TV Films Catherine Woulfe
A Guide to the Week’s Viewing
SATURDAY JANUARY 13
Wild (Three, 9.00pm). Who among us hasn’t felt like hefting a huge pack onto their back and trudging up the nearest mountain alone? Reese Witherspoon shows how it’s done – and what she can do – as she treks 1100 very hairy miles towards redemption, in a film based on Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 memoir. Laura Dern plays Strayed’s mother in a series of gorgeous, golden-lit flashbacks. Both were nominated for acting Oscars and the film pulled in an impressive 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. It dipped out on a Best Film nomination, though – sexism, Strayed believes. (2014)
Untitled (Sky Arts, 020, 8.30pm). Film-maker Michael Glawogger died of malaria in April 2014, part way through what he considered his “most extreme project” – travelling for a year and filming whatever came his way. He made it to four and a half months, ticking off the Balkans, Italy and North and West Africa. After Glawogger’s death, his collaborator and editor Monika Willi put this film together using his raw footage and text messages. He had always fancied the title Untitled. It would be “a documentary about nothing”, he said, born of his compulsion to make a film “that never comes to rest”. Poetic, no? (2017)
SUNDAY JANUARY 14
10 Things I Hate About You (TVNZ 2, 12.00am). Lurch back to the golden age of 90s cinema with beautiful young brats Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A high-school comedy (don’t let that put you off) based on The Taming of the Shrew (ditto). Pipped at the box office by The Matrix. Truly, those were the days. (1999)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Maori TV, 8.30pm). “I, too, can command the wind, sir!” Cate Blanchett is fire and ice – and a hurricane, of course – reprising Queen Elizabeth I in this magnificent telling of the latter part of the monarch’s reign. The Oscar for costuming was a given: Blanchett looks by turns a fairy queen and a Furie. Geoffrey Rush and Clive Owen just look awed to be in her presence. (2007)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (Sky Movies Premiere, 030, 8.30pm). Actual tagline: “This summer, the galaxy won’t save itself”. Dammit, galaxy! Do better!
Happily, that zany Marvel gang of Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper et al are once again on hand to save the day. Plus, they go digging through Peter Quill’s parentage and discover a rather large daddy issue. (2017)
MONDAY JANUARY 15
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
(Prime, 8.30pm). “You watch him on the screen and you see a catlike presence,” Jason Scott Lee said of martial-arts icon Bruce Lee (unrelated), whom he plays in this biopic. “He seemed to be able to explode, physically, like a firecracker in a single second.” But there’s much more to see here than Bruce Lee being awesome.
His widow, Linda, wrote the biography that underpins the film – and also of their struggles as an interracial couple and of his crushing disappointment to see a white man cast in Kung Fu, the series Lee helped develop on the understanding he would play the lead. (1993)
TUESDAY JANUARY 16
The Blair Witch Project (Sky Movies Greats, 033, 8.30pm). Three film students take their cameras into a spooky wood to make a doco about a legendary witch. They do a lot of running with said cameras, which makes for a pretty shaky experience. Then there’s all the terrified heavy breathing as they film pieces to camera while huddled in their tents. The dialogue was improvised and the conceit – which spawned a genre and took a lot of people in – is that the film is made entirely from footage discovered a year after the group’s disappearance. (1999)
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 17
Peter Pan (Sky Movies Disney, 037, 7.00pm). Peter’s a narcissistic little toerag and Wendy’s so painfully dutiful I suspect she grew up to become the woman from the Better Living ads. Worse: the word “savages” is used throughout; and at one point, the boys go hunting for Indians. But … mermaids and fairies and pirates and a tick-tock croc! A dog who does the housework and looks after the kids! Smee! Plus that pacifying quality possessed of all the old Disney greats. (1953)
Batman Returns (Prime, 8.30pm). The one with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny DeVito as the Penguin. Dark and violent – Tim Burton directs – it was also the last time Michael Keaton donned the batsuit. At least it was a goodie: this time his cape has a fancy flip-out thingy that turns it into a glider. (1992)
THURSDAY JANUARY 18
A Royal Night Out (Sky Movies Extra, 031, 8.30pm). In London, in 1945, their cooped-up Royal Highnesses, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, are allowed out – incognito and each accompanied by a single army officer – to celebrate the declaration of peace. Their curfew is 1am. Yeah, right. Margaret’s the first to peel off, of course, for a romp through nightclubs and brothels. Elizabeth, a military attendant in tow, is not far behind. It’s all very silly, charming (every second word is “Lilibet”) and harmless. Sarah Gadon, now on Netflix as Grace in Alias Grace, plays Elizabeth, and
Bel Powley Margaret. Rupert Everett and Emily Watson couple up as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Want the disappointing but true version? The princesses were allowed out, but in a group of 16, and they made it back by curfew. (2015)
FRIDAY JANUARY 19
Man on a Ledge (TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm). Dumb fun. To prove a point, ex-con Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) hops out of a hotel room and spends a lot of time on a ledge 20 storeys above New York City. I spent a lot of time hoping he had good grip on his shoes – and wishing that the police negotiator (Elizabeth Banks) would make like any woman in a time of crisis and tie back her huge swishy hair. (2012)