Pick of the week
Steve Jobs
“Completely incompatible with anything.” What is true of the Apple Macintosh is also true of its designer, Steve Jobs, in Danny Boyle’s fascinating 2015 biopic of the computer magnate. Structured around three product launches – 1984 (Macintosh), 1988 (the NeXTcube, anyone?) and 1998 (iMac) – it exposes the insufferable yet visionary nature of Jobs through Aaron Sorkin’s rat-a-tat script and walk-and-talk dialogue. Michael Fassbender plays him with the right balance of self-preening and self-loathing, and Kate Winslet is also excellent as marketing executive Joanna Hoffman, acting as Jobs’s occasional conscience as he alienates friends, colleagues and his daughter.
Sunday 21 November, Amazon Prime Video
***
The Queen of Spades
Director Thorold Dickinson only came on board this 1949 adaptation of a Pushkin story with five days’ notice, but you wouldn’t guess it from the meshing of its sumptuous design, expressionist camerawork and melodramatic acting. A supernatural period drama set in 1806 St Petersburg, it stars Anton Walbrook as a lowly army engineer who believes frail, old aristocrat Edith Evans knows the secret to winning a card game, and he’ll do anything to get it, including seducing her naive companion (Yvonne Mitchell).
Saturday 20 November, 2.15pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
Mad Max
Although the second in the series has the edge in terms of junkyard vehicle design and carnage, George Miller’s 1979 original (at the time, the most profitable film ever made)set the template – and provided Mel Gibson with his star-making break. In a near-future Australia where society is on the verge of collapse, Gibson’s leather-clad cop pursues a murderous biker gang through the outback, at great personal cost. The Australian new wave would produce better films but none with such an enduring global impact. The first two sequels follow on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Monday 22 November, 9pm, ITV4
***
Maurice
EM Forster refused to publish the novel during his lifetime due to its then controversial depiction of homosexuality, and it was not until 1987 that James Ivory and Ismail Merchant managed to make this finely crafted film adaptation. Another of the director-producer duo’s opulent studies of the upper middle-class – all country houses and comfortable living – it follows the sexual awakening of James Wilby’s Maurice, initially falling in love with fellow Cambridge student Clive (Hugh Grant) but then struggling with his feelings, and their illegal status.
Tuesday 23 November, 11.10pm, Film4
***
Bruised
Halle Berry makes her directorial debut in this largely compelling drama, doubling up as its lead. She plays Jackie Justice, an alcoholic former UFC fighter who is drawn back into the mixed martial arts cage when she has to take care of the son she abandoned. Personal redemption through sporting success isn’t the most original of angles but this is clearly a passion project for Berry, and she keeps the mood downbeat and gritty, particularly in the fight scenes, which are convincingly brutal.
Wednesday 24 November, Netflix
***
Silent Running
Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 sci-fi fable is – as you’d expect from the special effects master behind 2001: A Space Odyssey – a pleasure to just gaze at, but at the film’s heart is an environmental message that has survived its counterculture origins to become relevant today. Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, a botanist on a spaceship that contains a biodome full of samples of Earth’s near-extinct plant life. When the order comes to destroy the dome, Lowell rebels (“They can’t blow up this forest!”), enlisting his three little robot helpers to ensure the survival of his precious green domain.
Wednesday 24 November, 1pm, Horror Channel
***
All the President’s Men
Remember a time when the US president would resign over his misdemeanours in office? Alan J Pakula’s fact-based 1976 film now has a distinct nostalgic tinge to it, as Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) probe a break-in at Democrat party headquarters and the subsequent cover-up of their involvement by Richard Nixon’s White House. An all-too-rare cinematic representation of journalists as honest and diligent, expressed via the twists and turns of a first-rate thriller.
Thursday 25 November, 10pm, BBC Four
