MOVIE treats you don’t need a cinema to enjoy
41. CATHERINE THE GREAT
Catherine Deneuve is on top form in The Truth, which should have been in cinemas now but instead can be streamed and downloaded from Curzon Home Cinema. She plays an aging and self-aggrandising giant of French cinema about to publish her memoirs. Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke star, and the enjoyable drama plays out in an authentic mixture of English and subtitled French. curzonhomecinema.com
42. A BIT TOO CLOSE TO HOME?
With a dreadful topicality, new movie Vivarium – available on most digital platforms – is about a young couple trapped in a suburban house that they literally cannot escape. Whatever Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) do, they always end up back at No 9. A little derivative, but nicely visualised. play.google.com
43. ARRIVING HOT FROM THE CINEMAS
Universal reacted with impressive speed to the sudden closure of most cinemas, and moved three of their most recent releases – The Invisible Man, The
Hunt and Emma – on to digital platforms, where they will soon be joined by the family-friendly
Trolls World Tour. Download prices are around €18, which sounds steep until you remember that you’d probably be buying two to four tickets at the cinema. Emma is the pick of the bunch. skystore.com, play. google.com, amazon.co.uk,
44. THREE SPARKLING NETFLIX GEMS
Remember when we all groaned at the prospect of watching Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, all three-and-a-half hours of it? Well, we’re not groaning quite so loudly now. It’s still on Netflix, where you might also want to catch up with Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy.
The Two Popes – the brilliant picture that won Oscar nods for Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce – is there too. netflix.com
45. THE DEADLY VIRUS STORY IT’S OK TO ENJOY
Social media is full of appropriate films to watch while we’re all self-isolating. Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, from 2011, is the all-too realistic story of a deadly virus that suddenly sweeps the world. Digital downloads widely available. apple.com/itunes, amazon.co.uk, skystore.com
46. SEARCH FOR YOUR FAVOURITE MOVIE
Desperate to watch an old favourite but can;t find it? Type in the title at FindAnyFilm and it will track down a physical copy or a download. findanyfilm.com
47. LIGHTS, CAMERA... INACTION!
Always wanted to sound a bit more knowledgeable about film?
The BBC has Mark Kermode’s three-part series Secrets Of
Cinema running on BBC4, while, on BBC Sounds, there’s Matthew
Sweet’s exploration of existential angst in cinema – Lights, Camera,
Inaction. Robert De Niro’s question from Taxi Driver – ‘You STARS: Catherine Deneuve in The Truth, Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita;
Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver looking at me?’ – has never seemed harder to answer. bbc.co.uk/sounds
48. GOING FOR A SONG
For what the distributors describe as ‘a limited time’, Military Wives with Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan is being made available on all the main premium on-demand sites. The funny, moving but ultimately uplifting tale of Army wives who form a choir while their husbands are away in Afghanistan is pretty much perfect for these difficult times. amazon. co.uk, skystore. com
49. AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
For those in search of something a little different, MUBI and BFI Player are worth a look. The former is a curated subscription streaming service with current highlights Steven Shainberg’s Secretary and Park Chan-Wook’s
Vengeance trilogy. BFI Player combines recent new releases with art-house classics, such as
Betty Blue, Maurice and La Dolce Vita. Go to mubi.com, player.bfi. org.uk
50. ENJOY THIS JOKER WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED
Last month, Hildur Guonadottir deservedly won the Oscar for Best Original Score for Joker. If you’ve forgotten what that haunting, mournful music sounded like, remind yourself with the original soundtrack. amazon.co.uk
51. IS IT AS GOOD AS THE BOOK?
Always wanted to be the person who grandly opines, ‘Of course, it’s not as good as the book’? Now is the time to get ahead of the game. Agatha Christie’s Death On The
Nile, Francis Hodgson Burnett’s
The Secret Garden, AJ Finn’s
The Woman In The Window, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl and Frank Herbert’s Dune will stand you in good stead over coming months, in preparation for when the forthcoming adaptations finally hit the cinemas. easons.com
52. WHICH WITCH WILL YOU WATCH?
A new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s
The Witches is currently due out in October. If that’s too long to wait, downloads of the 1990 version starring Anjelica Huston are available.
Better still, track down the audio book version read by Simon Callow. Sheer joy. amazon.co.uk
53. HOW THEY CORNERED HOLLYWOOD’S TOP PREDATOR
Still wondering how Harvey Weinstein is now beginning a 23year sentence for rape and sexual assault? Two powerful books help provide the horrifying answers – Ronan Farrow’s Catch And Kill and She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. waterstones.com
54. LEAVING THE HOUSE? DON’T BE A DONKEY, SAYS ARNIE
One of the unexpected joys of this period has been the sight of film stars popping up on social media to share brief tidings of quarantined joy. Personal favourites to date include Arnold Swarzenegger telling us to stay at home, with the help of a pet donkey and pony, and Judi Dench telling us to ‘keep on laughing’ while playing with some very silly pop-up dog-ears. twitter.com
55. OH, BROTHER, NOW THAT’S A HOLLYWOOD MEMOIR
Diane Keaton was never going to write a conventional Hollywood memoir.
Brother & Sister tells the moving story of her relationship with her troubled younger brother, Randy, who battled drink, divorce and mental illness, and is now suffering from dementia. easons. com