Pick of the week
Tár
In Todd Field’s bravura drama, Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is at the peak of her profession. The feted chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, she’s married to fellow musician Sharon (Nina Hoss), with whom she has an adopted daughter. She’s also overly self-confident and demanding, traits that don’t help her cause when revelations about a past, possibly abusive, relationship surface. What is initially a fascinating inside look at the classical world – with all its artistry and snobbery – becomes increasingly nightmarish as the pressures on Tár lead to mental disintegration. There are also mysterious occurrences that suggest a deliciously spooky alternative take on her fate.
Friday 1 September, 11.15am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Benedetta
Nuns, sex, visions of Christ – how could arch-controversialist Paul Verhoeven resist making a film about Sister Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century Italian nun accused of lesbianism? The always committed Virginie Efira runs the gamut of emotions as the young woman who starts having miraculous, though disturbing, encounters with the son of God. The furore this causes, and her secret relationship with Daphné Patakia’s novice Bartolomea, brings trouble down on her. Verhoeven revels in the chaos, oscillating wildly between the sacred and the very profane.
Sunday 27 August, 11.15pm, Film4
***
Women Talking
Sarah Polley’s intensely moving drama won the best adapted screenplay Oscar this year – and it’s a film where words carry life-changing weight. A group of women in a Mennonite religious community gather in a barn to decide what to do after the men are arrested for tranquilising then raping many of them. The horror of this plays out in their involved arguments over staying or leaving – from Rooney Mara’s softly spoken Ona and Jessie Buckley’s forgiving Mariche to Claire Foy’s furious Salome. Faith and justice do battle in a sensitive, superbly acted tale.
Monday 28 August, Prime Video
***
The Man With the Golden Arm
Frank Sinatra showed his chops as a dramatic actor in Otto Preminger’s down’n’dirty yarn. He plays Frankie Machine – an ex-addict poker dealer out of jail and back in his inner-city Chicago neighbourhood of dive bars and strip joints. Cocky but brittle, he’s bent on becoming a drummer but, as the local heroin kingpin warns, “the monkey never dies”. A few knockbacks later and a wired Frankie is desperate for his next hit. Featuring a jagged jazz score by Elmer Bernstein, it’s a twitchy, propulsive story of temptation and redemption.
Monday 28 August, 8.45pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
Choose Love
This “interactive romcom” is a cross between Sliding Doors and Bandersnatch, though hopefully without the deaths. Laura Marano’s Cami is a recording engineer with a steady boyfriend, Paul (Scott Michael Foster). But there’s something missing in her life and it’s up to you, dear subscriber, to fix it for her. Will old flame Jack (Jordi Webber) or rock star Rex (Avan Jogia) make it all right? There are multiple routes to the end but don’t expect the unexpected – it is a romcom after all.
Thursday 31 August, Netflix
***
Song of the Sea
A delightful children’s animation right up there with the best of Studio Ghibli, Tomm Moore’s 2014 film is yet another quality work from Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon stable. It’s based on the Celtic myth of the selkie, a seal that can take human form, and follows the two children of widowed lighthouse keeper Conor: Ben, 10, and his six-year-old sister Saoirse, who is mute and has something otherworldly about her. Amid beautiful watercolour landscapes, a fantastical tale of fairy folk, witches and baleful enchantment unfolds, as Ben goes on a perilous quest to save his sister’s life.
Thursday 31 August, 12.50pm, Film4
***
Jackie
Before he delved into Princess Diana’s fraught 1991 Christmas in Spencer, Pablo Larraín explored a similarly epochal point in the life of Jackie Kennedy. His drama is set in the week after her husband’s assassination in 1963, and flips from an interview with a journalist to the events in Dallas, their aftermath and the 1961 TV special in which she guided viewers around the White House. Natalie Portman masters the first lady’s breathy voice and single-mindedness (and fashionable clothes), as she deals with grief and begins to ponder her – and the president’s – legacy.
Thursday 31 August, 1.55am, Film4
