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| Blinded By The Light Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival |
Gurinder Chadha's coming-of-age comedy hits all the right notes - and not just in terms of its Bruce Springsteen soundtrack. It's 1987 and Javed (Viveik Kalra, making an impressive debut) has high hopes of being a writer. When a friend (Aaron Phagura) turns him on to The Boss, Javed becomes his No.1 fan and.uses the music for inspiration. Underpinned by the engaging memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor, from which it is adapted, this is a pacy consideration of teenage life of the period that tackles more serious considerations of the racism and prejudice of the period lightly but effectively.
The Son, Amazon Prime
Anne-Katrin Titze writes: The center of Florian Zeller’s intergenerational drama, The Son, adapted from his play Le Fils by Christopher Hampton, is occupied by a cypher. Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is 17 and lives with his mother Kate (Laura Dern, terrifically flustered and well-meaning) in Brooklyn. Nicholas is in pain, constant unbearable pain, he says. When his mother finds out that he had stopped attending school, a fact he cleverly managed to hide from her, she shows up at her ex-husband’s doorstep to discuss the situation. Peter (Hugh Jackman, giving this role his all) and his second wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) just had a baby boy, and when Nicholas asks his father to move in with them in Manhattan, things become even more complicated. During a pivotal scene we get a better understanding of Peter’s own role as son, when he pays a visit to his father Anthony, played by the ever greater and greater Anthony Hopkins. “It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone,” croons Tom Jones during an exuberant dance number that adds a touch of lightheartedness. Father and son can share a moment of cartoon-watching and cereal-throwing, but ultimately, the film states, sometimes love is not enough.
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, 3.40pm, Film4, Tuesday, April 17
Jennie Kermode writes: The Fifties and Sixties saw a slew of great adventure movies involving travelling to secret or forgotten worlds and Henry Levin’s take on this Jules Verne classic is one of the best. Following James Mason’s ambitious professor as he explores a hidden subterranean realm, it features one of the best human-dinosaur battles of the era, as the professor’s party stumbles into the territory of hungry dimetrodons. These may be played by dolled-up lizards but they still deliver some scares, and they probably provide the closest thing to natural dinosaur movement that you’ll see onscreen. The use of forced perspective and clever model work really bring the conflict to life, and there’s much more to enjoy besides, with a volcanic finale and a Bernard Herrmann score.
Hustlers, 9pm, Film4, Tuesday, April 18
Although she did receive a Golden Globe nomination, Jennifer Lopez should easily have snagged an Oscar nod for her role in Lorene Scafaria's well-written adaptation of a New Yorker story charting a complex scam orchestrated by a group of strippers. She places the brassy Ramona, who becomes the brains behind a criminal outfit who plot to fleece their clientele. The focus is on how new girl on the scene Destiny (Constance Wu) becomes swept up in the scam, with Scafaria cleverly moving back and forth in time so that we see the consequences and fallout as well as the original con - for both the perpetrators and, importantly, the victims. Glossy and gripping but never voyeuristic, Scafaria's film performs a clever dance. Read the full review here.
The Captive Heart, 3.50pm, Friday, April 21
This drama set against the backdrop of a PoW camp was one of the first of its type, arriving less than a year after VE Day and speaking to those who were fully aware of the real thing. Like Das Boot, which is also in our selection this week, there's a real sense of the tedium of camp life as well as the trouble. It features nuanced performances by Jack Warner and Mervyn Jons as friends before the war facing this together. The standout, however, is Michael Redgrave, as a man who claims to be a British officer - having stolen the dead man's identity - and who soon falls under suspicion leading him to write to the dead man's wife (played by Redgrave's real life wife Rachel Kempson) with unexpected consequences. Although Basil Dearden occasionally lays on the melodrama a bit thick, this is largely a well-composed and emotionally hefty consideration of love and comradeship against the backdrop of war.
Bronson, 10.55pm, Great Movies, Friday, April 21
Charles Bronson has been back in the news recently after the failure of his latest parole bid. Notorious in the newspapers for being "one of Britain's most violent offenders", this biopic is, like most of Nicolas Winding Refn's work, delivered with force and a stylish panache. The violence may be too much for some viewers but Refn does manage to avoid any celebration of the criminal even as he digs about in his psyche - and the whole thing throbs with as energy as unpredictable as a sudden punch to the solar plexus. At its heart is Tom Hardy, whose towering performance is big enough to match the mayhem served up by Refn.
Shrek, 4.55pm, E4, Saturday, April 22
Given the huge variety in the modern animation landscape its worth remembering what a game-changer this DreamWorks film was on its release. Featuring a grumpy ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) as its focal point, it took a sideswipe at fairy tales in ways which, at the time, would have had Disney clutching at its pearls. Although the tale of the need to rescue a princess (Cameron Diaz) is a familiar one, the fact that our hero Shrek is less than heroic as he sets of on a quest with a donkey (Eddie Murphy, on top form) is all part of the fun as writer Ted Elliott skewers Disney and serves it up with a side salad of fun. John Lithgow is also hugely entertaining as the vertically challenged bad guy Lord Farquaad.
We're staying with animation for our short selection this week. Emma Lazenby's Mother Of Many, which was inspired by the director's own mum's career as a midwife.
