Choice of the week
Macbeth’s tragedy
For his first film without a collaborator / brother Ethan, Joel Coen delivered a confident and elegant take on Shakespeare’s murderous Scottish play. Denzel Washington is a beautifully brooding Macbeth, while Frances McDormand embraces the dark side as a woman – a role she was born to be. Their regicidal plot is drawn through stark locations in crisp black-and-white images reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal. In an inventive twist, Kathryn Hunter plays the Three “Weird Sisters” while eloquent support comes from Bertie Carvel as the doomed Banquo and Alex Hassell as the scheming and devious Ross.
Friday January 14, Apple TV +
After the storm
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2016 drama is another of the great Japanese filmmaker’s comedic and understated tales of fractured families and the ways they find to get by in life. Hiroshi Abe plays Ryôta, a divorced former novelist who now loses his income as a private investigator and neglects his young son. His encounters with his no-frills widowed mother Yoshiko (regular Kore-eda Kirin Kiki) and his long-suffering ex-wife Kyōko (Yōko Maki) slowly push him towards the triage of his life, but not exactly in the way he does. hoped.
Sunday January 9, 12:10 a.m., BBC Two
Brothers sisters
Jacques Audiard, the French director of Rouille et d’os, is not the first person you would expect to make a western. But that 2018 film is a beautiful piece of work, giving a respectful nod to the genre’s staples, shootouts, and glorious views while sneaking into moments of existential reflection. John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play Eli and Charlie, the chalk-and-cheese murderous siblings of the title, sent to follow Jake Gyllenhaal’s scout John Morris to California and then kill a chemist, Hermann Warm (Rice Ahmed), who developed a potentially lucrative method of extracting gold from rivers.
Sunday January 9, 10 p.m., BBC Two
Eternals
Here, Marvel stirs up a whole new set of myths in its melting pot of fantastic adventure. The Eternals – including Gemma Chan’s Sersi, Richard Madden’s Ikaris, and Angelina Jolie’s Thena – are overpowered aliens who have protected humanity for millennia from destructive beasts called Deviants. Nowadays, the group comes together once again to fight a resurgence of the creatures, all while discovering the real reason for their mission. It’s an ominous thing but has a good deed, a little wit (courtesy of Kumail Nanjiani), and a nice filigree gold look.
Wednesday January 12, Disney +
Magnificent obsession
The film that confirmed Douglas Sirk as the master of Technicolor melodrama and made Rock Hudson a star. He plays the selfish playboy millionaire Bob, who inadvertently contributes to the death of Jane Wyman’s doctor husband Helen. Their unlikely connection leads to tragedy, redemption, and love among the affluent upper middle classes, in a film imbued with a philosophy of selflessness and charity as a spiritual act.
Thursday January 13, 6:45 p.m., Super! Classic Movies
Save the cinema
A true story ripe for dramatic treatment, Sara Sugarman’s innocent drama follows the fight to save lyrics in Carmarthen in the early 1990s. Hairstylist and youth opera director Liz Evans (a heartwarming performance by Samantha Morton) stirs up opposition, including Jonathan Pryce’s retired professor Mr Morgan, when city council plans to replace the cinema with a shopping center. There’s a slight villainy, in the form of Venal Mayor Tom (Adeel Akhtar), a hint of Hollywood glamor, and a softly reiterated message about the importance of community and local heritage. SW
Friday January 14, 10:55 a.m., 8 p.m., Sky Cinema premiere
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Who needs a straight man when you have talents like Steve Martin and John Candy fighting over each other? In the stunning 1987 John Hughes comedy, the two are thrown together on a frantic and weather-hampered journey from New York to Chicago as they run to get home in time for Thanksgiving. Martin’s publicity director Neal (superior, quick to anger) and Candy street vendor Del (awesome, accident prone) make the perfect weird couple in a movie that can be compared to Midnight Run for its cleverly plotted twists and turns. and his humor of character. SW
Friday January 14, 9 p.m., Comedy Central