Top films to watch on TV this week

WEDNESDAY

Fight Club (1999) Film4, 10.50p.m. An insomniac office worker (Edward Norton) is tired of his boring day job and spends his evenings crashing support groups for illnesses he doesn’t have. However, when he meets mysterious soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on a plane back from one of his business trips, they establish a very different kind of club where similarly frustrated men come to vent their anger in the form of bare-knuckle fighting.

With a star-studded cast, including Helena Bonham Carter in what was then seen as a huge departure from her period movie roles, director David Fincher’s pitch-black comedy became an instant cult classic. In fact, author Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the book on which Fight Club is based, has even said that he thinks the film is an improvement on his novel.

THURSDAY

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) ITV4, 10.05p.m.

Jonathan Demme’s terrifying 1991 treatment of the Thomas Harris novel is one of only three films to sweep the ‘ big five’ Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Jodie Foster plays FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is eager to please her superior, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). He implores Clarice to earn the trust of cannibal murderer Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to track down a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), who kidnaps women then skins his victims.

In a series of charged conversations, closely monitored by Baltimore State Hospital director Dr Chilton (Anthony Heald), Starling allows herself to understand the mind set of Buffalo Bill and anticipate where he might strike next.

FRIDAY

Men (2022) Film4, 10.45p.m. Emotionally brittle widow Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) is haunted by nightmarish flashbacks to her husband James’s (Paapa Essiedu) grim death. To escape, Harper rents a manor house in the sleepy village of Coston. The bumbling owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear, who plays all the village’s men), politely assures Harper than she won’t need to lock the front door.

During a rain-sodden gallivant around nearby woods, the widow encounters a naked vagrant. Events in Coston whirl out of control and Harper telephones good friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) for emotional ballast.

Men is a phantasmagorical nightmare that saturates a bloodthirsty battle of the sexes with grief, psychological manipulation and toxic masculinity.

SATURDAY

Oppenheimer (2023) Sky Cinema Premiere, 11.40a.m. & 8p.m.

General Leslie Groves Jr (Matt Damon) spearheads the Manhattan Project to research and develop a devastating weapon capable of ending the Second World War. The military man appoints J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as scientific director despite his personal ties to Communist Party members. Oppenheimer’s biologist wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) joins other families in New Mexico to witness the dawn of a new age of self-destruction, culminating in the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Christopher Nolan’s directorial brio sustains an ambitious but dramatically necessary three-hour running time in this epic, which deservedly won Best Picture at the recent Academy Awards. His verve is matched by Murphy’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the son of German Jewish immigrants, who feels personally compelled to act.

SUNDAY

Spartacus (1960) ITV4, 5.15p.m. Stanley Kubrick’s epic about Roman slaves in revolt won four Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actor for Peter Ustinov. He joins an all-star cast including Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and Jean Simmons.

The slave Spartacus (Douglas) is spared from a death sentence by the wily Batiatus (Ustinov), who trains the condemned man at his academy as a gladiator, to fight to the death for the entertainment of the rich and the powerful including Gracchus (Laughton) and his scheming successor Crassus (Olivier).

Enraged by how little the Empire values human life, Spartacus leads an uprising with Antoninus (Tony Curtis) at his side, but the valiant slaves are no match for Crassus, who desires Spartacus’s wife Varinia (Simmons).

MONDAY

Nowhere Special (2020) BBC2,

11.15p.m.

Award-winning Italian filmmaker Uberto Pasolini draws inspiration from true events for a life-affirming portrait of enduring love and sacrifice between father and son. Thirty-five-year-old window cleaner John (James Norton) has dedicated himself to raising his four-yearold son Michael (Daniel Lamont) in the absence of a mother, who left when the boy was born. The bond between parent and child is seemingly unbreakable, founded on simple routines that reflect the beautiful simplicity of John and Michael’s relationship.

Fate deals John a cruel blow and he is given just a few months to live. Without any family to turn to, he decides to conceal the harrowing truth from Michael and to spend his final weeks searching for a new family to cherish his boy when he is gone.

TUESDAY

Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Film4, 6.45p.m.

Gurinder Chadha’s unabashedly feelgood comedy is a hugely entertaining mix of East Is East and Billy Elliot, about a young woman striving to realise her dreams on and off the soccer pitch. Eighteen-year-old Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) is a hard-working English-Indian girl with one abiding passion: David Beckham. More than anything, she wants to join her idol on the football pitch, but her parents (Anupam Kher, Shaheen Khan) will never accept a football player for a daughter.

Nagra makes us fall in love with plucky Jess from the get-go, and there’s strong support from Keira Knightley, but Khan and Juliet Stevenson steal the movie as the girls’ no-nonsense mothers. The script scores countless belly laughs, laced with tears for the rousing finale.