Pick of the week
Joram
Devashish Makhija’s new Hindi-language film melds a chase thriller and a topical political drama to exhilarating effect – and throws in a baby for extra pathos. Mumbai construction worker Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) is forced to go on the run with his three-month-old daughter, Joram, when his wife is killed by unknown assailants. He flees to his home state of Jharkhand, where he has a secret past as a tribal rebel, but the police and powerful local politician Phulo Karma (a superbly chilling Smita Tambe) are on his tail. Between tense pursuits, there is a real sense of a rural community succumbing to “progress” – mining, land grabs, corruption – and a traditional culture buckling under the strain.
Sunday 8 September, 2.10am, Channel 4
***
Source Code
A man wakes up on a commuter train into Chicago and has only eight minutes to find the bomb on board – and the bomber – before he’s thrown back in time to the start to try again … and again … and again. Jake Gyllenhaal is the US army helicopter pilot on a whodunnit mission, whose quantum physical explanation is less important than the thrill of the mystery. Director Duncan Jones keeps the action tight and the emotional payoffs – with Michelle Monaghan’s fellow passenger and Vera Farmiga’s remote handler – to the point. A great little movie.
Sunday 8 September, 5.05pm, Great! Movies
***
How to Marry a Millionaire
The second in a Lauren Bacall matinee double bill with Designing Woman, Jean Negulesco’s 1953 comedy is pretty much an MGM musical without the songs (despite being a 20th Century Fox film). In glorious, gaudy CinemaScope and Technicolor, with a Gershwinesque score by Alfred Newman, it follows fashion models Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe as they plot to nab wealthy husbands. Bacall is the brains of the operation; the others most definitely are not – but amid the sumptuous sets and opulent clothes, love predictably triumphs over more material concerns.
Saturday 7 September, 2.55pm, BBC Two
***
Beetlejuice
It is a safe bet that Michael Keaton will have a larger role in the new sequel than he has in Tim Burton’s 1988 ghostly comedy. As “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse, he’s a whirlwind of disgusting behaviour and groan-worthy wisecracks, but you have to wait three-quarters of an hour for him to appear. Until then we follow young, recently deceased couple Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, looking on in horror as a new family in their quaint home indulge in a spot of radical interior decoration. Winona Ryder channels her inner Robert Smith as the goth daughter who befriends them.
Saturday 7 September, 3.20pm, Channel 5
***
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
For his melodramatic version of the horror classic, director and star Kenneth Branagh aims for the Romantic and the romantic. Bare-chested and Byronic, his Victor Frankenstein is an obsessive young man, his love for adopted sister Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) losing out to the urge to resurrect the dead. As the stitched-together “creature”, Robert De Niro is an interesting if not entirely successful contrast – implacably brutal but largely sympathetic.
Wednesday 11 September, 8pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Burning an Illusion
One of a regrettably small number of mainstream features made by Black British film-makers in the 1980s, and a clear touchstone for Steve McQueen’s recent Small Axe series, Menelik Shabazz’s groundbreaking drama covers a lot of ground. It starts out as a love story gone wrong, as the relationship between the independent-minded Pat (Cassie McFarlane) and jobless toolmaker Del (Victor Romero Evans) falters over his macho, controlling attitudes. But a violent incident pushes Pat towards a greater political awareness of her inequitable existence.
Thursday 12 September, 8.20am, 4pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Alien
Accept no substitutes – or sequels. Despite continual attempts to better its haunted-house-in-space atmosphere, or find new ways to explore its darkly gothic universe, Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror is perfect as it is. There’s the innovative design – the spaceship feels authentically lived-in and the xenomorph in all its incarnations is electrifyingly alien – while Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack is a bundle of nervous energy. And in Sigourney Weaver it has a new type of hero – a woman who is more of a match for the beastie than her gun-toting male crewmates.
Friday 13 September, 10.40pm, BBC One
