Grim January
Our pick of the films and shows to download or stream.
So, you could watch a bunch of jolly comedies in a bid to beat the January blues. But really, what’s the point? It still won’t be Christmas any more and you’ll still be skint. Instead, why not give your smile muscles the month off and wallow in some prime cinematic misery? There’s plenty out there in the digital ether – not least the bleakest musical since Mariah Carey’s Glitter,
Les Misérables (2012, HHHH, Netflix). Arguably the movie peaks early doors with Anne Hathaway anguishing her way through ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, but there’s still plenty more to endure, including massacred peasants and watery suicide. Sticking with topping yourself, A Long Way Down (2014,
HHH, Netflix) is centred on that too with four would-be-jumpers forming a pact to wait (otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a movie, would there?).
Starred Up (2013, HHHH, Sky Movies On Demand) might sound like some all-singing, all-dancing jazz-hands extravaganza, but is actually one of the best prison movies since Scum. The father-son stuff wouldn’t be out of a place in a ’30s melodrama, but so well-played (by Ben Mendelsohn and lead Jack O’Connell) you’ll think you’re watching a doc. Tying in handily with the early Jan release of his stunning
Birdman (see Screen), two of Mexican hotshot Alejandro González Iñárritu’s earlier works are available on Mubi. And both are grim as hell. In his multi-stranded breakout Amores Perros (2000, HHHH) dead dogs litter the landscape like fallen autumn leaves. Meanwhile, 21 Grams (2006, HHHH) is so downbeat that the bit where Naomi Watts starts battering Benicio Del Toro with a wooden lamp is one of the lighter moments.
Over on Picturebox, we have Ben Stiller being Grinch-y in LA story
Greenberg (2010, HHHH), Jim Carrey being an actual Grinch in the film of the same name (2000, HHHH) and Anthony Perkins being a prime candidate for The Hotel Inspector in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960, HHHHH).
And on Virgin Movies there’s more parenting issues in The Place Beyond
The Pines (2012, HHHH), plus Gary Oldman in the engrossingly gloomy
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, HHHH), where everyone from Colin Firth to Benedict Cumberbatch really looks like they got coal for Christmas.