sat 27th Apr, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 1st May. Alternatively...
Schizo, Sat 27th Apr, Horror.

[colinr0380]

Relatively quiet again next week. The big film of the Easter weekend is the premiere of Kubo and the Two Strings at on Channel 4 at 12.30 p.m. on Saturday 20th. Also the same day Channel 4 have The Shallows at 9 p.m.

There is another episode of Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema on Easter Monday at 9 p.m., this time on disaster movies.

Film4 has Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley romantic drama Learning To Drive at 1.30 a.m. in the early hours of Wednesday 24th. And as jlnight noted, Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!! is on Film4 at 11.20 p.m. on Friday 26th.

E4 is jumping straight into the second series of Rick & Morty at 10.55 p.m. on Friday 26th. Also on Friday at 9.30 p.m., BBC2 is starting to screen the The Looming Tower.

[jlnight]

Paths of Glory, Sat 27th Apr, BBC2. (Preceded by 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Barry Lyndon, Sun 28th Apr, BBC4. (Filmworker and The Killing are repeated late night on Film4). When was the last time this was on free-to-air, Colin?

The Looking Glass War, Tue 30th Apr, Talking Pictures.

[colinr0380]

Barry Lyndon was first shown in Channel 4's Kubrick season in June 1996 (with accompanying Cinefile documentary), along with Full Metal Jacket getting its first screening. It also got a screening on BBC2 on 5th May 2003, but I am not sure if it has been on the mainstream channels since then.

[colinr0380]

The latest Mark Kermode Secrets of Cinema episode, on disaster movies, is a similar mix of the insightful and rather frustratingly too widely defined at times. I especially liked the early section of the episode which makes a great argument that the disaster movie evolves out of the Biblical epics and especially Cecil B. DeMille, both because of the grand scale on which such films operate and the morality angle. The religious element is mostly removed (or toned down, or made more multi-denominational) but modern disaster films are still all about over confident people (or governments, or humanity in general) paying the price for their hubristic assurance that they have dominion over their world having to face disasters (often natural) that destroy everything they have built up in one fell swoop, and then it becomes a fight for survival and trying to find some glimmer of hope to rebuild and continue on again from out of the wreckage.

The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno get the most focus on, with their narratives used as throughlines through the episode, but I particularly liked the clips from DeMille's The Last Days of Pompeii and from rarely shown early disaster films: Deluge, The Rains Came and San Francisco. Japan gets represented through Godzilla (of course!) but also I Live In Fear. The UK is represented through The Day The Earth Caught Fire (though no Crack In The World! Or Meteor!)

It was nice to have Kermode mention the way that a lot of these disaster movies have ensemble casts of fading Hollywood stars that harks back to dramas such as Grand Hotel. For me the key to a disaster movie is that you need multiple subplots (often involving love affairs or other dramas) in multiple locations that all then get knitted together through the big disaster occurring a third to half-way through the film that everyone, no matter how disparate and separate from each other (geographically, culturally, politically, racially, etc), have to respond to as a common threat. It is why I would argue that the earthquake in Robert Altman's Short Cuts is alluding to the disaster movie trend without entirely following through with the threat! Or that Night of the Living Dead has that disaster movie structure, because its about the reactions of the characters than the incident itself in many ways.

Though the big connecting series between Grand Hotel and the modern disaster movie is probably the Airport series, which rather morphs from one to the other through its sequels. It only gets a brief mention in the episode as Kermode brings up the Airport series, but only to note Sylvia Kristel appearing in Concorde...Airport '79! I would also note the wonderfully goofy TV movie merging of Airport and Marooned, Starflight One! Which I think was something that Airplane II was riffing on! Starflight One is better, and funnier, though because it is played straighter!

I do also think that the definition of 'disaster movie' is thrown a bit too wide. So a lot of time is given over to clips from Gravity and Ryan Reynolds in a coffin film Buried, where I would argue that a true disaster movie is an ensemble one (because otherwise every personal trial a character goes through could be classed as a disaster movie - if Buried is classed as such, why not Locke?) or at least one which involves a threat to the wider world (though the Gravity and Buried section does seem there to allow for Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds to have a sequence intercutting their 'heavy breathing'!). Whilst Jaws features that aspect as well, I would argue that this is less a disaster movie (since the characters there have a choice to be in that resort!) and more in the 'when nature attacks' subgenre instead!

And whilst Armageddon and Deep Impact get focused on in detail, along with Titanic (though I'd argue that they miss out on Pearl Harbor being Bay's attempt at doing a Titanic, with the detailed attack sequence focused on numerous characters built up over the early half of the film his most successful take on the disaster movie, more than Armageddon) and Irwin Allen gets his due, where was the ultimate disaster movie When Worlds Collide?

[colinr0380]

Pretty good next week: the big film is the premiere of the 2017 US take of Ghost In The Shell on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 27th, which we have talked about a lot here.

Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa is showing on Film4 at 11.10 p.m. on Monday 29th.

BBC2 is showing Captain Fantastic at 10 p.m. on Sunday 28th and Operation Avalanche at 11.55 p.m. on Friday 3rd.

And there is another David DeCoteau TV movie, with My Mother's Stalker on Channel 5 at 2.15 p.m. on Thursday 2nd! (Place your bets now on how many shirtless twinks appear in the film!)

[jlnight]

Rock City (aka Sound of the City: London 1964-73), Fri 3rd May, Talking Pictures. Also Sat 11th May.

The Passenger, Sat 4th May, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 9th May.

The Immortal Orson Welles, Sun 5th May, Talking Pictures.
The Deep, Sun 5th May, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 8th May.

Breaker Morant, Mon 6th May, Movies4Men.
Bunny Lake is Missing, Mon 6th May, Talking Pictures. Also Sun 18th May.