Pick of the week
The Brutalist
The ongoing trauma of the Holocaust casts a shadow over this epic and intensely felt postwar drama from Brady Corbet. It’s also a tale of art v commerce, as Adrien Brody’s Jewish-Hungarian concentration camp survivor László comes to the US and resumes his career as an architect famed for his brutalist style, supported by his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones). His new employer, industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (a superbly self-regarding Guy Pearce), envisions a grandiose community centre on the top of a hill. It is their relationship that forms the dark heart of the film, as László’s obsession with creative purity clashes with Harrison’s ego, envy and financial might.
Friday 5 September, 9pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
The Quick and the Dead
Back in 1995 – when she was a far bigger draw than Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio – Sharon Stone starred alongside them in Sam Raimi’s jolly spaghetti western homage. Cowgirl Ellen rides into the town of Redemption on the eve of a sharp-shooting competition organised by the autocratic mayor, Herod (Gene Hackman). She seems to have a beef with him, but what is it? Also intrigued by her are Crowe’s outlaw turned pacifist preacher Cort and DiCaprio’s braggadocious teenage gunslinger the Kid, in a reworking of Sergio Leone’s greatest tricks.
Saturday 30 August, 9pm, 5Action
***
Sisters
In this 1972 murder mystery, Brian De Palma succumbed fully to his Hitchcock obsession – he even got Bernard Herrmann to do the score. Thankfully, he’s very good at it, offering up a warped tale of twin sisters (one sweet, the other psychotic, both played by Margot Kidder), a missing body in a Staten Island apartment, and a crusading journalist (Jennifer Salt) who lives opposite and is determined to solve the case. It was also De Palma’s first sustained use of split screen, providing double the plot and double the sweaty tension.
Tuesday 2 September, 11.50pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
The Fisher King
Terry Gilliam’s most romantic drama may well be his best. After New York radio shock jock Jack (Jeff Bridges) inspires a mass shooting, his life falls apart. Then he meets Robin Williams’s Parry, a mentally ill down-and-out on a quest for the holy grail – and the heart of Amanda Plummer’s klutzy Lydia. Because Parry’s wife was killed in the massacre, Jack seeks redemption by helping him with both wishes. Comedy and fantasy mingle delightfully, while Mercedes Ruehl is on Oscar-winning form as Jack’s long-suffering girlfriend.
Thursday 4 September, 3.05pm, Sky Cinema Greats
***
Rebecca
Joan Fontaine delivers a perfectly calibrated rabbit-in-the-headlights performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s first US film, a fervid adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic mystery. A whirlwind romance with the brooding Maxim (Laurence Olivier) doesn’t prepare the second Mrs de Winter (Fontaine) for life at his Cornish stately pile, Manderley, where the memory of his drowned wife is sustained by the forbidding, fetishistic housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson).
Thursday 4 September, 4.30pm, Talking Pictures TV
***
Reality
A verbatim dramatisation of an FBI interview doesn’t sound like a ripsnorter, but Tina Satter’s 2023 ripped-from-the-headlines drama is genuinely gripping. NSA linguist Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) comes home to be faced by federal agents – led by Josh Hamilton’s Garrick and Marchánt Davis’s Taylor – who want to talk to her about the leak of classified information about Russian interference in US elections. Redacted dialogue is represented imaginatively by characters simply vanishing, but it is Sweeney’s gradual disintegration in the face of the evidence that is the most compelling.
Thursday 4 September, 9pm, Film4
***
Highest 2 Lowest
In his vibrant adaptation of Ed McBain’s thriller King’s Ransom (by way of Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low), Spike Lee gets to indulge in his love of New York. Basketball, baseball, hip-hop, Puerto Rican music, the subway – the rich pageant of city life suffuses the action as record company legend David King (Denzel Washington) faces a moral dilemma. The son of his longtime chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright) is accidentally kidnapped instead of his own. So should still he pay the $17.5m ransom, even though it will mean losing control of his label?
Friday 5 September, Apple TV+
