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15 hours ago
7
Pick of the week
The King Tide
Like The Wicker Man from the islanders’ point of view, plus a dash of Celtic myth, Christian Sparkes’s dark fable is a slow-burning treat. A baby washes up in a boat after a storm, and is adopted by Grace (Lara Jean Chorostecki) and Bobby (Clayne Crawford), the mayor of an isolated isle dependent on fishing. Ten years later, the girl, Isla (Alix West Lefler), turns out to have healing powers, as well as the ability to attract large shoals of fish. But when she loses her magic, the community starts to panic about the end of their traditional way of life and demand Isla saves them. A cautionary tale about what happens when a child’s welfare conflicts with the common good.
Easter Sunday, Paramount+
Lightyear
This is the film that (fictionally) inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy in Toy Story – but Pixar’s 2022 meta-animation takes a different trajectory to its forebear, visually and comedically. We meet space ranger Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans) as his mistake leads his spaceship to crash on a dangerous planet. Test-flights of a new hyperdrive lead to time dilation, so his ground crew age more quickly than him. Then Emperor Zurg appears … Buzz here is smarter than his plastic avatar, and the action is in the stars not the suburbs, but it retains that Pixar focus on the strength of family.
Saturday 19 April, 5.40pm, BBC One
The Game
What do you get the man who has everything for his birthday? How about an existential crisis? David Fincher’s tightly wound 1997 thriller about banker Nicholas Van Orton delivers peak Michael Douglas – a smug man brought low but learning valuable lessons. The gift of a mysterious game by his brother Conrad (Sean Penn) is the start of a dark few days of the soul for Nicholas, as a series of increasingly fraught role-playing scenarios (or are they actually real?) – bring up memories of their father’s suicide and focus his mind on his own empty life.
Saturday 19 April, 9pm, Legend Xtra
Oliver!
Who will buy this wonderful movie? Lionel Bart’s musical version of the Charles Dickens novel sidelines a lot of the novel’s darkness and social edge, but when you’ve got fantastic, earwormy tunes such as Food, Glorious Food, Consider Yourself and You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two it’s hard not to prioritise pleasure. Carol Reed’s colourful adaptation is well served by Ron Moody’s sneaky Fagin and a menacing Oliver Reed as Sikes, while Jack Wild’s spirited Dodger makes up for a relatively insipid Oliver – a fault of Dickens, not angelic youngster Mark Lester.
Easter Sunday, 3.40pm, Channel 4
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Accident
The second of three collaborations between gimlet-eyed writer Harold Pinter and expat US director Joseph Losey is a calculated study in toxic masculinity. Dirk Bogarde is superb as self-absorbed married Oxford don Stephen. After a car crash kills his favoured student William (Michael York), flashbacks about their relationship and William’s girlfriend Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) unfurl a story of entitlement, temptation and near-sociopathy in his insular academic world.
Monday 21 April, 9.05pm, Talking Pictures TV
They Live
John Carpenter’s pulpy 1988 sci-fi action flick is also a hotbed of anticapitalist sentiment. Itinerant worker Nada (wrestler Roddy Piper, a low-budget Arnie) comes to Los Angeles seeking employment but, after donning a pair of special sunglasses, stumbles on a conspiracy involving hidden messages on billboards and shop fronts and in magazines telling people to “Consume”, “Watch TV” and “Obey” (the banknotes say: “This is your god”). Also, some folk look like warmed-up skeletons. Have aliens invaded? A fun mix of politics and punchups.
Friday 25 April, 12.05am, Talking Pictures TV
Amores Perros
The title translates as “Love’s a bitch” but there is also a lot of dog appreciation in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s intense drama about desire, loss and blood-soaked revenge. Three stories collide in a Mexico City car crash: Octavio (Gael García Bernal) loves his brother’s neglected wife and enters illegal dog fights to fund their escape; model Valeria (Goya Toledo) breaks her leg in the auto accident then her pooch vanishes under the floorboards of her new flat; and the tramp-like El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría) has a cohort of canines but is also a hitman for a cop.
Friday 25 April, 12.25am, Film4
