Top films to watch on TV this week
WEDNESDAY
Drive (2011) Sony Movies, 9p.m.
Driver (Ryan Gosling) performs death-defying stunts in big-budget films but when he’s not on a set, he works as a mechanic for his good friend Shannon (Bryan Cranston) – and also performs illegal jobs, which invariably involve high-speed getaways from crime scenes.
When one heist goes wrong, Driver is marked for death at the hands of hoodlums Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman). There are romantic complications when Driver falls for pretty neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan), whose husband Standard Gabriel (Oscar Isaac) has just been released from prison.
Director Nicolas Winding Refn hits the accelerator in the opening scenes and barely touches the brakes as the plot skids with sickening inevitability towards its bloody resolution.
THURSDAY
Educating Rita (1983) BBC4, 9p.m.
Bored Liverpool hairdresser Rita (Julie Walters) enrols in an Open University English course. Her tutor is Frank (Michael Caine), a hard-drinking poet who is initially sceptical, but comes to see his new pupil’s frank opinions and natural intelligence as a breath of fresh air. She’s slightly in awe of him, but as she finds her feet and starts mixing with other pupils, the dynamics of their relationship change.
Although Willie Russell’s play, which was written as a two-hander, has been opened out for the screen, the film ultimately depends on the relationship between Frank and Rita. Fortunately, Walters and Caine, who were both deservedly nominated for Oscars, are perfect in their roles, making the growing friendship completely believable. The result is a smart, funny and very touching comedy drama, filmed entirely in Dublin, in particular Trinity College.
FRIDAY
Empire of the Sun (1987) BBC2, 11.20p.m.
This lavish adaptation of JG Ballard’s autobiographical novel is one of Steven Spielberg’s most underrated films. Long before anybody thought he’d make a suitable Batman, a 13-year-old Christian Bale took the role of Jim, a young English boy in war-torn Shanghai.
His life is turned upside down when the Japanese take over and he becomes separated from his parents. He’s eventually captured and forced to survive the
terrors of internment alone. The previously spoilt young lad learns a few harsh life lessons, but displays a remarkable determination to survive which rubs off on those around him.
The top-drawer cast includes John Malkovich, Nigel Havers, Miranda Richardson, Leslie Phillips and Burt Kwouk, while John Williams, as usual, excels with his stirring soundtrack.
SATURDAY
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut (1979) BBC2, 11.00p.m.
Director Francis Ford Coppola added 30 extra minutes to his Vietnam war epic, and now there’s a chance to see it in all its glory. Martin Sheen plays Captain Willard, an assassin assigned to find and kill the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who is believed to have descended into insanity.
Winner of two Oscars, including Best Cinematography, and two Baftas, it has gone on to influence countless movies, from Tropic Thunder and Avatar, to the more recent Ad Astra. Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford and Laurence Fishburne also star, while Robert Duvall has a memorable turn as the surf-obsessed Colonel Kilgore.
SUNDAY
Sorry Angel (2018) BBC4, 10.00p.m.
Love moves in mysterious ways in writer-director Christophe Honore’s 1990s-set gay romance. HIV-positive writer Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) has resigned himself to the idea that he
will never forge a meaningful connection with another man. He puts up emotional defences as protection until he wanders into a cinema and catches a glimpse of the much younger Arthur ( Vincent Lacoste) in the dark. Unlike Jacques, Arthur is at the beginning of his journey of self-discovery as a gay man and he is keen to explore every facet of his identity away from the close-knit small town where he grew up.
The two strangers enjoy each other’s company and agree to meet again. The men’s feelings intensify but Jacques has commitments to his dying ex-lover Marco (Thomas Gonzalez).
MONDAY
Atomic Blonde (2017) Film4, 9.00p.m.
In 1989 Berlin, KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin (Johannes Johannesson) shoots dead MI6 agent James Gascoigne (Sam Hargrave) on the snow-laden streets and steals a microfilm containing the names and locations of active field agents. MI6 chief Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and his gruff CIA counterpart Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman) pressgang elite British spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) to locate Bakhtin and retrieve the microfilm. Her contact in Berlin is renegade station chief David Percival (James McAvoy).
Atomic Blonde is an action-packed spy caper hard-wired with 1980s nostalgia. Director John Leitch plays to his strengths as a stunt co-ordinator, pushing the cast to their physical limits with each exhilarating flurry of punches, kicks, tooth-shattering face plants and acrobatic tumbles.
MONDAY
Unsane (2018) Film4, 9.00p.m.
Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) has moved from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape the barrage of text messages from a mentally unstable admirer called David Strine (Joshua Leonard). Always looking over her shoulder, Sawyer visits Highland Creek Behavioural Centre, which offers support to victims of stalking. She fills in a series of forms to complete her treatment then discovers that her hastily scrawled signature has condemned her to a living nightmare.
As she queues for medication, Sawyer is horrified to discover that another nurse bears a spooky resemblance to David. Shot entirely on a smartphone, director Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane is a hallucinogenic mind trip, which generates sparks of claustrophobia from the restricted screen framing and occasional blurring of images.