Three to watch this week...
Deep Water (Cert 15, 115 mins, streaming from March 18 exclusively on Prime Video)
Web app developer Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) amassed his fortune designing computer chips for military drones and he lives in comfort in New Orleans with wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) and their precocious young daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins).
The couple’s marriage is saturated with resentment and mistrust to the point that Melinda openly flaunts toy boys in front of Vic, Trixie and their well-to-friends Arthur (Dash Mihok), Mary (Devyn Tyler) and Nash (Lil Rel Howery).
Vic coolly asserts his authority, quietly confiding to one cocksure pretender, Joel (Brendan C Miller), that he took a hammer to the head of his wife’s previous extramarital dalliance.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, Deep Water is an erotically charged game of cat and mouse that steadily cranks up suspense as anyone who gets too close to Melinda disappears abruptly or suffers an unfortunate accident.
Director Adrian Lyne harks back to his 1987 hit Fatal Attraction for breathlessly staged couplings that make explicit the dark, destructive desires churning beneath characters’ refined exteriors.
The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (Cert 12, 126 mins, streaming from March 23 exclusively on Disney+) Tammy Faye Grover (Jessica Chastain) is raised in a blended family of eight children in International Falls, Minnesota by a devout mother (Cherry Jones), who hides her eldest daughter from the congregation to avoid public reminders of her failed first marriage and divorce.
In 1960 at North Central Bible College, Tammy meets Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) and they forego studies to marry and establish a travelling ministry, which leads to a big break on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) under Reverend Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds).
Jim’s ambition sows the seeds of The PTL Club (Praise The Lord) and he openly woos
conservative pastor Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio).
The Eyes Of Tammy Faye dramatises the rise of “the Ken and Barbie of televangelists” through the heavily mascaraed peepers of its easily duped heroine.
Drawing inspiration from an award-winning documentary, director Michael Showalter and scriptwriter Abe Sylvia offer an exceedingly charitable portrayal of the relentlessly upbeat woman at the centre of an embezzlement scandal, which sank the evangelical Christian PTL Television Network and originally sentenced Tammy’s husband Jim to 45 years in prison on fraud and conspiracy charges. It’s a barnstorming, all-guns-blazing central performance worthy of her Oscar nomination, which fixates on the wife’s overly trusting nature without making cruel fun at the altar of her campness and theatricality.
Peacemaker (8 episodes, streaming from March 22 exclusively on Now)
After the inspired lunacy of James Gunn’s 2021 blockbuster The Suicide Squad, one of the film’s most memorable DC Comics characters headlines a small-screen spin-off written and directed by Gunn, which shoots to kill on Sky Max and streams exclusively on Now. John Cena reprises his role as Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker, antagonistic defender of the weak and innocent, who gleefully slays to ensure peace and goodwill for all men, women and children.
He joins a mysterious black ops squad led by mercenary Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), assigned to destroy parasitic creatures that have taken over the bodies of human hosts.
Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), daughter of iron-fisted A.R.G.U.S. leader Amanda Waller, Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), John Economos (Steve Agee) and costumed sociopath Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) join Peacemaker on his daredevil escapade.