Pick of the week
Elvis
Austin Butler just bagged a Bafta for his turn as Elvis Presley, and he is the best thing in Baz Luhrmann’s flamboyant biopic of the rock’n’roller. Mastering the physical impersonation, Butler also gives a sense of Presley as an unresolved mix of mummy’s boy and sexual whirlwind, while the recreations of his stage performances are electrifying. The film looks at events through the eyes of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker – played uneasily with a sort-of Dutch accent and prosthetic nose by Tom Hanks – which foregrounds the financial aspect of their relationship and the “what ifs” of a career Luhrmann sees as created, but also hindered, by Parker.
Friday 3 March, 11.35am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
A Hard Day’s Night
Richard Lester’s freewheeling 1964 musical featuring the Beatles is a wonderful snapshot of four lads revelling in their newfound fame. There is scripted dialogue and a vague plot about the recording of a TV show, but it’s shot with so much vivacity, and the band are such naturals in front of the camera, that it feels more like an off-the-cuff documentary than a comedy caper. Wilfrid Brambell brings sitcom chops as Paul’s errant grandfather, and Ringo shines in his solo scenes, but the film’s winning combination of slapstick, scouse wit and pop hits is a team effort.
Saturday 25 February, 3.05pm, BBC Two
***
The Macaluso Sisters
The ties that bind and the changes time brings are the concerns of this tender Italian drama. We meet the five sisters, all teenagers or younger, living by themselves in a rundown flat in Palermo and surviving by renting out homing pigeons for events. After a tragedy, the film shifts through the decades, as sibling relationships cohere or fracture amid the ghosts of the past. Emma Dante’s film reveals its origins as a play in the focus on domestic detail but takes flight through the ever-present pigeons – which symbolise both the dream of escape and the pull of home.
Saturday 25 February, 9pm, BBC Four
***
Assault on Precinct 13
A loose adaptation of Rio Bravo, John Carpenter’s taut, low-budget thriller relocates the western to the mean streets of LA. Austin Stoker is the police lieutenant assigned to oversee the closure of a ghetto police station who finds himself besieged there by a cabal of street gangs, trapped with a traumatised father, two female clerical staff and a couple of convicts en route to death row. It’s a film of concentrated suspense – silencers give a spooky intensity to the gunfire, the dialogue is to the point and Carpenter’s own propulsive synth score adds to the menace.
Saturday 25 February, 11pm, HorrorXtra
***
Chariots of Fire
A film telling the story of British sprinters Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) and their route to the 1924 Paris Olympics could have descended into nationalistic tubthumping. Vangelis’s anthemic score, the Cambridge University scenes and the many slow-motion shots of Brits in sporting action show Hugh Hudson’s rousing drama is a little in love with all the pomp and circumstance. But there is antisemitism, class snobbery and jingoism here as well.
Sunday 26 February, 5pm, BBC Two
***
Mud
Jeff Nichols’s perceptive coming-of-age yarn is set on the banks of the Mississippi, and has a real feel for the landscape and the river folk who inhabit it. There’s a whiff of Huckleberry Finn in the story of 14-year-old best friends Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), whose aquatic explorations lead them to Matthew McConaughey’s Mud, a killer on the run hiding out on an island. Convinced by his story of amour fou involving Reese Witherspoon’s Juniper, the boys resolve to help him flee. A leisurely thriller of youthful idealism muddied by grownup emotions.
Sunday 26 February, 11.10pm, BBC One
***
A Fantastic Woman
This Oscar-winning drama from Sebastián Lelio explores grief and identity through the experiences of young trans woman Marina (a remarkable Daniela Vega), a waitress and nightclub singer in Santiago, Chile. When her older lover, Orlando, dies, she is forced to call on reserves of strength as her sense of self is continually called into question by his hostile, bigoted family, not to mention the police and hospital staff. Nice touches of magical realism pepper the film as Marina struggles to come to terms with her loss.
Wednesday 1 March, 2.50am, Channel 4
