Pick of the week
Eternity
David Freyne’s lovely new film is a throwback to classic Hollywood romantic comedies such as the Cary Grant classic My Favourite Wife. Miles Teller (in the Grant role) plays Larry, who dies accidentally after 65 years of marriage to Elizabeth Olsen’s terminally ill Joan. He finds himself in an afterlife transit hotel where he must select one of many themed worlds in which to live for ever. Joan turns up soon after, but is met by Luke (Callum Turner), her first husband, who was killed in the Korean war and has been waiting for her ever since. Which one will Joan choose to spend eternity with? Teller, Olsen and Turner find a perfect balance of wit and warmth in a charming drama.
Friday 13 February, Apple TV
***
Crossing
“Istanbul is a place where people come to disappear,” says one of its residents in Levan Akin’s deeply moving drama. It’s also a city of refuge, reinvention and freedom, as retired Georgian teacher Lia (Mzia Arabuli) discovers when she travels there to look for her long-lost transgender niece. Her search, aided by Lucas Kankava’s callow young neighbour Achi and Turkish trainee lawyer Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a former trans sex worker, reveals a precarious underworld of poverty, illegality and exploitation, but also one of life-affirming friendship.
Saturday 7 February, 9.20pm, BBC Four
***
Alice, Darling
Anna Kendrick is well known for bringing the perk to an array of popular comedies, but Mary Nighy’s drama shows she can plumb the emotional depths too. She stars as Alice, who goes off on a week’s lakeside break with her best friends Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) and Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn). But her anxious behaviour, and the continual texts from her self-centred artist boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick), hint at a disturbing relationship of coercive control and gaslighting. A chilling, enraging tale about how abuse can come in many forms.
Tuesday 10 February, 9pm, Film4
***
Queer
Luca Guadagnino’s take on William Burroughs’s novella plays with the author’s transgressive myth in a steamy, lush drama that features a bravura performance from Daniel Craig. His gay American expat Lee frequents the seedy bars of 1950s Mexico City picking up young men, until the arrival of Drew Starkey’s enigmatic Eugene sees him fall hopelessly in love. It’s a romance of sorts, but one of unrequited lust and surreal goings-on, not least on a trip into the Ecuadorian rainforest in search of ayahuasca and an encounter with Lesley Manville’s wildly off-grid scientist.
Tuesday 10 February, 11pm, BBC Two
***
The Astronaut
When the lead character says of her remote forest retreat “it sounds like a horror movie”, you know what to plan for. Kate Mara is the titular astronaut in Jess Varley’s sci-fi drama who returns to Earth after a re-entry that went wrong. Sent to recuperate in a high-tech rural house by her Pentagon general dad (Laurence Fishburne), she starts getting visual and auditory hallucinations, not to mention mystery bruises. And is there a creature hiding in the woods? A tidy chiller with a fleshy twist.
Friday 13 February, Paramount+
***
How to Train Your Dragon
Universal has got in on the Disney act by creating a live-action version of its hit 2010 animated comedy – and very nicely done it is too. The original’s writer-director Dean DeBlois is back to shepherd the (mostly) human cast, led by Mason Thomas as smith’s apprentice Hiccup. He’s a disappointment to his Viking chief father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his role), due to his ineptitude in fighting the dragons that raid their village. But then Hiccup befriends one of the creatures, Toothless, and sees a way out of his clan’s never-ending conflict. Delightful.
Friday 13 February, 8.25am, 4pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Moulin Rouge!
Take a great opera like La Bohème, chuck in a Bollywood dance routine or two, some songs by Elton John and Nirvana, plus the odd Greek myth, then stir them into the heady melting pot of fin-de-siècle Paris – and you have Baz Luhrmann’s fever dream of a movie. It’s an almost overwhelming cultural mashup, with Ewan McGregor’s songwriter and Nicole Kidman’s courtesan/stage star doing well to convince us as star-crossed lovers amid the colourful extravagance, frenetic editing and anachronistic tunes of this magpie musical. A definite case of more being more.
Friday 13 February, 11pm, BBC Two
