Pick of the week
Daughters
Natalie Rae and Angela Patton’s documentary is an inspirational tale, but it’s also a bit of a heartbreaker. It follows Patton’s own Date With Dad programme in the US, which allows incarcerated fathers to attend a dance in prison with their young daughters. We follow the lead-up to an event in Washington DC, from the points of view of five-year-old Aubrey, Santana, aged 10, Ja’Ana, 11, and Raziah, 15, as well as their convict dads, who must complete a 10-week course that digs down into their parental histories and responsibilities. It’s tough love, but 95% of the men who take part never reoffend. The aftermath for the girls is more mixed but it’s remarkable how one day together can change lives.
Wednesday 14 August, Netflix
***
Three Thousand Years of Longing
In between Mad Max outings, George Miller let his imagination run riot with AS Byatt’s short story, a seductive riff on the world of the Arabian Nights. Tilda Swinton is a narratologist who tells her own “once upon a time” tale about an antique glass bottle and the giant djinn (Idris Elba) it contained. She’s wary of the three wishes he offers but is captivated by his long, magical life, involving the likes of Sheba and Solomon, enslaved girls and sultans, and repressed female creativity.
Sunday 11 August, 9pm, Film4
***
Taxi Driver
It may be a blast from the past in its depiction of New York as incorrigibly dirty, sleazy and crime-ridden, but Martin Scorsese’s 1976 urban drama endures as a compelling study of social alienation and skewed morality. In Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle it has the ideal, endlessly quotable antihero – a “man who would not take it any more” but whose rage and incoherence lead him to extreme measures. Bernard Herrmann’s jagged, jazzy score ups the ante while the neon-lit city comes across as thrilling and dangerous in equal measure.
Saturday 10 August, 11.35pm, Great! Movies
***
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Steven Spielberg’s greatest film built on the blockbuster format he invented in Jaws, with epic sci-fi set pieces and state-of-the-art effects that still pass muster. But hidden in there – and possibly only noticeable to grownups – is a dark tale of family disintegration. Roy Neary’s obsession with extraterrestrials (captured superbly by a sweaty, manic Richard Dreyfuss) creates a distance between him and his wife and kids – which can’t be resolved by the revelation that aliens exist. It’s an exhilarating adventure, but an absent father on a spaceship is still an absent father …
Sunday11 August, 4.05pm, Film4
***
Dial M for Murder
Shot in 3D, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller is a minor entry in his illustrious body of work – and it does betray its stage origins – but it zips along effortlessly. Ray Milland, as a man plotting the killing of his unfaithful wife (Grace Kelly), is clearly enjoying playing a would-be criminal mastermind. There’s also a smart cameo from John Williams, who had already won a Tony as the sly chief inspector who calls on him. Of course, the most notable appearance is the giant puppet finger dialing a giant prop phone, created at that scale to show up in focus in the hefty 3D camera.
Sunday 11 August, 4.15pm, BBC Two
***
I Am Not Your Negro
African-American writer James Baldwin was such an eloquent, incisive thinker that it is rewarding to listen to him opine on any topic. Raoul Peck’s documentary gives us plenty of him, either in archive footage or via Samuel L Jackson’s readings, but is based on Baldwin’s own, unfinished, book about three men he knew – Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers – all civil rights activists, all murdered. His recollections of them, added to his own experience, make him a valuable witness to the history of Black people in America – which, he asserted, is the history of America. Thought-provoking stuff.
Sunday 11 August, 11.55pm, BBC Four
***
The Sense of an Ending
With his trademark air of gentle befuddlement, Jim Broadbent is the perfect embodiment of the deluded main character in Ritesh Batra’s adaptation of Julian Barnes’s novel. Tony, a semi-retired divorced father, has settled into a dotage of blithe indifference to life. But then he is left a mystery diary in the will of his ex-lover’s mother. Memories of teenage friendship and romance re-emerge – but they’re not quite the ones he had thought they were. A contemplative rather than dramatic tale of self-realisation, with fine support from Harriet Walter and Charlotte Rampling.
Monday 12 August, 11.05pm, BBC Two
