Pick of the week
Everything Everywhere All at Once
A breakout hit in cinemas this summer, this kaleidoscopic action fantasy from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (AKA the Daniels) deserves repeat viewings to get the most out of it. The plot centres on Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, revelling in the chance to do comedy), who runs a failing laundrette with sad-sack husband Waymond (Key Huy Quan) and alienated daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). However, on a visit to tax inspector Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn finds herself propelled into a multiverse in which she adopts a wild variety of personas in an attempt to stop a nefarious version of Joy from destroying all life. A furiously fast-paced, visually vibrant and epic entertainment.
Out now, Prime Video
***
Sammy Going South
One of Alexander Mackendrick’s lesser-known films after his glory days at Ealing Studios, this 1963 movie is almost an anti-Disney adventure in its lack of sentimentality about childhood. Sammy (Fergus McClelland) is a 10-year-old English boy living in Port Said, Egypt. When his parents are killed in a bombing, the traumatised boy sets off to find his aunt – in South Africa. His 5,000-mile odyssey features encounters with strangers good and bad, including Edward G Robinson’s roguish diamond smuggler. SW
Saturday 10 September, 9.05pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing 1958 thriller is “the greatest film of all time”, according to Sight & Sound’s 2012 critics’ poll. Whether or not it remains there in this year’s update, it’s still a brilliantly twisted study of obsession, featuring a career-high performance by James Stewart. His retired cop, Scottie, is asked to follow Madeleine (Kim Novak), a friend’s wife who has been acting unusually, but the fear of heights that made him quit the force rears its head again in tragic fashion. Later, however, he meets Judy, who is the spitting image of Madeleine … SW
Monday 12 September, 11am, Film4
***
Rita, Sue and Bob Too
The brief but distinctive career of Bradford writer Andrea Dunbar reached the big screen with Alan Clarke’s defiantly realistic 1987 adaptation of two of her plays. On a working-class estate, two teenage friends (played by Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes) babysit for a married man (the satyr-like George Costigan) – and both end up having sex with him. The story is bracingly funny but has a strain of Loachian hard knocks in its depiction of the lack of choices available in their world. SW
Monday 12 September, 9pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark
A daily dose of Indy films begins with Steven Spielberg’s original (and easily the best) historical adventure. Harrison Ford dons the hat and whip as the peripatetic archaeology professor/treasure hunter for a giddily enjoyable yarn of Nazis, hidden loot and giant rolling stones that wouldn’t look out of place in a 1940s matinee double bill. Karen Allen is much more than a damsel in distress as Jones’s love interest Marion, while John Williams’s rousing score is the cherry on top. SW
Tuesday 13 September, 9pm, Film4
***
Wind River
In between Marvel assignments, Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner teamed up for Taylor Sheridan’s atmospheric crime drama. She’s the FBI agent sent to a Native American reservation in Wyoming in the depths of winter after a teenage girl’s frozen corpse is discovered. He’s the US Fish and Wildlife service agent who uses his local knowledge to help her investigate the case. The landscape here is as much of a character as the people shaped by its beauty, isolation and unforgiving nature, while the two leads give emotional width to a compelling police procedural. SW
Thursday 15 September, 11.35pm, Film4
***
Meek’s Cutoff
In 1845 Oregon, a wagon train of settlers is being guided across the parched land by grizzled know-it-all Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood). But as their water supply runs down, the pragmatic Emily (Michelle Williams) begins to suspect he has no more clue of the way than they do. This is a western, but it’s a Kelly Reichardt western, so don’t expect the typical escapades, even when a Native American turns up. It’s a foreboding drama of half-heard conversations and imperfect knowledge, of uncertain fate and the tragic clash of cultures. SW
Friday 16 September, 1pm, Great! Movies Action
