TV
Casanova Available now
The Italian adventurer – and notorious womaniser – has already been depicted twice on TV, first in a 70s Dennis Potter serial and then by David Tennant in Russell T Davies’s lively 2005 series (the pair would collaborate again on Doctor Who that same year). Now, Y Tu Mamá También actor Diego Luna dons pompadour for an Amazon pilot directed by Amelie’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet. This Casanova depicts a largely unheralded period in the life of the Venetian playboy, with Casanova attempting to put his sordid reputation behind him – although, somewhat inevitably, he finds it a more difficult task than he expected.
Sneaky Pete Available now
(“As pilots go, it is a hooky concept with – and you suspect the House-y influence of Shore here – an easily repeatable procedural element: Pete and Julia could chase down a different fugitive each week, while the burning fuse of Maris’s grand deception sparks ominously in the background as he grows ever more attached to his surrogate family.” Graeme Virtue)
Catastrophe series one 23 August
(“Praise be, after scores of British sitcoms based around the nonspecific, warm, fuzzy feeling generated by people being kind at each other, a half hour of narrative comedy that bursts with jokes. Solid, delicious chunks of funny pudding rather than the funny-flavoured foam we’ve been doused in lately. Some depravity, lots of misdirection, a little embarrassment; they don’t favour one particular style. The scenes between them come across as verbal tennis matches, like Hildy and Walt in His Girl Friday, but less shrill. ” Julia Raeside)
Masters Of Sex series two Available now
“Ultimately this is a show that works not because of narrative tricks but because the relationships at its heart are beautifully written and brilliantly played. Lizzy Caplan has been outstanding this season, making Virginia warm and likeable even at her worst moments, while Michael Sheen continues to shine as the repressed Bill, desperately inching his way towards humanity yet never quite able to let his guard down when it counts. It is this central pairing that gives the show its strength. Yes, we care about the supporting cast … but without the complex and compelling relationship at its centre, Masters of Sex would fall apart.” Sarah Hughes)
Films
Manglehorn Available now
(“Director David Gordon Green guides Pacino through a beautiful performance as the eponymous Austin locksmith, ruminating on an ancient breakup. He trudges mournfully through an America he no longer understands. The oddities around him – a messy pileup involving a watermelon truck, two Trap dancers spinning in slow motion – might just be happening in his head. On the surface, Manglehorn is a sleepy romance about an old man brushing off the rust to love again (his squeeze, played by Holly Hunter, is – of course – nearly two decades younger). Its depths hide a strange, satisfying meditation on regret, nostalgia and remorse.” Henry Barnes)
Inception Available now
(“Along with technical brilliance and ingenuity, there is something disconcertingly self-important about Inception, with a plot that clogs and flags markedly in its final act, and, however gasp-inducing its effects and invented worlds, the story’s drive stalls; I can never suppress the suspicion that something more interesting might be happening in ordinary, unassuming waking reality. Invention runs lower once we’re on those snowy slopes, and the hard narrative punch keeps disintegrating into a floating cloud of pixels. But what a display they make.” Peter Bradshaw)
Dear White People Available now
(“Here’s a film that refreshingly acknowledges various elephants in cinema’s crowded living room: racism, the interracial sex taboo and class war. It’s an elegant, angular campus satire with a little of Alexander Payne’s dyspeptic Election … The movie’s acidly knowing comment drains away as the romantic drama advances and resolves, but it’s clever and entertaining.” PB)
Get Hard Available now
(“I don’t believe Get Hard sets out to be hurtful, and there are some good gags (particularly King’s prison trash talk: “You’ve got 20 likes on Instafuck! … You’re a disappointment to your parents, who I fucked”), but it does seem dumb and dated. Hart, a huge force on social media, seemed to anticipate the reaction before the screening. He told the audience: ‘Jump on Twitter, I’ll talk to you back. But if you don’t like it, what I want you to do is go into the middle of the street and kill yourself.’” Alex Needham)
Run All Night Available now
(“Liam Neeson’s global punching roadshow rolls on. This New York layover – overseen by Non-Stop’s Jaume Collet-Serra – improves on recent outings: unlike the Taken sequels, it never cuts around the arse-whupping you’ve paid to see, and it grounds all its beat-downs in appreciably supple character business”. Mike McCahill)
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian 14 August
“Andrew Adamson follows up his tremendous movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the second in the series, Prince Caspian, and it’s entertaining, value-for-money stuff. Families and fans of the CS Lewis books can consider themselves in safe hands, though in my view some of the magic has gone, perhaps simply because the interest of the Narnia series itself declines exponentially as it progresses towards the very uncomfortable, theologically strained finale in the seventh and last volume.” PB)
