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Pick of the week
Mickey 17
Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his Oscar-laden social satire Parasite is another sharp comedy about class and capitalism, this time set in space. A starship under the command of Mark Ruffalo’s Trumpesque politician is en route to colonise a distant planet. Robert Pattinson – who is becoming quite the character actor – stars as Mickey, an “expendable”: his identity has been downloaded so he can die any number of times and the crew just reprint a new body. But when he gets to version 17, an encounter with the new world’s louse-like inhabitants puts a spanner in the works. It’s not subtle, but the farcical action is played with gusto by Pattinson alongside Naomi Ackie and Toni Collette.
Friday 14 November 12.35pm, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
War Paint: Women at War
“What do women see that men don’t?” That’s the question driving Margy Kinmonth’s enlightening history of female artists and how they respond to war. It ranges in time from second world war painters such as Laura Knight to the present-day likes of Fiona Banner and Rachel Whiteread; and geographically from Iran to Sudan to Ukraine. We see skilled artists using a range of techniques to reveal the underreported, female-centred aspects of conflict, with a focus on the many neglected talents who deserve a more prominent place in the cultural conversation.
Sunday 9 November, 9pm, Sky Arts
Mr Burton
Marc Evans’s drama is a fact-based tale of how poor miner’s son Richie Jenkins became RSC star Richard Burton – but it’s also an affecting story of fathers and sons, what you gain by leaving and what you lose. The young Richard (Harry Lawtey, making a good fist of that sonorous voice) has a bleak future in his industrial Port Talbot home town. But his English teacher, Philip Burton (Toby Jones), sees promise in the would-be actor and becomes the mentor his drunken dad will never be. However, the lifelong demons that already assail Richard start to warp their relationship.
Monday 10 November, 8pm, BBC One
Freakier Friday
It was inevitable that a sequel to the 2003 body-swap comedy would up the ante, so in Nisha Ganatra’s new film there are not two but four people inhabiting the wrong flesh and bones. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan return as mother and daughter Tess and Anna, while Julia Butters is Anna’s teenage daughter Harper. Add in Sophia Hammons as Anna’s soon-to-be stepdaughter and mix frantically. Curtis and Lohan are clearly having a lot of fun being the irresponsible kids, with the plot turning on them using their adult status to try to halt their parents’ marriage.
Wednesday 12 November, Disney+
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A Merry Little Ex-Mas
It is the first Christmas after their divorce but parents Kate (Alicia Silverstone) and Everett (Oliver Hudson) are spending it together one final time as a family. However, Everett brings along his new girlfriend, the hot’n’young Tess (Jameela Jamil), while Kate gets her own back by hooking up with equally hot’n’young pine tree seller Chet (Pierson Fodé). Steve Carr’s comedy drama doesn’t break the mould of festive films but never looks as if it wants to – Christmas cosiness is all.
Wednesday 12 November, Netflix
Come See Me in the Good Light
An instant weepie, Ryan White’s documentary follows performance poet Andrea Gibson as they deal with incurable ovarian cancer, supported by their wife, fellow poet Megan Falley. It’s an intimate fly-on-the-wall profile, filled with love, as the couple come to terms with the diagnosis, the rounds of treatment and Gibson’s desire to do one last spoken-word performance. Despite not being a household name in the UK, Gibson is a vibrant and engaging presence, their poetry interspersed with often very funny thoughts about living with dying. Oddly life-affirming.
Friday 14 November, Apple TV
Belén
Dolores Fonzi co-wrote, directed and stars in Argentina’s entry for the Academy Awards, a rousing, political labour of love that should be right up Oscar’s street. It’s the true story of a legal injustice that occurred in 2014, when a young woman, known only as Belén, was jailed for homicide after having a miscarriage. Fonzi plays her lawyer, Soledad Deza, who fights to overturn the decision, inspiring a national campaign against the conservative, male establishment’s control over women’s reproductive rights. A historical snapshot that is sadly still relevant today.
Friday 14 November, Prime Video
