SEVEN FILMS TO SEE THIS WEEK
Son of Rambow Today, 8.30pm, Paramount Channel
Will Poulter made his big-screen debut in Garth Jennings’s bittersweet coming-of-age tale about two school friends trying to make a home-made sequel to Rambo movie First Blood, using borrowed home-video equipment and their fertile imaginations, in the early days of Thatcher’s Britain. Jennings worked on the film (based on his own childhood experiences in the 1980s) for several years, including a production break while he shot The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The movie had its premiere at Sundance, and received the seal of approval from David Morrell, original creator of the John Rambo character.
The Lebanese Rocket Society Tomorrow, 9.25pm, Sundance Channel
The 1960s was dominated by the competing United States/Soviet efforts to send a rocket into space, but it’s a little known fact that the Middle East’s first rocket was launched by members of Beirut’s Haigazian College Rocket Society in April 1961, three months before the Israeli government managed to launch the region’s first state-sponsored effort. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s 2012 documentary talks to some of the people behind the achievement, asks where they are now, and more importantly, why their work seems to have been all but forgotten.
Darkest Hour Tuesday, 8.50pm, OSN Movies First
Gary Oldman is in Oscar-winning form as Winston Churchill in this dramatisation of the early years of his reign as British prime minister, characterised mostly by his refusal to surrender to Nazi Germany as the Wehrmacht swept across Europe. Churchill is faced with opposition in his own government, many of whom wanted to negotiate peace with Germany, and even King George VI, who distrusted him over his track record as First Lord of the Admiralty and the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in the First World War. Yet the prime minister finds himself fighting on every front, as the war rages on for a further five years.
Winter’s Bone Wednesday, 8.30am, Star Movies
Debra Granik’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name manages to be simultaneously a crime thriller, a mystery and a family tear-jerker. Jennifer Lawrence was among the film’s four Oscar nominations for her performance as Ree, a teenage single mum who is also caring for her mentally ill mother. When Ree’s estranged, petty-criminal father skips bail, she has days to find him – or prove him dead – before the family’s home is seized by bail bondsmen. The film picked up the Grand Jury Prize at 2010’s Sundance Festival.
Jackie Thursday, 2.40am, OSN Movies First
Natalie Portman turns in an Oscarworthy performance in Pablo Larrain’s biopic of JFK’s media-darling wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, although she was ultimately unfortunate to lose out to Emma Stone, as
La La Land swept the board. The film follows Jackie’s final days as first lady, and the aftermath of her husband’s death, and features a solid supporting cast, including Peter Sarsgaard as JFK’s brother Robert, Greta Gerwig as the Kennedys’ social secretary Nancy, and John Hurt, in his final film before his death, as the couple’s priest.
American Psycho Friday, 11.05pm, OSN Movies
Mary Harron takes on Bret Easton Ellis’s brilliant 1991 novel, and hands a lead role to a then relatively unknown Christian Bale as suave psychopath Patrick Bateman. Bale heads up a cast that reads like a who’s who of indie cinema, including Jared Leto, Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny. Bale catches the emotionally detached, pop-culture-and-consumer-goods-obsessed serial killer of the title perfectly, and you will never listen to Huey Lewis and the News in the same way again once you have seen this grisly horror-comedy.
Salt of this Sea Saturday, 2.35pm, Sundance Channel
Annemarie Jacir’s 2008 drama was Palestine’s 2009 Oscars entry. Although it didn’t receive a final nomination, it can count Dubai International Film Festival among events that bestowed it with a slew of international prizes. The film stars Palestinian-American poet, author, performer and political activist Suheir Hammad as Soraya, an American-born Palestinian who heads back to her homeland on a mission to attempt to reclaim her family’s house and money, which were seized during the Naqba of 1948. Saleh Bakri – of The Band’s Visit, Giraffada, Wajib and Zinzana
fame – also stars.