The Conjuring 16 August
(“The craft – if not the art – of a great horror flick skitters around Saw creator James Wan’s new popcorn-spiller … The Conjuring was a huge hit in the US, perhaps because it plays to sceptics and believers alike; there’s never any question that what we’re seeing might be absurd or imaginary … But the 70s setting, paired with the cheapish visual effects, helps the thing scramble along like a fleshed-out episode of Scooby Doo. Wan’s shocks are predictable but – yikes! – are they scary.” HB)
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 17 August
(“The gut feeling is that if anybody urgently needed the further adventures of Kevin James’s human Weeble, we’d have had them a year or two after 2009’s amiably duff original. Six years on, and the gods have provided us with a cinematic equivalent to the second Cheeky Girls album, or anything Sir Mix-a-Lot put out after “Baby Got Back”: any novelty has long worn off, leaving behind a flagrant cashgrab.” MMC)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 20 August
(“The delights on show here are enigmatic and rare, a subtly shifting atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion and a climactic moment whose perpetrator, the eponymous Ford, is to act out on stage 800 times. This is presented as the start of celebrity culture with the face of James, whose gang carried out 25 robberies and 17 murders, recognised as readily as the US president’s and his assassin – “I’ve been a nobody all my life” – achieving fame through one act. It trails connections to Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Mark Chapman and co, without ever nudging you in the ribs about it. Brad Pitt as the taciturn and unpredictable James is ideal casting, part-regular bloke, part-ageing poster boy, hemmed in by fame and myth.” Rob Mackie)
Child 44 24 August
(“Tom Rob Smith’s page-turning bestseller from 2008 has been turned into a heavy, indigestible meal of a film, full of actors speaking English with vyery hyeavy Ryussian accyents – actors from England, Sweden, Lebanon, Poland, Australia, almost anywhere but Russia … Tom Hardy brings his robust, muscular presence to the role of Leo and he is watchable enough, but the forensic and psychological aspects are just dull; there is no fascination in the detection process … Everything is immersed in a cloudy brown soup.” PB)
A Little Chaos 24 August
(“It has to be said, the performances are excellent. Winslet manages emotional honesty within anachronistic confines, and Schoenaerts escapes with dignity. Alan Rickman plays Louis XIV with unexpected compassion … But Rickman should have sent the script back for further pruning. There are some potentially interesting ideas voiced about whether or not to suppress nature to our will, and whether women are treated well at court, but the answers are implicit and the debate dead on arrival.” Catherine Shoard)
The Good Lie 31 August
“Philippe Falardeau’s heartfelt account of children fleeing civil war in southern Sudan and arriving as displaced adults in America is raised shoulder-high by its cast, many of whom have first-hand experience of the tribulations of the so-called “Lost Boys”… Strong performances from Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany and Emmanuel Jal ensure that the characters of Mamere, Jeremiah and Paul are never reduced to “exotic” victimhood. On the contrary, they draw us into their experience of the wasteful strangeness of the west, ensuring that we see the world through their eyes, looking out rather than in.” Mark Kermode)
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 31 August
“If there was just one extended sequence that crackled with originality you could at least say it has its moments, but, truly, there’s nothing besides repeated use of swear words in lieu of wit. More embarrassing were the callbacks to the earlier film – like the return of Chevy Chase sounding like a deranged Jonathan Winters (and milking a Caddyshack gag for a cheap laugh). Are POV shots of Adam Scott zonked out on acid cut to techno the type of thing you are itching to see? So throwaway are the film’s set pieces, they had me looking for the black X that would turn off this would-be viral video and let me get back to reading my email. Alas, I was in a screening room (filled with audibly sighing critics) and could find no such escape.” Jordan Hoffman)
Top Five 31 August
“Rosario Dawson makes the most of a peach of a part that is miles richer than it needed to be. What might have been just a good-looking sounding board is actually Diane Keaton (or maybe Tony Roberts) to Chris Rock’s Woody Allen; Julie Delpy to his Ethan Hawke. Or, even, his Chris Rock – as the two stroll round the streets of Manhattan, swapping stories and riffing on pop culture, Top Five irresistibly recalls 2 Days in New York, Rock’s 2012 romance with Delpy. There is a loose-limbed ease here that is as inclusive as it is in-jokey; never more so than when Andre returns home to chat with friends and family (including Tracy Morgan, Anders Holm and JB Smoove).
