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Pick of the week
The History of Sound
Feted young actors Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor have teamed up for this melancholy romance about music and missed connection. Mescal plays Lionel, a gifted musician who meets a more scholarly academic, David (O’Connor), while studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, in the midst of the first world war. Reunited after armistice, the two travel around rural Maine together, recording their folk music on the new-fangled “wax cylinders” and – ultimately, fleetingly – falling in love. Director Oliver Hermanus’s previous work includes Living, the Bill Nighy-starring re-imagining of Kurosawa’s 50s classic Ikiru, and this is a similar symphony of longing and decade-spanning desire.
Saturday 12 September, 7.50am, 2.50pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
In the Grey
There’s a conspicuous absence of cockneys in this new action thriller – but otherwise it’s your typical Guy Ritchie joint, elevated by the presence of Jake Gyllenhaal as Bronco Beauregard, one half of a glorified, globe-trotting debt-collecting duo with Henry Cavill as his more reticent other half, Sid. Eiza González is on – effectively – Miss Moneypenny duties as Rachel Wild, a lawyer who employs Bronco and Sid to do her dirty work (ie all the cool stunts), on account of their absolute willingness to operate in the legal-moral grey zone of the title.
Out now, Prime Video
The Red Shoes
If you’ve never seen Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 meta-dance-thriller, you’ve never seen the colour red. It’s that serious. Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s gruesome fairytale, it revolves round aspiring ballerina Victoria Page (a resplendent Moira Shearer) and her toxic relationship with the world-renowned impresario Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook). Boris forces her to choose between her art and her love for composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). But the story is near-irrelevant when the cinematography and choreography are this spectacular.
Saturday 12 September, 9.50am, BBC Two
Rabbit Trap
Dev Patel stars in this creepy folk horror which combines ASMR atmospherics with the timeless eeriness of Tylwyth Teg fairy-folk legend. It’s 1976 and sound recordist Darcy Davenport (Patel) and his wife, musician Daphne (Rosy McEwen), have relocated to an isolated Welsh cabin, seeking inspiration through immersion in the sounds of nature. But the couple is soon accosted by a nameless child of indeterminate age and gender, who insinuates themself into their home.
Sunday 13 September, 6.50am, 10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
This month, two entirely different films are out in cinemas, offering alternative takes on the legendary, wealth-redistributing outlaw. But neither the mortality-contemplating Hugh Jackman one, nor the mud-splattered Andrew Garfield one, can compete with this Kevin Costner-starring 90s classic. Alan Rickman was a deserved Bafta-winner for his definitive take on the Sheriff of Nottingham, but the real villain was that Bryan Adams theme song.
Monday 14 September, 5.35pm, Sky Cinema Greats
Get Carter
It’s one of the all-time great gangster films, offering a peer down the side-streets and back alleys of late-60s Newcastle, plus Michael Caine in his charismatic, menacing prime. He plays Jack Carter, the titular hardman who returns to his hometown after years spent in London’s underworld in order to investigate, then avenge, his brother’s death. Writer-director Mike Hodges cleverly incorporated aspects of real-life local crimes into his script, especially the notorious “one-armed bandit murder” of 1967, helping to usher in a gritty new era of realism for British crime drama.
Monday 14 September, 11.05pm, BBC Two
It Should Happen to You
The great Jack Lemmon had his first major film role in this George Cukor-directed story of a young woman, Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday), who yearns to make her mark on the world by any means necessary. Gladys kicks off a curious kind of career by hiring billboards around New York City to display her name, while suitor Pete (Lemmon) attempts to persuade her to find contentment in the crowd. It’s sharp as a romantic comedy, sweet as a prescient satire on the perils of fame, and altogether a delicious treat.
Wednesday 16 September, 11am, Film4
