From famous Olympian to prisoner of war
When fact is stranger than fiction – Damon Smith chooses true stories to watch this week
Unbroken
(15, 132 mins)
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
Based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken documents the extraordinary true story of distance runner Louis Zamperini, who competed at the 1936 Olympic Games, survived a plane crash during the Second World War and then suffered at the hands of the Japanese in a POW camp.
Director Angelina Jolie’s admiration for her subject is evident in every gorgeously crafted frame of this life-affirming biopic, which is blessed with Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography and an elegiac score from composer Alexandre Desplat.
Wince-inducing scenes of cruelty warrant the film’s 15 certificate, but the violence always serves the narrative and is never gratuitous.
Boy Erased (15, 110 mins)
Streaming on Netflix
In 2004, 19-year-old Baptist preacher’s son Garrard Conley
willingly entered a Love In Action facility in Tennessee to purge the homosexuality which put him at odds with his family’s religious zeal. Conley’s nightmarish experiences of conversion therapy informed a best-selling memoir, Boy Erased.
Writer-director Joel Edgerton sensitively plunders this heartfelt text for a deeply moving and unsentimental dramatisation.
The film-maker casts himself as the pious counsellor in charge of malleable minds, who are encouraged to chant “I am using sexual sin and homosexuality to fill a God-shaped void in my life”.
Words cut to the bone and Lucas Hedges is heart-breaking as the teenage witness to controversial practices.
Dark Waters (12, 122 mins)
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
A dogged fight for justice lasting more than 20 years exposes shady business practices and corporate greed in Dark Waters.
Inspired by a New York Times magazine article, director Todd Haynes’ slow-burning thriller details the ripple effect of a cover-up in 1970s West Virginia, where the man-made PFOA chemical used in the production of Teflon may have leaked into the water supply.
By the time the end credits roll and a title card reveals the shocking extent of the chemical spill, our hackles are raised and any traces of PFOA in our bloodstream boil over with indignation.