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9
Pick of the week
Swiped
As she’s still bound by an NDA, Whitney Wolfe Herd did not contribute to her own biopic. But even this fictionalised account of the career of the co-founder of dating app Tinder and creator of Bumble paints a damning picture of the toxic, misogynistic culture that permeates Silicon Valley. In Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s sadly still timely film, Lily James stars as Whitney, a peppy college graduate lucking her way into a startup incubator run by Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer). It portrays the subsequent diminishing of her key role in the success of Tinder, which runs parallel with the collapse of her relationship with colleague Justin (Jackson White), amid gaslighting, trolling and sexual harassment.
Friday 19 September, Disney+
Hue and Cry
This early Ealing comedy must have been ideal fodder for the Saturday matinee slot in late-40s cinemas, featuring all the thrills, spills and intrigue a youngster could want. Harry Fowler plays Joe, the leader of a gang of boys (and one girl) who hang out in the bombed-out houses of postwar London. When he discovers that the plot of a story in his favourite magazine, Trump, mirrors real-life criminal events, he and his mates investigate. Alastair Sim has a nifty cameo as the writer whose work is being manipulated (“here’s a split infinitive!”) but it’s down to the kids to save the day.
Saturday 13 September, 11am, Film4
Tár
Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
It has caused some disquiet by having its lead character, a woman, suspected of grooming, but Todd Field’s bravura drama is a fascinating and often unnerving exploration of the peaks and pitfalls of high-end creativity. Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a celebrated figure in love with her own voice. She’s married to first violin Sharon (Nina Hoss), with whom she has an adopted daughter. But her bullish self-confidence doesn’t help her cause when dark revelations about a past relationship surface.
Sunday 14 September, 10pm, BBC Two
Twiggy
She was too short, too thin and didn’t have a bust. But in 1966, model Lesley Hornby, AKA Twiggy, rapidly became the face of the swinging decade – her cropped hair, wide eyes and gamine style sought after by fashion magazines and young women in the UK and abroad. Sadie Frost’s laudatory documentary reveals how a smiley, 16-year-old, working-class Londoner survived instant fame, then carved out a successful career in movies, theatre, TV and music. And Twiggy herself is tremendous company, remarkably grounded despite her whirlwind of a life.
Monday 15 September, 9pm, BBC Two
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Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
What happens when the era of free love arrives and you’re already middle-aged and married? In Paul Mazursky’s witty, gimlet-eyed 1969 drama, that’s the tangle documentary film-maker Bob (Robert Culp) and his wife Carol (Natalie Wood) find themselves in after a wellness retreat gets them hooked on emotional honesty. Awkwardly, their best friends Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) are less keen on their disruptive modern ways.
Monday 15 September, 9.05pm, Talking Pictures TV
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
In his 1992 gothic horror, Francis Ford Coppola takes a gloriously maximalist approach to the vampire yarn, stuffing it with nods to film styles of the past. He also prioritises the romance between Gary Oldman’s undead old count and ingenue Mina (Winona Ryder) over visceral shocks, while there is a pointed contrast made between the Victorian love of technology and the repressed but unstoppable desires of the flesh. These pulls between ancient and modern even find an inadvertent echo in the very 90s Keanu Reeves and his struggles with an English accent as fall-guy solicitor Harker.
Monday 15 September, 11.30pm, BBC Two
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Soon-to-be national treasure Emma Thompson gives a wonderfully candid performance in Sophie Hyde’s poignant drama about a late-in-life sexual awakening. Her widowed, retired teacher Nancy hires “aesthetically perfect” sex worker Leo (Daryl McCormack) for an afternoon in a hotel room in the hope of discovering a physical pleasure she never knew during her long marriage. There’s much more talking than sex, but the two leads perfectly balance the awkwardness, humour, tension and emotional mic drops that characterise their transactional encounters.
Wednesday 17 September, 9pm, Film4
