FILMS OF THE WEEK

THE BIG MOVIE

Stoker (2013) 18 Sunday, 12.10am, Ch4 Mia Wasikowska stars in this dark and decadent thriller, written by actor Wentworth Miller, which owes a huge debt to Hitchcock’s Shadow Of A Doubt. Wasikowska is India Stoker, a teenager on the cusp of womanhood, whose suspicion and hostility towards her mother (Nicole Kidman) are stoked by the sudden death of her father – and by the equally sudden arrival of her charming, but patently unhinged, uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, above, with

Kidman and Wasikowska). The errant uncle’s presence intensifies the mistrust and rivalry between mother and daughter, triggering a deeply unsettling sequence of events – and murders. Beautifully shot by South Korean director Park Chan-wook, the film casts an uneasy spell; it is as beguiling as it is confounding.

CLASSIC FILM CHOICE

Double Indemnity (1944) PG Tuesday, 11am, Film4 Billy Wilder’s perfectly executed film noir is narrated by Fred MacMurray’s insurance salesman, Walter Neff, but it’s Barbara Stanwyck (above, with MacMurray), as Phyllis Dietrichson, who is in the driving seat. She’s one of cinema’s most memorable femmes fatales, and we quickly get the measure of her, as Walter deduces that she plans to kill her husband for his insurance money. Walter says he will have no part of it, but like any femme fatale worth her perfume and furs, Phyllis has got under his skin. They plot a rather clever murder, and it plays out almost perfectly.

But there’s a reason that a weak and wounded Walter is narrating the whole sorry affair as a confession... The constantly calculating Phyllis is evil through and through, and it’s a credit to Stanwyck that she was able to make such a wicked woman so alluring.