Movie picks
saturday
Hustlers, Ch4, 9pm
Network premiere of Lorene Scafaria’s fact-based comedy-drama caper starring Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo and Cardi B.
When the financial crash of 2008 hits, a group of high-end strippers with comfortable, flashy lifestyles find themselves out of work and out of touch with each other.
Destiny (Wu) reconnects with Ramona (Lopez) after her return to dancing forces her to cross a line she never thought she would.
Ramona introduces Destiny to her new hustle — charging a finder’s fee for delivering drugged-up rich men to their old strip club in order to rip them off. The hustlers enjoy lucrative success, but it doesn’t take long for others in the industry to carry out copycat cons.
Frustrated, Ramona begins to adopt more reckless business tactics that eventually catch up with her...
Friday
True Spirit, Netflix
When the tenacious young sailor Jessica Watson (Teagan Croft) sets out to be the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world, many expect her to fail.
With the support of her sailing coach and mentor Ben Bryant (Cliff Curtis) and her parents (Josh Lawson and Academy Award winner Anna Paquin), Jessica is determined to accomplish what was thought to be impossible, navigating some of the world’s most challenging stretches of ocean over the course of 210 days.
Written and directed by Sarah Spillane, this incredible true story of perseverance and human accomplishment that shows that you are only as big as the dreams you dare to live.
Friday
Brightburn, Film4, 9pm
The superhero genre gets twisted with terrifying horror in David Yarovesky’s Brightburn, about a malevolent 12-year-old with superhuman powers.
In 2006, Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and
Kyle Breyer (David Denman) are a young couple who are desperate to have children but cannot conceive.
When a spaceship crashes behind their house in a rural Kansas town, they find what looks like a human baby inside.
Tori believes her prayers have been answered and the couple adopt the child, naming him Brandon, and conceal his true identity from him by hiding the spaceship in their barn.
Twelve years on, Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) finds himself struggling with the other kids at school and is labelled an outcast. Around this time, the spacecraft starts transmitting a message that causes Brandon to enter a trance-like state and sleepwalk towards the ship.
Tori stops him, but he soon starts exhibiting superhuman strength. When he’s called to the ship a second time, Tori reveals the truth to Brandon, but assures him she loves him as if he were her own son. This is little comfort, and Brandon goes on a murderous rampage. Kyle tries to convince Tori their adopted boy is evil, but she refuses to listen. Can she wake up in time to see what he really is?
saturday
Big Gold Brick, Sky Cinema & NOW Big Gold Brick recounts the story of fledgling writer Samuel Liston and his experiences with Floyd Deveraux, the enigmatic middle-aged father of two who enlists Samuel to write his biography.
But the circumstances that lead up to this arrangement in the first place are quite astonishing — and efforts to write the biography are quickly stymied by ensuing chaos in this darkly comedic, genre-bending film.
Starring Andy Garcia, Emory Cohen, Megan Fox, Lucy Hale and Oscar Isaac and directed by
Brian Petsos.