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| Utama |
Utama, 2.10am, Film4, Tuesday, July 8
Alejandro Loayza Grisi marries the wide open spaces of the Bolivian Highlands to an intimate story of ageing love and generational tensions in his exquisitely shot meditative drama Utama – the opening shot will stay with you for a start. While never losing his focus on Quechua llama shepherd Virginio, his wife Sisa (played by real-life husband and wife José Calcina and Luisa Quispe) and their grandson Clever (Santos Choque), he gracefully tackles the theme of climate change and its impact on remote communities without oversentimentality. If you need another reason to watch this then it is surely the fabulously photogenic llamas, though threaten to steal every scene they're in. As Grisi told us: "I must say the llamas are very easy animals to work with, because they are so photogenic. You can stare at them and they put you in a good mood."
The Blood On Satan’s Claw, 2am, Together TV (Freeview Channel 83), Thursday, July 10 and on the same channel at midnight on Friday, July 11
Jennie Kermode writes: Set in the aftermath of the English Civil War, when an urgent effort was underway to modernise ordinary people’s thinking and restore civilised values, Piers Haggard's folk horror classic uses diabolic motifs to tell a story whose underlying premise is a battle of ideas. It sees an isolated village fall prey to the malign influence of a charismatic teenage girl with a penchant for cruelty, whose brutal gang the adults are at a loss as to how to deal with. Where spiritual authority fails, only academic learning offers hope, but there is a terrible price to pay. Cleverly shot in a way that further distinguishes the children from the preceding generation, this sophisticated film has deep roots and ongoing relevance today. The post-midnight slot on Together TV is worth keeping an eye on as they’re screening quite a few classics and oddities there.
The Wicker Man, 9.05pm, Film4, Thursday, July 10
Is two folk horror classics too much for one week? It’s been ages since we had even one in, so indulge us, especially when the second is Robin Hardy's iconic film that continues to have a burning influence on a genre that has made a resurgence in recent times with the likes of Midsommar and All You Need Is Death. Edward Woodward stars as Sergeant Howie, a cop sent to the remote Scottish Summerisle in a bid to locate a missing girl. A devout Christian, his beliefs run up against the Pagan rituals on the island, personified by Christopher Lee, as the lord of the isle. Unsettling from the start, the off-kilter nature of Summerisle and its inhabitants becomes increasingly sinister, with the film's mood feeding off Howie's anxiety as he faces both the threat of the isle and the temptations of Britt Ekland's pub barmaid. "With the original film, we wanted to explore the idea of what would happen if we all woke up one days and Christianity was no longer the dominant religion, and instead there was a Pagan shrine down the road," Hardy once told us. You can read the rest of that interview here.
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, 4.35pm, Film4, Saturday, July 12
You don't have to have grown up in the US, where Mister Rogers (Tom Hanks) was a household name for generations of youngsters, to enjoy this charmer of a biopic – though if you want to take a look at the real man in action, he’s easy to find on YouTube. Marielle Heller's film goes beyond the children's favourite onscreen to show he was just as nice away from the camera as a journalist who comes to interview him (Matthew Rhys) gets emotional support as well as his story. Hanks plays Rogers with the welcoming warmth and familiarity of one of Rogers' trademark cardigans, so that you feel nostalgia for him even if this is your own first encounter with a man who, thankfully in a cynical world, was not too good to be true. Read what Wendy Makkena<>, who co-stars as Dorothy, the partner of the journalist's estranged father told us about the film. You catch Hanks playing what is basically the flipside of this character as the curmudgeonly central turn in My Name Is Otto at 9pm on Channel 4 the same night.
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, 7.45pm, Great Movies, Saturday, July 12
This second instalment is arguably the best of the early tranche of Star Trek films, not least because it features a towering performance from Ricardo Montalban as villain Khan – reprising the role he first took on in a 1967 episode of the original series. The warlord is out for vengeance after Kirk (William Shatner) sent him into exile and the film fully explores this personal conflict while offering, for its time, solid action sequences and a finale that dares to be less than completely feel-good.
Oppenheimer, Netflix, streaming from Saturday, July 12
If for some reason you didn’t manage to catch the Oscar-winner from Christopher Nolan at the cinema – perhaps you stayed away in solidarity with Barbie? – now’s your chance to stream it, handy given its bladder-busting three-hour running time. Unsurprisingly, it details the development of the atomic bomb via the life of Robert Oppenheimer. Whether the film needs to be quite as structurally convoluted is definitely debatable but Nolan does like that sort of thing and you can't argue with the beautifully recreated period detail and the magnetic performances from Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr and Emily Blunt, among others.
Flux Gourmet, MUBI, streaming now
Off-the-wall cookery meets absurdist comedy in Peter Strickland's sensory onslaught. The story revolves around culinary star Elle di Elle (Fatma Mohamed) who has arrived at a culinary institute for a three-month residency with her acolytes-cum-bandmates Billy Rubin (Asa Butterflied) and Lamina Propria (Ariane Labed) in tow. The group use their cookery to make music, all under the imperious eye of Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie in an assortment of remarkable costumes). Their ''journey'' is being documented by Stones (Makis Papadimitriou), a Greek journalist with extreme flatulence. On the one hand this is all a bit daft, but Strickland knows how to turn on the style to cook up something that is nothing if not unique.
We’ve got a spooky little short for you this week as Gabriela Ortega’s Huella sees a woman take an unexpected dance with grief.
