| TV Films
A Guide to the Week’s Viewing
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 1
Unbreakable (Movies Greats, Sky 033, 4.50pm). The superhero world of director M Night Shyamalan ( The Sixth Sense), which opened with Unbreakable, will come to an end early next year with Glass (the reversal is deliberate). When David Dunn (Bruce Willis) survives a train crash that kills all the other passengers, Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson), an obsessive comic-book collector born with bones as brittle as … well, glass, takes an abnormal interest. Unbreakable surprised critics and gained a cult following for its unique take on the role of the superhero and its unusually empathetic look at the lives of those around
them. (2000)
Looper (Movies Greats, Sky 033, 6.35pm). They say that the best we can hope for in time-travel movies is that they abide by their own rules. Unless the industry discovers a tear in the space-time continuum, I’d say that spaceship has sailed. Time travel doesn’t make sense for a reason. Writer-director Rian Johnson ( Star Wars: The Last Jedi) gets on with the job regardless, but in a novel way. In 2044, young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) waits by a field with a shotgun. A hooded body appears, sent back in time from the 2070s, and Joe blows him away. This is the work of a looper. Joe’s last job,
however, will be to murder his future self (Bruce Willis), thus “closing the loop”. Things do not go to plan. (2012)
Toy Story (TVNZ 2, 7.00pm). The best animated film of all time? Probably. (1995)
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Māori TV, 8.30pm). Based on a play written by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, The Broken Circle Breakdown is a simple story beautifully told. Didier (Heldenbergh) and Elise (Veerle Baetens) are drawn together by their mutual love of bluegrass music.
Elise is a free spirit and tattoo artist; Didier is an atheist, a romantic and a musician. When their sixyear-old daughter is diagnosed with leukaemia, their love is torn apart. The Belgian drama is in Flemish with subtitles, but the American songs, performed impressively by the actors, are in as crisp and wistful English as Bill Monroe ever sang. (2012)
Z for Zachariah (TVNZ Duke, 9.00pm). Mostly filmed on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, Z for Zachariah tells a postapocalyptic tale that veers towards the romantic. Improbably sheltering from nuclear fallout among her small town’s steep hills and self-contained weather patterns, Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) believes she is the sole survivor of a global catastrophe. That is until the arrival of engineer John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
The original novel by Robert C O’Brien was a twisted parable of Adam and Eve, with a reluctant Eve, but the film version has the serpentine addition of Caleb (Chris Pine), who undermines the growing relationship between Burden and Loomis – and the entire point of the book. (2015)
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 2
Jason Bourne (Three, 8.30pm). Everyone’s favourite amnesiac hitman (Matt Damon) returns after his strange absence in the fifth instalment of the Bourne franchise. Even his memory seems to have come back. Critics were glad to see a return to normal service and action, which has been updated for the post-Snowden age to include mass surveillance and tech CEOs, but they did wonder where Jeremy Renner went. (2016)
The Wrestler (Māori TV,
8.30pm). In one of the best films of 2008, Mickey Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, an ageing professional wrestler years past his prime who struggles to find meaning in life outside the ring. The Wrestler sees the reunion of director Darren Aronofsky and composer Clint Mansell, who worked together on Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, among others. Also starring Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, the film has the added bonus of an original Bruce
Springsteen song, which he recorded for the soundtrack. (2008)
The Dark Knight Rises (Movies Greats, Sky 033, 8.30pm). After eight years of lying low, Batman (Christian Bale) returns to a Gotham City gripped by class warfare and terrorism. Allusions to the present day proved irresistible for some US critics, who turned purple shouting that the film sent up Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party movement or, truly, presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s finance company Bain Capital. But archvillain Bane (Tom Hardy) is, simply, Bane. And he’s not very memorable, either, (though it is hard to stand out when there are three or four new characters as well as the long shadow cast by Heath Ledger’s Joker). Watching this dark and apocalyptic conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s ( Inception, Interstellar) Batman trilogy, it’s strange to think back on the garish and slightly camp early days of the comic strip and animation – happier times? (2012)
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5
Tulip Fever (Movies Extra, Sky 031, 8.30pm). As tulip mania sets in during the 17th-century “Dutch Golden Age”, ageing, wealthy Cornelis (Christoph Waltz) commissions artist
Jan (Dane DeHaan) to paint his beautiful young wife, Sophia (Alicia Vikander). Jan and Sophia duly fall in love and speculate on the booming tulip market in the hope of building a future with the profits. A story could grow from this – it certainly has the resources and is in the skilled hands of director Justin Chadwick and writer Tom Stoppard. But the narrative drowns in an ocean of characters and subplots. (2017)
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6
Deep Impact (Three, 8.30pm). A comet is heading for Earth; it’s 11km long and threatens to wipe out humanity. However, the US government has a cunning solution: nuclear weapons. Starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave and Morgan Freeman. (1998)
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 7
Polina (Movie Rialto, Sky 039, 8.30pm). This French drama, directed by Valérie Müller and choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, is different from most other films about the grit and graft of ballet. There are the usual shots of straight backs and bloodied toes, but its main character (Anastasia Shevtsova) eventually elopes to modern dance in frustration at the rigidity of the art form. It’s an elegant film that has as much to do with dancing (no music video cuts in this one) as it does with the way dancers interact with the world around them. (2016)