TV Films
A Guide to the Week’s Viewing
SATURDAY JUNE 2
Locke (Maori TV, 8.30pm). Tom Hardy on the phone in a car: thanks to a taut script by director Steven Knight (who wrote the films Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises and created TV series Peaky Blinders) and an extraordinary performance from Hardy, albeit with a Welsh accent, Locke is thoroughly gripping. Ivan Locke is a construction foreman in Birmingham about to oversee the largest concrete pour of his life when he gets in his BMW and starts driving to London. In a film that would not exist were it not for in-car calling, Ivan uses all his persuasive powers to juggle the people in his life, including the nervous assistant he’s left in charge. Voices on the other end of the line include Ruth Wilson, Olivia Colman, Andrew Scott and Tom Holland. (2014)
Lady Macbeth (Rialto, Sky 039, 8.30pm). There’s an echo of Wuthering Heights in this new adaptation of the 1865 novella by Nikolai Leskov – a rough, working-class lover, the windswept moors – but Katherine (Florence Pugh) and Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) are not romantic heroes, and this Victorian noir is an exercise in moral
relativism in which the abused become the abusers. Theatre director William Oldroyd, on debut, dispenses almost entirely with soundtrack music, adding to the cold, bare atmosphere of the sparsely furnished house in which young, newly married Katherine is confined. To say that she rebels against her imprisonment is an understatement and the film is awash with undercurrents and shifts in the characters’ status, all anchored by a stunning performance by Pugh. (2016)
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (Three, 9.55pm). Somehow, we don’t think this is what Dan O’Bannon intended when he created the first alien for Ridley Scott’s 1979 space masterpiece. Special-effects whizzes the Strause brothers breed an alien and a predator into a “Predalien”, wind it up and set it loose on a small town in Colorado. Schlock and gore ensue. (2007)
SUNDAY JUNE 3
My Week with Marilyn
(TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). A lovely performance by Michelle Williams, who finds the vulnerability, neediness and self-destructive tendencies of the most famous actress in the world at the time, Marilyn Monroe. Eddie Redmayne plays Colin Clark, who escorted Monroe in London during the shooting of The Prince and the Showgirl. There are good turns from Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, star and director of the film, and Judi Dench as Sybil Thorndike, but the movie, directed by Simon Curtis, is slightly bland. (2011)
The Heat (Three, 8.30pm). Another of Sandra Bullock’s stick-up-herbutt roles, but when it’s Melissa McCarthy who’s forcing her to remove it, the results are hilarious. Bridesmaids director Paul Feig again proves that a femalecentric comedy can do well at the box office, and Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold doesn’t dip into sentimentality, even when Bullock and McCarthy bond during an all-night session in a rundown Irish bar. (2013)
London Has Fallen (TVNZ 2, 8.30pm). Incredibly, a sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. Even more incredibly, a third movie is planned. After terrorist attacks on nearly all the leaders of the free world who have gathered in London for a funeral, Gerard Butler is at it again, sending the faceless hordes back to “F---head-istan”. It is a bit of a shocker seeing nice bits of London blown up, including Westminster Abbey, but the movie is pure xenophobic nastiness. (2016)
The Butler (Maori TV, 9.00pm).
If the TV series Empire is anything to go by, Lee Daniels and his frequent writing collaborator Danny Strong don’t really do subtle, and this Forrest Gump- style story about a
White House butler who is witness to 34 years of civil-rights changes is a rubber sledgehammer. Forest Whitaker is the butler who serves presidents Eisenhower through to Obama and watches the changes in America partly through his politicised Black Panther son (David Oyelowo). “I never understood what you all really went through,” says James Marsden as John F Kennedy.
“You’ve changed my heart.” (2013)
QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY
The Hundred-Foot Journey (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). Another script by Steven Knight; in this, he adapts the 2010 novel by Richard C Morais about a culture clash between a traditional eatery and a new Indian restaurant in a small French village. Even with a hitand-miss French accent, Helen Mirren is especially snooty as the owner of a celebrated, Michelin-starred establishment, and Om Puri brings some gravitas as the wily patriarch who enjoys the game. Think Under the Tuscan Sun, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and director Lasse Hallström’s previous films Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Chocolat. (2014)
The Iceman (Prime, 9.35pm). Not an especially good biopic, but Michael Shannon elevates the story of mob hitman Richie Kuklinski, who killed at least 100 people over roughly 20 years. The film follows Kuklinski as he juggles his family life with wife Deborah (Winona Ryder) and his terrible work for Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta). Stephen Dorff, David Schwimmer and James Franco also star, and Captain America Chris Evans disappears behind a moustache and scraggly hair to play volatile fellow hitman Robert Pronge. Director Ariel Vromen goes for a Goodfellas feel, but there was no good side to Kuklinski. (2012)
WEDNESDAY JUNE 6
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (Three, 7.30pm).
With the three overblown and, at times, plain stupid prequels, George Lucas completes his Star Wars saga, but to what end? The first Star Wars’ inventive, seat-of-the-pants effects have been replaced by crazy amounts of mind-numbing CGI and some very bad dialogue, and Lucas has removed any mystery there might have been. In 2005, there was some comfort in thinking we would never have to sit through another new Star Wars movie. As it was, we needed a 10-year break to clear our minds before JJ Abrams could make Star
Wars excellent again. (2005)
FRIDAY JUNE 8
Blade Runner (TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm). Only the greatest science fiction movie of all time. A love story, a technonoir, a warning about the environment, a reminder not to play God. Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard is vulnerable and heart-wrenchingly human; ironic, considering what director Ridley Scott has revealed about Deckard. One thing is wrong: the film is set in 2019, which gives us only one year to build replicants and ruin the planet. (1982) Films are rated out of 5: (abysmal) to