Pick of the week
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Having created a truly memorable character in Charlize Theron’s one-armed trucker Furiosa for his Mad Max sequel Fury Road, George Miller couldn’t let her lie. However, this is no mere rerun. It’s Furiosa’s origin story, with Anya Taylor-Joy fierce and focused as the girl abducted from her hidden valley home, the Green Place, and forced to live by her wits in a desert world of violence and rough justice. Chris Hemsworth is a riot as Dementus, the vainglorious leader of a biker gang who challenges the power of the three dominant fiefdoms – Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm – amid epic landscapes and reassuringly thrilling petrolhead action.
Friday 31 January, 11.40am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Star Trek: Section 31
Originally intended as a series vehicle for Michelle Yeoh’s Star Trek: Discovery character Philippa Georgiou, this fun one-off feature plonks her in the “lost era” a few years before the events of The Next Generation. The titular section is a Starfleet black ops unit, which recruits alt-universe tyrant turned off-grid bar owner Georgiou after a biosuperweapon hits the black market and threatens galactic oblivion. Yeoh is as action-friendly and deliciously arch as ever, cosplaying evil but really just stringing us – and her team – along before doing the right thing.
Out now, Paramount+
***
Timestalker
In 1688, a Scottish peasant (Alice Lowe) falls for Aneurin Barnard’s preacher, then suffers a fatal pike-related accident. Reincarnated as a pompadoured lady in 1793, she has visions of her past life and future lives. Could all this be connected to the inept highwayman who looks uncannily like the preacher? Or is she a fantasist stalker? Coming across like a video nasty starring Adam Ant, Lowe’s witty comedy explores obsessional love through a time-travelling frame, wrapped up in her trademark gore and a yen for bold, mismatched colours.
Saturday 25 January, 6.20am, 6.20pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Superman
Another reworking of the Krypton native’s story is due in cinemas this summer, but it will do well to match Richard Donner’s 1978 sci-fi drama. Christopher Reeve is still the best Clark Kent/Kal-El we’ve had, working the switch from nice-guy journalist to superpowered crime-fighter with deft charm, while Margot Kidder has few equals as his go-getting colleague and love interest Lois Lane. Add in John Williams’s heart-lifting score and special effects that have almost lasted the test of time, and you’ll believe a man can fly.
Sunday 26 January, 3.25pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Time Bandits
Co-written with Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam’s jolly children’s fantasy has that Monty Python sketch comedy anarchy but is harnessed to a gripping narrative. Craig Warnock is Kevin, an ordinary boy spirited away on a spacetime-spanning adventure by a group of dwarfs (led by David Rappaport’s Randall) who have stolen a map of everywhere from the Supreme Being. From ancient Greece to the Titanic, meeting Robin Hood and Napoleon en route, Kevin is drawn into a flight from evil.
Saturday 25 January, 4.25pm, Film4
***
Bad Lieutenant
You can rely on Harvey Keitel to give his soul to a role, and he certainly goes to extremes in Abel Ferrara’s heady morality tale. Keitel’s unnamed New York lieutenant is a disgrace as a cop and despicable as a human being. He steals from thieves, sells police-evidence cocaine and brutalises suspects, with an appetite for excess – booze, heroin, gambling. But when a nun is brutally raped, he can’t understand why she forgives her attackers, which sets him off on a skewed road to redemption. Ferrara spares us little in his depiction of a dissolute man barely hanging on.
Sunday 26 January, 1am, Legend Xtra
***
Another Year
It’s rare to find a happy couple in a Mike Leigh film, but this 2010 drama gives us a good’un. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen’s Tom and Gerri are the engineering geologist and NHS counsellor round whom revolve the unfulfilled lives of their depressed, lonely single friends Mary (Lesley Manville) and Ken (Peter Wight). Manville brings emotional fragility to the otherwise irritating, selfish Mary, stealing every scene she’s in as the seasons turn. This week, Leigh fans can also catch Happy-Go-Lucky on Wednesday and Mr Turner on Thursday.
Tuesday 28 January, 1am, Film4
