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| Philip Seymour Hoffman in A Most Wanted Man |
While not Anton Corbijn's best work, which surely remains 2006 Joy Division biopic Control, this melancholic John Le Carré adaptation is worth catching if only for Philip Seymour Hoffman's crumpled central performance as Günther Bachmann - his last completed role before his tragic death in 2014, not long after the film's Sundance premiere. In post 9/11 Hamburg, Bachmann is running a covert operation, using the newly arrived Chechen-Russian Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) in a bid to snare a humanitarian he suspects of syphoning money to terrorists. Corbijn told us he hit the streets with the scriptwriter Andrew Bovell, to get a feel for Hamburg: "I took the scriptwriter [Bovell] to Hamburg about four years ago now and I forced the poor guy on a bicycle."
The Duke, 11pm, BBC2, Tuesday, January 13
This classic tale of British eccentricity fits Jim Broadbent like hand in glove. He plays ageing radical Kempton Bunton, who, unlikely though it may seem, was the mastermind behind the real-life 1961 theft of Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London's National Gallery - just the start of a plan. Alongside him, Helen Mirren also delivers as his long-suffering wife Dorothy, in a film that is as built around small moments of family drama as it is around the bigger picture. The final film from filmmaker Roger Michell (and I'm not picking swan songs deliberately this week!) is a charmer, its themes handled lightly but with humour and heart.
The Straight Story, 11.20pm, Film4, Thursday, January 15
One of those delightful fact-is-stranger-than fiction tales, David Lynch's heartwarmer is based on the true story of Alvin Straight, a septugenarian who drove a motorised mower from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his ailing elder brother. Taking his cue from the title, Lynch plays this one straight, which helps it to hit all the right emotional notes. The central performance from Richard Farnsworth is also a spot-on delight.
Lollipop, 11pm, BBC2, Friday, January 16
One of the British-produced gems of recent years, Daisy-May Hudson's sensitive drama follows single mum Molly (Posy Sterling), who discovers after a short spell in jail that her children Ava (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads), 11, and Leo (Luke Howitt), five, have been taken into care from her mother's custody. Desperate to get her kids back, she faces an uphill struggle with authorities who view her jail stint as her making herself “intentionally homeless”. Hudson, who previously directed a documentary about her family's experience of living in a homeless hostel makes an impressively nuanced debut fiction feature, while Sterling announces herself as a talent to watch.
The War Game, BBC iPlayer, streaming now
I know it was only last week when I put Peter Watkins' seminal Culloden in this list but you really shouldn't miss the chance to catch his remarkable anti-war film The War Game, which was originally banned by the BBC before it even aired for being "too horrifying". That, of course, is part of the point and this hard hitting consideration of what might happen if a nuclear bomb fell on Kent has lost none of its power down the decades. Filled with images that are likely to stay with you, including a bucket full of wedding rings that act as the only reminder of the dead.
Jess Weixler made her mark in Mitchell Lichtenstein's dark horror comedy. She plays Dawn, a virgin who has an anatomical quirk that gives her considerably more bite than most when it comes to bad boyfriends. Weixler deadpans her way through the destruction perfectly as predators become accidental prey. Given that this film is about vagina dentata, Lichtenstein could have sunk his teeth into basic humour, but this is much smarter than that, skewering stereotypes of femininity and societal expectations. Also, it's damned funny, even if it might make male audience members wince.
The Worst Person In The World, streaming now, All4.com
Anne-Katrin Titze writes: You will be able to think of a number of people much worse than anybody we encounter in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, co-written with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt. The title expresses perfectly, though, a feeling of surfeit, in a not-yet-adult-at-any-age-and-aware-of-it kind of fashion. Julie, played by Renate Reinsve (Best Actress winner at Cannes) takes us on trips of reinvention attempts and new beginnings. A female narrator’s voice tells us in 12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue, the tale in a timeless, soothing tone, as if all will be well eventually. Overwhelmed by something in a relationship or beyond, the self or the other may feel like the worst to the best of us. When Julie, in her late twenties, meets Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), successful comic book author, the mutual attraction is palpable. The scenes with Julie’s father (Vidar Sandem), who remarried and has a teenage daughter, are revealing and poignant. Time speeds up, slows down, seemingly stands still and before you know it, the end announces itself with a grin. Trier reunited with Reinsve for Sentimental Value, which is a serious awards contender this season and snagged her co-star a Golden Globe last night..
You'll have to pop across to the European Film Awards website to watch this week's short. Karni Arieli and Saul Freed's beautifully animated Wild Summon, which follows the dramatic life cycle of the wild salmon in human form.
