Pick of the week
I, Tonya
Its array of comically unreliable narrators make Craig Gillespie’s 2017 biographical drama about disgraced US figure skater Tonya Harding an edgier, wittier proposition than the facts would suggest. Self-proclaimed “redneck” Harding (Margot Robbie) has real talent but lacks the clean-cut presentational skills required to woo the judges. How she ends up accused of plotting an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan is a tragicomic story of a horrifically pushy mother (the Oscar-winning Allison Janney), domestic abuse – courtesy of husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan) – and one stupendously inept criminal enterprise. Robbie gives it her all as the girl given a terrible hand in life who is determined to make it work.
Thursday 24 February, 10pm, BBC Four
***
Kimi
Steven Soderbergh’s lean, gripping Hitchcockian thriller stars Zoë Kravitz as Angela, a “voice stream interpreter” for an Alexa-style virtual assistant called Kimi. She has become trapped in her (salary-inappropriate) apartment with agoraphobia, as trauma from an assault is exacerbated by Covid lockdowns. But after hearing what she thinks is a murder she pushes herself to go outside to solve the “crime”. Rear Window and The Conversation are clear touchstones but that doesn’t detract from the film’s pleasures.
Saturday 19 February, 12.40pm, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Kes
A classic of British social realism, Ken Loach’s 1969 drama also has a large dose of symbolism in its story of a poor boy and his wild bird. David Bradley’s put-upon working-class teenager Billy is looking at a dismal future stuck on his Barnsley estate, but training a baby kestrel offers him an imaginative freedom unavailable in his school life or at home. The ritual humiliations of a PE lesson and canings by the headmaster show how education without empathy can destroy lives, but a glimpse of hope is offered by the natural world.
Saturday 19 February, 9.05pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
The Last of the Mohicans
The multifaceted Daniel Day-Lewis nails the classic Hollywood hero type in Michael Mann’s sweeping adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s romantic adventure novel. Day-Lewis’s noble, hard-running Hawkeye – adopted son of a Mohican – is drawn into the British army’s frontier war against the French and their Huron collaborators, while falling for Madeleine Stowe’s sparky colonel’s daughter. Despite elements of “white saviour” in the plot, and shady historical accuracy, it’s visually arresting stuff, particularly in the chase sequences.
Sunday 20 February, 6.55pm, AMC
***
The Neon Bible
A rare chance to see one of Terence Davies’s less celebrated films – but any film by him is worthy of your time. He takes his poetic, image-led focus on the lives of children to 1940s America with an adaptation of the novel by John Kennedy Toole (of A Confederacy of Dunces fame). It follows Jacob Tierney’s David, whose harsh life in rural Georgia – where Bible Belt religion wields a constrictive power – is brightened by his Aunt Mae. Gena Rowlands is vibrant as the has-been singer with a rebellious streak.
Monday 21 February, 2.05am, Film4
***
The Man in the White Suit
There’s a distinct touch of Jesus to Alec Guinness in this brilliant 1951 Ealing satire. His wide-eyed, unworldly scientist, Sidney, invents a cloth that never gets dirty and lasts for ever. Of course, this will not do, as the textile industry would become defunct, so an unholy alliance of capital and labour races to prevent him bringing it to the public. Master director Alexander Mackendrick sets the scene with a lightness that belies the tragic beating down of Sidney’s creative impulses – from the musical plops and parps of his lab apparatus to Joan Greenwood’s mellifluous turn as the factory owner’s daughter.
Friday 25 February, 1pm, BBC Two
***
Bacurau
A remote town in Brazil is attacked by trophy hunters in search of human prey in Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sly modern western, which riffs on 30s horror The Most Dangerous Game. The first sign of something wrong is when the settlement vanishes off online maps, but matters soon turn bloody. Udo Keir is in charge of the braggadocious post-colonial invaders, but he little realises that the good folk of Bacurau, including Sônia Braga’s doctor and Silvero Pereira’s outlaw, have a fierce community spirit and psychotropic drugs on their side.
Friday 25 February, 12.45am, Film4
