Film choice

Contraband (1940, b/w) TALKING PICTURES TV, 2.20PM ★★★

Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson team up during the London Blitz to smash a German spy ring in this larky Hitchcockian thriller from Powell and Pressburger. Its depiction of the Phoney War stage of the Second World War, when blackouts plunged London in darkness, and danger sparked over the wireless, is well-judged; the leads, too, are impressively cool-headed among the zany zigzags of the script.

A Night to Remember (1958, b/w) FILM4, 4.20PM ★★★★★

If James Cameron’s Titanic went head-to-head with Roy Baker’s film about the 1912 tragedy, made for less than one per cent the cost of the 1997 version, it’d sink. A Night to Remember lacks the special effects, but it’s far more emotionally involving. Kenneth More is heroic as Second Officer Bertie Lightoller, and there’s no sentimental syrup to clog all the drama up. Baker’s film is an unfairly forgotten gem.

Cowboys (2020) SKY CINEMA PREMIERE ★★★★

 Proving how adaptable the Western is as a cinematic form (and how far it has come since John Wayne), Anna Kerrigan writes and directs this tender-hearted drama about a father (Steve Zahn) who flees into the Montana wilds with his transgender son (Sasha Knight). On their trail is his Bible-bashing mother (Jillian Bell) who believes her daughter has been corrupted. A beautiful, meditative tale.