How to have a magical night IN at the movies
Cinema off limits? Here’s our guide to the best recent movies you can watch at home
We KeeP hearing that the nation is facing its biggest crisis since World War II, yet one of the things the British do during challenging times is go to the pictures. Cinema attendance rocketed during the war, and the war years yielded some wonderful films such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and David Lean’s Brief encounter. That’s not an option this time. Cinemas are closed, releases postponed, production halted. Luckily, we live in an era of streaming and downloading services, so that unique brand of pure escapism which great movies provide is increasingly available to us at home, just when we need it most.
It might be, in the coming weeks, that more and more major studios and distributors will make planned cinema releases accessible at the click of a few buttons. universal has already started the ball rolling, announcing that its Dreamworks animation, Trolls: World Tour, will be available on-demand on the same day as its proposed theatrical release in April.
Here, until the cinemas re-open and life starts getting back to normal, I will focus on what is available to you at home, starting this week with five different films of varying types that might have passed you by, and didn’t all get the critical and commercial attention they deserved.
They’re all terrific in various ways, the perfect solution if you need to lose an afternoon or fill an evening.
Happy viewing! GREAT WESTERN (15, Netflix)
If you’re the sort of person who prefers a meaty novel to a collection of short stories, you might object to the format of this singular film, written and directed by Joel and ethan Coen.
on the other hand, it gives us half a dozen bursts, for the price of one, of the Coen brothers’ glorious creativity. The film is divided into six chapters, all featuring different actors ( including Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson and Tom Waits) telling different stories.
All that unites them is that they each tell a tale of frontier life in the old West, starting with the chapter after which the picture is named.
Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a roving troubadour even quicker on the draw than he is with a lyric — think George formby crossed with Billy the Kid.
All these chapters are marvellous, showcasing the Coens’ quirkiness and storytelling flair, but the one I loved most is The Gal Who Got rattled, featuring Zoe Kazan as an unworldly, anxious wagon- train passenger on her way to an arranged marriage with her brother’s business partner. It’s sweet, tragic and unforgettable.
GEM OF A DRAMA UNCUT GEMS (15, Netflix)
ANoTHer pair of brothers, the Safdies, wrote and directed this extraordinary film, which makes you feel as if you’re plugged into an electric socket even watching it. Adam Sandler is the source of most of the energy, giving a half-crazed but riveting performance as a New york diamond dealer, an incorrigible ducker, diver and compulsive gambler called Howard ratner.
Howard has managed to import an uncut black opal from an ethiopian mine. He sees it as his passport to riches, but first he is talked into lending it to a famous client — basketball player Kevin Garnett, playing himself — who is convinced the rock brings him luck.
In its wild, freeform way, full of signature Safdie tics such as overlapping dialogue, the film follows Howard as he tries to appease his creditors (who include his menacing brother-in-law), his long- suffering wife ( Idina Menzel, an awfully long way from frozen’s Princess elsa), and his sweetly loyal mistress (Julia fox).
It’s a challenging spectacle in many ways. In fact, my wife wanted to duck out after the first ten minutes, but my sons and I persuaded her to stick with it — and she’s glad she did.
WEIGH TO GO BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON (15, Amazon Prime)
PLAyWrIGHT Paul Downs Colaizzo was inspired by the experience of a close friend, a real-life Brittany, to write and direct this hugely engaging comedy, his feature-film debut, which reminded me in some ways of 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding. That’s as good a recommendation as any.
In the film, Brittany (Jillian Bell) is 28, single and overweight, with worryingly high blood pressure.
After deciding that she’s fed up being the fat, jolly sidekick to all her skinny friends, she resolves to run the New york City marathon.
It becomes her passionate goal, to which end she loses lots of weight, acquires a boyfriend and learns a number of truths about herself and
Others — for instance, that perfection exists only in the eye of the beholder. Everyone has issues of one sort of another.
All of this sounds like it could be cheesier than all the snacks she keeps munching before her big lifestyle change, but actually it’s not cheesy at all. Colaizzo’s whipsmart script, and Bell’s delicious performance, keep it real.
RUFF DIAMOND ISLE OF DOGS (PG, Apple TV)
I’m excited about Wes Anderson’s next film, the French dispatch, not least because his collaborators on the story are Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, who helped him write Isle Of dogs. Like so many of Anderson’s films, such as 2014’s the Grand Budapest Hotel, this is beguilingly funny and clever.
It’s a stop-motion animation set largely on a godforsaken island just off the coast of Japan, to which all the canine inhabitants of a nearby city have been banished in a tide of hysteria following an epidemic of dog flu.
don’t worry, though; it’s not too disconcertingly topical. When the mayor’s young son decides that he misses his doggy bodyguard, he steals a light aircraft and flies to the island, cue some very funny adventures. In the meantime, a stray called Chief (voiced by Bryan Cranston) falls for the refined Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson). He’s her bit of ruff.
the cast also includes tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill murray, Edward Norton and even Yoko Ono, voicing a scientist called Yoko Ono. It’s that kind of film: strange, original and huge fun, if a little bit barking.
IT’LL GRAB YOU FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY (12, Amazon Prime)
NOT all wrestling films are gripping. Walk Like A Panther (2018) was dismal, a kind of feeble half- hour sitcom stretched, like Big daddy’s leotard, beyond endurance.
But this one is really delightful and, better still, it’s true, inspired by a Channel 4 documentary about a Norwich girl, Saraya- Jade Bevis (Florence Pugh), who became a star of World Wrestling Entertainment, the American showbiz behemoth known as WWE.
I promise you don’t need to love wrestling to love this film, which is very nicely written and directed by Stephen merchant. He pops up in it, too, as does its executive producer, former WWE giant dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson.
A fine cast also includes Nick Frost, Lena Headey and Jack Lowden as Saraya’s father, mother and brother, but it’s Pugh who deserves most of the plaudits. She wasn’t the most obvious young actress to cast as a wrestling champ, but she gives an absolute powerslam of a performance.