Pick of the week
Woman of the Hour
Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut is not, as you might expect from her past roles, a bubbly musical or romantic comedy. It’s a deadly serious fact-based tale about a serial killer in the US in the 1970s, which is careful to give his female victims equal billing. Kendrick plays Sheryl, an aspiring actor who is hired for TV show The Dating Game – the same episode on which, bizarrely, multiple murderer Rodney Alcala (an alternately charming and creepy Daniel Zovatto) has been picked as one of the eligible bachelors. Skilfully woven into that are the stories of other women who crossed Alcala’s path, in a tense, chilling tale of personal tragedy and damning police failure.
Friday 18 October, Netflix
***
Shane
George Stevens’s warm-hearted 1953 western toys with several of the dualities central to the genre: good/evil, naturally, but also family/loner and settler/pioneer. Alan Ladd (white hat) plays the sharp-shooting title character, who passes by the cabin of homesteader Van Heflin, wife Jean Arthur and their impressionable son (Brandon de Wilde) to find the family under threat from land-grabbing ranchers – with Jack Palance (black hat) their hired gun. It’s largely predictable, but given purpose by its belief in the power of community.
Saturday 12 October, 6.30am, 4.40am, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Edge of Tomorrow
Its alternative title – Live Die Repeat – gives a taste of the high-concept nature of Doug Liman’s satisfying sci-fi actioner. With Tom Cruise on board as lead – and a script co-written by his Mission: Impossible mucker Christopher McQuarrie – there is little time for nuance, as his war-shy army PR officer finds himself in an armoured suit fighting tentacular alien invaders on the north coast of France. However, every time he is killed he wakes up the day before – and Emily Blunt’s all-action soldier is the only one who knows why. Thrilling.
Saturday 12 October, 9.20pm, Sky Showcase
***
The Duke of Burgundy
Peter Strickland dives into the world of 70s European arthouse erotica with his seductive 2014 curio. The sadomasochistic relationship between Sidse Babett Knudsen’s mistress Cynthia and Chiara D’Anna’s servant Evelyn (sin and evil?) seems mutually fulfilling, but the balance of power is a delicate one – just like the butterflies they and their (exclusively female) neighbours study and classify. It’s a sultry, hallucinatory film of silk, leather and lace, where passions are controlled and nature constrained.
Thursday 17 October, 1.25am, Film4
***
The Radleys
A Whitby family’s dull life is thrown out of joint when the daughter fatally bites a would-be rapist. It turns out they are all vampires, albeit abstaining ones. Damian Lewis plays the father, whose pleasure-seeking twin brother (Lewis again) turns up to sort out the mess only to inspire the others, including wife Kelly Macdonald, to succumb to their addictive natures. Euros Lyn’s kitchen-sink horror juggles coming-outs and coming-of-ages amid all the blood-letting.
Friday 18 October, 12.30pm, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Fight Club
Adapted from Chuck Palahniuk’s zeitgeisty 1996 novel, David Fincher’s film is a wrecking ball of misdirected masculinity. Edward Norton plays an insomniac office worker who finds a release from his frustrating existence when he meets soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). He and the devil-may-care Tyler set up an underground club where other dissatisfied white-collar men can punch each other – a display of raw physicality that gets warped into rage against consumer culture. Exhilarating stuff, packed with provocation and – if you’ve managed to avoid them thus far – a couple of cracking twists.
Friday 18 October, 11.05pm, Film4
***
Beat Girl
This quaint 1960 British attempt to hang on to James Dean and Marlon Brando’s teen rebel coat-tails is most notable for being John Barry’s first movie soundtrack. His rock’n’roll tunes (including a song entitled It’s Legal) percolate through a film in which 16-year-old Jennifer (Gillian Hills) antagonises her “square” architect father (David Farrar) and his new French wife (Noëlle Adam) by hanging out in coffee bars with kids who say “cat” and “daddio” a lot. Proper peril comes in the form of Christopher Lee’s slimy stripclub owner.
Friday 18 October, 3.10am, Talking Pictures TV
