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THIS WEEK’S BEST FILMS
a scientist who aids his escape from a military facility and sets out to show him mankind is worth saving.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) (Sony Movies, 9pm)
A female assassin decides to quit the profession, get married and raise a family, only to be shot on her wedding day and left for dead. Four years later, she wakes up from a coma intent on revenge and sets off to wipe out her former colleagues. Her old boss Bill is her main target, but in the meantime she’ll make do with a couple of other hit-women.
WEDNESDAY
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) (Film4, 9pm)
Laidback gym-owner Peter La Fleur, played by Vince Vaughan, faces being put out of business by White Goodman, the maniacal owner of the neighbouring Globo-Gym. It seems that the only way Peter and his band of misfit customers can raise the $50,000 needed to save their beloved hangout is to win a dodgeball tournament.
Gangster Squad (2013) (ITV4, 11.10pm)
One-time boxer Mickey Cohen rules the roost in 1940s Los Angeles. Police chief Bill Parker is powerless to stop the rise of Cohen’s criminal fraternity so he approaches Sergeant John O’Mara to establish a covert team of officers, who are willing not only to bend the law but also to break it in order to restore law and order. O’Mara recruits his good friend Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) for this dangerous assignment but the mission is compromised when suave ladies’ man Wooters falls under the spell of Cohen’s squeeze, actress Grace Faraday (Emma Stone). Gangster Squad ultimately trades style over substance but Fleischer’s dramatisation of bullet-riddled history has its undeniable pleasures, including the chemistry between Stone and Gosling.
THURSDAY
Charade (1963) (Film4, 12.40pm)
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant make a delightful pairing in director Stanley Donen’s hugely enjoyable romantic thriller, which mixes stylish Hitchcock-esque intrigue with screwball comedy touches. Regina Lambert is considering divorcing her husband, but before
she can break the news, she discovers that he’s been murdered. What’s more, it turns out he was involved in a $250,000 robbery and his former accomplices think she can point them in the direction of the loot. The impressive supporting cast includes Walter Matthau and James Coburn.
Atomic Blonde (2017) (Film4, 9pm)
In 1989 Berlin, KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin shoots dead MI6 agent James Gascoigne on the snowladen streets and steals a microfilm containing the names and locations of active field agents. MI6 chief Eric Gray and his gruff CIA counterpart pressgang elite British spy Lorraine Broughton, played energetically by Charlize Theron, to locate Bakhtin and retrieve the microfilm. Her contact in Berlin is a renegade station chief.
FRIDAY
Happy Death Day (2017) (Film4, 9pm)
A murdered college student is forced to relive the gruesome day of her demise in Christopher Landon’s waggish and sprightly slasher, which splices uproarious comedy Groundhog Day with self-referential teen horror Scream. Gore frequently trumps giggles during Happy Death Day but the tantalising dramatic conceit of a distraught heroine stuck in a tragic groove provides screenwriter Scott Lobdell with a rich seam of black humour and female empowerment. He relishes killing off his central character in myriad grisly scenarios, including a farcical montage of slaughter set to a jaunty pop soundtrack.
Midnight Special (2016) (BBC2, 11.05pm)
Roy Tomlin has abducted his biological son, Alton, for reasons not yet known and is moving him at night in order to avoid attracting attention. A brief pit stop for petrol leads to devastation on an unimaginable scale and reveals some of the little boy’s powers. Michael Shannon stars as the father in this sci-fi thriller, desperate to get his son away from the cult that used to be his home, and whose leader has dispatched two disciples to bring the eight-year-old back. Roy is heading to the home of his wife Sarah. But it seems that the authorities are also trying to make sense of Alton’s abilities.