The pick of the week’s films on Sky, Virgin & other platforms
ALIEN: COVENANT
We know what horrors lie in store for Katherine Waterston’s Ripley-like heroine and her crew on the colony ship Covenant, so brace yourself for another round of face-huggers, chest-bursters, and astronauts being chased down spaceship corridors by a slavering xenomorph. Michael Fassbender’s eerie blond android proves the movie’s best feature by far. (15,122min)
A KIND OF MURDER
An unhappily married architect (Patrick Wilson) begins stalking a suspected wife murderer little realising the consequences that lie in store in this twisty and twisted psychological thriller. Stylishly shot and perversely gripping, the film is based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The
Blunderer, and it is not hard to detect echoes of the author’s
Strangers on a Train. (15, 92min)
KING ARTHUR:
LEGEND OF THE SWORD
Director Guy Ritchie’s take on Arthurian myth is a mash-up of sword-and-sorcery action fantasy and geezers-on-amission caper. Charlie Hunnam’s Arthur is a Mockney badass, ducking and diving in 5th-century Londinium until he finally gets around to embracing his destiny as the son of Eric Bana’s King Uther Pendragon. (12,126min)
THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED)
PREMIERE (Available on Netflix from Fri) Sometimes painfully touching and sometimes painfully hilarious, this bittersweet New York comedy revolves around a hopelessly dysfunctional family. Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Elizabeth Marvel play the bickering adult offspring of
Dustin Hoffman’s patriarch. As the eldest son, Sandler gives his best performance in years, and his seething rivalry with his half-brother (Stiller) provides the film’s comic spine. (15,110min)
MISS SLOANE
Jessica Chastain plays a devious Washington DC lobbyist who takes on America’s gun lobby in this glossy but gripping political thriller. She keeps us on our toes every bit as much as her bewildered allies (including Mark Strong and Gugu Mbatha-raw) and irate foes (Michael Stuhlbarg, Sam Waterston and John Lithgow). Director John Madden keeps things taut and intriguing to the very end. (15,132min)
OUR SOULS AT NIGHT
Almost 40 years since their last screen pairing in 1979’s The
Electric Horseman, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda reunite for a cosy but charming romantic drama and prove that the passing years haven’t dimmed their chemistry one bit. They play widowed neighbours in small-town Colorado whose unruffled lives get shaken up after Fonda’s Addie turns up at the door of Redford’s Louis with a startling proposal… (Pg,103min)
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: SALAZAR’S REVENGE
Johnny Depp’s pirate captain Jack Sparrow is back, but his fifth screen adventure sees him playing a largely passive role in the plot. This time, a younger generation is at the helm of the story as Brenton Thwaites’ Henry Turner, son of Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann, sets out to free his father from a watery curse. (12,129min)
THE RED TURTLE
This enchantingly simple, quietly moving animated fable explores our relationship with nature through the tale of a shipwrecked castaway whose efforts to escape his desert island are repeatedly frustrated by a giant red turtle. The film blends exquisite handdrawn animation with wordless storytelling and the end result is utterly charming. (PG, 81min)
SLEEPLESS
Jamie Foxx’s devious Las Vegas police officer finds himself trying to evade cops and crooks alike as, in the course of a single day and night, he gets on the wrong side of Michelle Monaghan’s Internal Affairs investigator, Dermot Mulroney’s crooked casino owner and Scoot Mcnairy’s psychopathic mobster. The film’s relentless pace ensures the excitement rarely flags. (15, 95min)
THE VILLAINESS
A blistering South Korean action thriller starring Kim Ok-bin as a woman forced by the police to join a secret programme that trains assassins for the country’s intelligence agency. She is pregnant, but in return for 10 years service she and her daughter will win their freedom. The film’s action sequences are terrific. Subtitled. (18,124min)
WONDER WOMAN
PREMIERE (Available from Mon) See review, above (12,141min)