Review: Buried treasure, impending war and loss in ‘The Dig’
Just before the outbreak of the World War II, a smalltime archaeologist was hired by a local woman to excavate her land. The thought was that it possibly contained some Viking remnants. But what was unearthed in the mounds out in the fields was far more significant than they could have imagined: Buried in the grounds of Sutton Hoo was actually a ship that would end up providing a deeper understanding of the sophistication of the early Anglo-Saxon period.
It’s this true story that John
Preston used as the stage for his novel “The Dig,” which has been adapted into a very lovely film by screenwriter Moira Buffini and director Simon Stone. Carey Mulligan stars as the Sutton Hoo landowner, Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow, mother to a pre-teen son and a bit of an amateur archaeologist who has a hunch about one of the mounds on her property. There’s also a ticking clock behind her expedition — the story is set in the summer of 1939 and by September, Britain would be declaring war.
The man she chooses for the job is Basil Brown (Ralph
Fiennes), a local excavator for a provincial museum. He is no doubt a brilliant archaeologist and an expert in his region, taught by two generations of his own family, but his formal education and external demeanor denote a lower class and thus he’s not taken seriously by many.
Even his colleagues call him “unorthodox and untrained.”
Basil establishes a connection with Edith, however, who had purchased the lands with her husband to explore the mounds together. The project was derailed by his untimely death and she
• Shot during the early days of the pandemic, Doug Liman’s “Locked Down” is one of the most notable projects to emerge from quarantine yet. Starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, “Locked Down” centers on a couple put into lock-down just as they’re deciding to separate. Directed by the “Bourne Identity” filmmaker and written by Steven Knight (“Dirty Pretty Things,” “Eastern Promises”), the film debuts Thursday on HBO Max.
• Another acclaimed film from the virtual festival circuit, Sam Pollard’s “MLK/FBI,” debuts on-demand and in theaters Friday. Pollard, a frequent editor for Spike Lee, examines J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI’s surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr. — widely considered one the darkest chapters in FBI history. It’s a murky story dealing with the extramarital affairs of King but, more importantly, about the federal government’s racist attempts to control and thwart the civil rights leader.
Music
• Three years after releasing their fulllength debut album, boy band Why Don’t We are back with their sophomore release “The Good Times and the Bad Ones.” The 10-track album includes the single “Fallin’ (Adrenaline),” which samples Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” and is the group’s first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Another track, “Slow Down,” borrows from the Smashing Pumpkins’ mid-90s hit “1979,” while Skrillex, Timbaland and Travis Barker contribute to the album’s production.
• A year after their last live gig, Jimmy Eat World will perform their entire 10th studio album, 2019’s “Surviving,” on Friday. It’s one of three performances that’s part of the band’s Phoenix Sessions. On Jan. 29 they will perform their fifth effort, 2004’s “Futures,” and on Feb. 12 they will perform “Clarity,” their third album released in 1999. Tickets start at $14.99.
Television
• Catherine Zeta-Jones is joining Fox’s “Prodigal Son,” about a skilled criminal profiler (Tom Payne) and his serial-killer dad (Martin Sheen). The Oscar- and Tony-winning actor appears in the season’s second half as a doctor and foil to Sheen’s Martin Whitly, whose intimate knowledge of murder comes in handy for the NYPD’s toughest cases. Will Dr. Vivian Capshaw (Zeta-Jones) get too close to Martin? Will Martin strengthen his relationship with son Malcolm? The sophomore season of “Prodigal Son” starts at 9 p.m. EST on a new night, Tuesday.
• A real-life killer who terrorized Californians in the mid-1980s is the subject of Netflix’s limited, four-part documentary series, “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer,” debuting Wednesday. The brutal crime wave began in the Los Angeles area during a long, hot summer in 1985, with men, women and children among the victims of after-dark killings and assaults. First-person interviews, archival footage and original photography help recount the crimes and the hunt for the man responsible.