Movie picks
SATURDAY Free Guy, Ch4, 9pm
Guy (Ryan Reynolds) lives in Free City and he loves it. He works at the bank. And the coffee is like losing your virginity but in your mouth, he says.
He loves chatting with his mate, security guard Buddy (Lil Rel Howery). But Free City ain’t a normal place. There are the sunglasses people who don’t obey laws, manmade or natural. Then there’s the daily bank robberies that Guy gleefully endures. And the random robots wandering about.
Yep, it’s a computer game and Guy is an NPC (non-player character). But Guy’s world is about to be rocked by Millie, aka Molotovgirl (Jodie Comer), who has beef with the game’s publisher, Antwan (Taika Waititi).
But to talk to Molotvgirl, Guy must get himself some sunglasses. And to get some sunglasses, he’ll have to operate way outside his programming. And that’s going to ruffle a few pixels at the very least. Also featuring Joe Keery from Stranger Things.
SUNDAY The Golden Child, Ch4, 2.25pm
Michael Ritchie’s all-action comedy movie stars Eddie Murphy as Chandler Jarrell, a social worker specialising in missing children cases.
Jarrell is called in when sinister agents kidnap the eponymous, worldsaving infant (JL Reate) from a Tibetan temple.
The unlikely sleuth’s search for the Golden Child takes him through countless adventures and escapades, as well as a romantic dalliance with the mysterious Kee Nang (Charlotte Lewis).
MONDAY Real, Film4, 11.25pm
Writer, director and leading man
Aki Omoshaybi’s debut feature is a heartfelt romantic drama about a Black working-class couple living in innercity Portsmouth.
Kyle (Omoshaybi) is not long out of prison and has to live with his mother. Jamie (Pippa Bennett-warner) is a single mum working in a supermarket while she studies accountancy. Both are well-dressed when they bump into each other in a newsagent.
When Jamie’s card is declined, Kyle stumps up for her basket. Instantly attracted to each other, but wanting to hide their actual circumstances, they invent alternative lives.
But as their relationship deepens, can their love survive the truth?
FRIDAY Midway, Film4, 6.15pm
In December 1941, the US are reeling after the surprise attack by Japanese forces at their Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii kills more than 2000 Americans.
The US enter the war and charge Lieutenant Dick Best (Ed Skrein) with locating the fleet that perpetrated the atrocity. When he is unable to, the US launch a string of moderately successful attacks against Japan.
In retaliation, Japanese commander Admiral Isorokuyamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) plots a deadly invasion of US territory Midway Island. But when US intelligence intercepts messages detailing a Japanese attack on an unnamed location, it becomes a race against time to both figure out where will be hit next.