Pick of the week
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Harrison Ford’s final crack of the whip as academic cum adventurer Indiana Jones mostly redeems the disaster that was 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is largely down to Ford himself: his comic timing is still sharp, but he adds a world-weariness perfect for a retired archaeologist pitched into yet another hunt for a mysterious artefact. It’s now 1969, and his goddaughter Helena (played, with a Fleabag twinkle in her eye, by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is seeking an ancient Greek device with time-travel properties. The plotline is nonsense, of course, but James Mangold’s effortlessly jolly film has all the car chases, exotic escapades and devilish Nazis (led by Mads Mikkelsen) you could wish for.
Friday 15 December, Disney+
***
Adaptation
There are few films more meta than Spike Jonze’s teasing, playful comedy from 2002. Penned by Charlie Kaufman, it’s about a tortured writer called Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) who is struggling to finish a script based on Susan Orlean’s non-fiction bestseller The Orchid Thief (this actually happened to him). We also follow Meryl Streep’s Susan in scenes from the book. Cage plays Kaufman’s brother Donald too, whose tips for the script bleed into the film itself, putting them at the centre of their own oddball thriller.
Saturday 9 December, 10.50pm, Comedy Central
***
Wild Men
Questions of authenticity and masculinity are at the heart of this wry Danish comedy-drama from Thomas Daneskov. Rasmus Bjerg plays married father Martin, who is trying, and failing, to live by himself off-grid in Norway’s wilderness, using spurious Viking wisdom. Then he bumps into on-the-run drug dealer Musa (Zaki Youssef) and decides he is a kindred spirit in need of his help. With the police, Musa’s criminal cohorts and Martin’s wife (Sofie Gråbøl) in pursuit, their haphazard journey brings home the realities of their lives.
Saturday, 12.50am, BBC Two
***
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
An inadvertent companion piece to the Timothy Spall drama The Last Bus (Tuesday, 11.15pm, BBC Two), Hettie Macdonald’s superior film also focuses on an old man on an unusual long-distance trip. Jim Broadbent is the British acting royalty here, walking from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed to see an ex-colleague dying of cancer – his actions are intended to give her the will to live. The trip forces him to ponder his unexamined life, as it does his wife, Maureen (Penelope Wilton). Not wholly original, then, but tender and thoughtful. SW
Sunday 10 December, 4.20pm, 10.05pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Asteroid City
Wes Anderson’s style has arguably become more famous than his movies, with Instagram accounts and fan films riffing gleefully on his colour coordinated sets and deadpan comic characters. His new feature won’t disappoint in that respect, as a 1950s town in the US desert pays host to a Junior Stargazer convention. Attendees include Jason Schwartzman’s widowed war photographer, Scarlett Johansson’s film star and their respective offspring – plus a very unexpected visitor. SW
Tuesday, Prime Video
***
Your Name
The king of animated YA romance, Makoto Shinkai, has two films on the channel this week. Weathering With You is on Friday but up first is his delightful, heart-tugging 2016 fantasy, which mixes puppy love with metaphysics. A small-town girl and a boy in Tokyo realise that dreams where they inhabit each other’s bodies are, in fact, a real-life swap. Both teenage embarrassment and curiosity follow as Mitsuha and Taki explore their alter egos and help or hinder the other’s daily lives. But then the connection is unexpectedly broken – leaving Taki with a frustrating mystery to solve. SW
Thursday, 11pm, Film4
***
Dance First
This biopic of Irish writer Samuel Beckett is as fractured, forbidding and funny as its subject’s plays. Via a Godot-like dialogue with himself, Beckett (Gabriel Byrne) relives episodes in his life, hoping to pin down his feelings of guilt – and possibly find redemption. His time in Paris working for his hero James Joyce (Aidan Gillen), an involvement with Joyce’s mentally ill daughter, joining the French resistance and the two major loves of his life all give tantalising glimpses into Beckett’s gimlet-eyed worldview. SW
Thursday, 6.50am, 6.05pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
