TV Films Ryan Holder
A Guide to the Week’s Viewing
SATURDAY MARCH 10
Back to the Future (Three, 7.55pm). When Ronald Reagan first watched Back to the
Future, he had the projectionist rewind the scene where Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) finds out who will be president of the United States in the future. “Ronald Reagan, the actor!?” he shouts in disbelief. President Reagan enjoyed it so much that he included the reference, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”, in his State of the Union address in 1986. One sly YouTube commenter added, “And we still don’t have roads.” (1985) Better Living Through Chemistry (Choice TV, 8.30pm). Doug Varney (Sam Rockwell) is what would now be called a “beta male”. He is pushed around at home by his spin-class wife (Michelle Monaghan) and bullied at work by his fatherin-law (Ken Howard). Then he meets an infamous motif, a bored trophy wife (Olivia Wilde), who sets him free. There is chemistry between them and that’s not counting the cocktail of pharmaceuticals they take together. An awful voice-over runs through the film, provided – bizarrely – by Jane Fonda, giving you a helping hand to the predictably schmaltzy ending.
Why? No one knows. (2014)
Colossal (Rialto, Sky 039, 8.30pm). In South Korea, a Godzilla-like monster crushes its way through a terrorised city. In New England, Gloria (Anne Hathaway) scratches her head. In TV footage, the monster does, too. Coincidence? I don’t think so. In a story that becomes blacker and funnier as it skids across genres, experimental director Nacho Vigalondo makes literal the metaphor of interpersonal manipulation. Jason Sudeikis has a darker presence than usual. (2017)
Enemy of the State (TVNZ 2, 11.30pm). In 1998, Enemy of the State came to the big screen in the US. It told the story of Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith), a labour lawyer who unwittingly steps into the crosshairs of the National Security Agency (NSA). For what it thinks he knows, his every movement is watched, his reputation is smeared, and his life destroyed. Variety categorised the movie among the “conspiracy-paranoia pictures”, whereas the San Francisco Examiner derided its “preachy” tone and “Big Brother clichés”. All the while, unbeknown to our reviewers, the NSA’s machinery was being put into place to monitor a nation and hack the networks of democratically elected leaders around the world. Starring Gene Hackman and Jon Voight (in an evil caricature of former Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara). (1998)
SUNDAY MARCH 11
Money Monster (TVNZ 2, 8.30pm). It always amuses me when, in accounting for Donald Trump’s presence on the world stage, the global financial crisis is left off the balance sheet. If the glut of post-2008 outrage films is anything to go by, people are pissed off. In Money Monster, television finance expert Lee Gates (George Clooney) is taken hostage during a live broadcast. One of his followers, Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell), lost his life savings after the collapse of IBIS Clear Capital, whose stocks Gates had enthusiastically supported. So, Budwell straps an explosive vest to the man and they try to get to the bottom of where things went wrong. It turns out that there’s been some crookery. Director Jodie Foster, who was a star in Inside Man, seems to have combined the logic of that hostage drama with The Big Short, with mixed results. (2016)
Samba (Māori TV, 8.30pm). Samba, an encore to
The Intouchables by writing-directing team
Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, should be a relatively uncontroversial film. Troubled social worker Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) slowly falls in love with an illegal immigrant named Samba (Omar Sy) from Senegal just as he is ordered to leave France. However, since the film’s release, its message has grown more charged, as the far right rises in opposition to immigration all over Europe and, according to a 2017 poll, 61% of French people want all future immigration from Muslim-majority countries stopped. This would, of course, include Senegal, a country that was a French “possession” for a long time. (2014)
MONDAY MARCH 12
Michael Jackson’s This Is It (Prime, 8.30pm). See Michael Jackson strut his stuff in what ended up being his last concert. But is this it? Tyler Henry, E! Channel’s resident celebrity psychic, has just spoken to MJ about the events leading up to his death. Maybe we will finally learn what really happened to the King of Pop, in … the next episode. (2009)
THURSDAY MARCH 15
The Quiet American (Movies Classics, Sky 034, 8.30pm). In the midst of the Vietnam War, US Air Force officer and CIA agent Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) works undercover in the South. He meets British journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) and falls in love with his mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). And so a love triangle is formed, against the backdrop of America’s early and clandestine years in the war. Pyle’s character is thought to be based on Edward Lansdale, who helped to orchestrate the election of Ngo Dinh Diem to the South Vietnamese presidency and led the campaign to assassinate Fidel Castro and depose his Cuban Government, among other things. Like the 1958 classic, the film is based on Graham Greene’s novel of the same name. Release of The Quiet American was withheld for a year following the September 11 attacks as Miramax had concerns over its anti-imperial message. (2002)
FRIDAY MARCH 16
Hell or High Water (Rialto,
Sky 039, 8.30pm). The West in general and the US in particular have always had a certain fascination with frontier justice. In Hell or High Water, Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) rob branches of the Texas Midlands Bank to pay off unfair debts to the same bank, to stop it foreclosing on their family ranch. An oldfashioned Texas Ranger called Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), the other kind of justice, is hot on their tail. Director David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water is as much a tale of rural America’s economic strife as it is an action drama. (2016)