Pick of the week
The Power of the Dog
Writer-director Jane Campion’s first feature-length film since 2009 is a sensuous, psychosexual western, adapted from Thomas Savage’s novel, about the unspoken, sometimes unacknowledged emotions that can sway people’s actions. Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons play ranching brothers in 1920s Montana – charismatic alpha male Phil and taciturn, decent George. After George brings home new bride Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Phil’s initial jealousy ebbs as he mentors the boy in the ways of the cowboy. An undercurrent of homoerotic tension – underused in the genre – persists in a deep, dark tale. Wednesday 1 December, Netflix
***
Parasite
This 2020 Oscar best picture winner was a surprise international breakout hit for South Korea director Bong Joon-ho, coming after his inventive but unprofitable sci-fi dramas Snowpiercer and Okja. In a subversive story of power and privilege, the down-at-heel Kim clan (led by the great Song Kang-ho as the father) stumble on to the idea of usurping the domestic staff of the wealthy Park family after the son becomes the English tutor to the Parks’ daughter. Many a delicious twist and turn follows in a thrilling satire with more than a hint of Losey’s The Servant.
Saturday 27 November, 10pm, Channel 4
***
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut
One can only hope that this 2019 restoration is Francis Ford Coppola’s final tinker with his wildly ambitious, seminal Vietnam war drama. The “Goldilocks edit” – longer than the 1979 original, shorter than the 2001 Redux take – retains the encounter with the French colonials from Redux that adds historical breadth to the tragic story of America’s anti-communist endeavours and removes an unnecessary second Playboy Bunnies sequence. But in whatever form, it’s an overwhelming visual and aural journey into humanity’s worst impulses.
Saturday 27 November, 12.15am, BBC One
***
The Columnist
A superb Katja Herbers (from TV’s Westworld and Evil) heads Ivo van Aart’s blackly comic horror about the perils of the comments section. Her sweet-hearted Dutch journalist, Femke Boot, becomes obsessed by abusive, anonymous online trolls, particularly after discovering her neighbour is one of them. This inspires Femke to take up a particularly brutal form of cancelling, while she falls for a horror author who is, conversely, a genuinely nice guy. The film follows through on its premise, possibly beyond reason, but it’s a fun, viperish, bloody ride.
Saturday 27 November, 1.50am, Film4
***
14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible
The former Gurkha and SBS commando Nimsdai Purja’s attempt to climb every mountain in the world above 8,000m in just seven months is the inspiring subject of this documentary. The challenge (which he dubs “Project Possible”) is also driven by a desire to place climbers from Nepal in their rightful place in the firmament of the sport. Nimsdai smilingly leads his all-Nepali team into the high-altitude “death zone”, where the most extreme physical and mental challenges await.
Monday 29 November, Netflix
***
Nowhere Special
Largely neglected during the ins and outs of lockdown earlier this year, Uberto Pasolini’s tragic drama is an exceptional achievement. James Norton plays gentle Northern Irish window cleaner John, single father to Daniel Lamont’s watchful young boy Michael. He is also terminally ill with cancer, and so sets out to find suitable parents to adopt his son after he dies. The weight of sadness in his search could have been too oppressive, but Pasolini’s sensitive directorial touch (the window symbolism is never overdone) and Norton’s nuanced performance make this a real treasure.
Wednesday 1 December, 10.30am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
Godzilla vs Kong
The fourth film in the recently minted “MonsterVerse” pits the two big beasts against each other for more tsunami-inducing, skyscraper-dismantling action. Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall and Bryan Tyree Henry join the returning Millie Bobby Brown as concerned bystanders, while Adam Wingard orchestrates the B-movie action. The real baddies are, of course, the Earth-despoiling humans, and the dino and ape are just there to make the military-industrial complex see sense … mostly by smashing things up.
Friday 3 December, 10.15am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
• The caption on the Parasite photo in this article was amended on 27 November 2021. It shows Park So-dam and Choi Woo-shik, not “Gisaeng Chung and So-Dam Park” as an earlier version said.
