Every movie on TV tonight — rated or slated
We’ve rated every movie on TV tonight so you don’t waste your time on a dud. Choose from a zombie thriller, Disney classic, supreme sport doco or fashion-conscious comedy.
Leigh Paatsch
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THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (PG)
***1/2
8.30pm, Ch. 7
This one goes out to anyone suffering the whims of a tyrannical employer. For you, this will be so much more than a fun, fashion-conscious comedy. It will be therapy. For the rest of us, it’s all about the brilliant performance of Meryl Streep, who plays a psychotically driven fashion-mag editor with the delightful hobby of tormenting her staff to breaking point. Anne Hathaway (Princess Diaries) co-stars as the independent-minded ingenue who goes to water under the heat-seeking gaze of her spooky boss.
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (M)
***1/2
8.30pm, 7MATE
Here is where it all started. (Will it ever end? That’s a question for another day.) Initial plotting centres on an undercover cop (Paul Walker) that infiltrates a gang of truck-jacking petrolheads, only to fall in love with the beautiful young sister (Jordana Brewster) of their muscle-shirted leader (Vin Diesel). But really, anything resembling dialogue or storytelling is actually just a mini-trampoline that allows TFAF to jump to higher levels of stupendous stuntery as the minutes and scenery flash by. Inhaling the exhaust fumes left behind by TFAF’s fender-bending combo of fast cars, slow wits and omnipresent road rage remains a guilty, yet wholly intoxicating pleasure.
THE BOURNE IDENTITY (M)
***
8.35pm, Ch. 9
Continuing the long line of movie characters who can’t remember who the hell they are, here comes Matt Damon as author Robert Ludlum’s amnesiac spy, Jason Bourne. As cashed-up and dumbed-down a Mission: Implausible as it ultimately becomes, a few good bends are snapped on a relatively straightforward action tale. Director Doug Liman (Swingers, Go) keeps the explosions coming without letting Damon’s forgetful hero become too forgettable. The franchise took a marked upturn in later instalments, but a fair first entry nonetheless.
WORLD WAR Z (M)
****
8.30pm, GO!
It will stress you out. It will mess you up. But you’re still going to love living through every last dismembered bit of World War Z. This globetrotting, nerve-jolting affair is as (un)dead on the money as a zombie film can get. With most of the planet overrun by a virulent zombie invasion, it is left to globetrotting UN troubleshooter Brad Pitt to save what’s left. Each new destination visited triggers a devastating new set-piece. Each is different in structure and feel. All are truly frightening.
THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY (PG)
**
7.30pm WORLD MOVIES
The numbers just don’t add up for a dreary drama based on the true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-educated accounts clerk who ventured all the way from India to England over a century ago to change the face of mathematics forever. Under the protective wing of famed Cambridge scholar G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), Ramanujan (Dev Patel) moves past intense racial prejudice to achieve several lasting breakthroughs in just a few short years. Unlike A Beautiful Mind or The Imitation Game – two movies that powerfully convey the lonely, mind-twisting demands of a genius intellect – this politely cliched whitewashing of events equates to a multitude of facts minus any feeling.
THE STRENGTH OF WATER (M)
***1/2
9.40pm NITV
An utterly heartbreaking drama from New Zealand. The setting is amid a close-knit Maori community in the far north of the country. Money is hard to come to by. Life moves awfully slow. It is here we meet 10-year-old twins Kimi (Hato Paparoa) and Melody (Melanie Mayall-Nahi), the youngest members of a large family running a small farm. When they cross paths with a young drifter who is a pariah in the area, a dangerous divide opens up among misinformed locals.
FIVE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
DIEGO MARADONA (M)
****1/2
AMAZON; or rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
After multi-award-winning documentary portraits of F1 racing ace Ayrton Senna and troubled singing sensation Amy Winehouse, filmmaker Asif Kapadia focuses his trained eye on the infamous Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona. Once again breaking with convention to compelling and revealing effect, Kapadia zeros in almost exclusively on Maradona’s tumultuous, rewarding and ultimately doomed seven years spearheading the Italian club Napoli. Sportspeople of today who complain of living life in a virtual fishbowl come off as mere whingers when you get a grip on what Maradona went through during this era. Just as miraculous as his instinctive wizardry on the pitch was his appetite for self-destruction off it. An unyielding inability to say no to drugs, sex and dangerous crime bosses is a constant theme here. But so too is Maradona’s ability to preserve his genius with the ball at his feet for an unfathomable number of years, before it all catches up with him. A superior sports doco, not just for fans of “the beautiful game.”
MISS YOU ALREADY (M)
***
NETFLIX
How can you be best friends forever when there is only a year of that forever left? Milly (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) must find an answer when the former is diagnosed with advanced breast cancer just as the latter has fallen pregnant. The way in which lives can both fall apart and come together in the shadow of a terrible disease is often captured powerfully here. Just beware of occasional misjudged comic moments.
US (MA15+)
****
FOXTEL
This trippy exercise in enigmatic terror is the second feature from American writer-director Jordan Peele, whose unheralded debut Get Out was a global box-office sensation in 2017. The basic plot involves a family of four taking a long weekend at the coast. The mother, Adelaide (a wonderful Lupita Nyong’o), doesn’t like the location, as she stayed there unhappily as a child. Adelaide’s misgivings multiply when paid a surprise visit by a family too much like her own for anyone’s comfort. A movie that plays a winning mind game, even if you’re never sure of the rules.
DUMBO (PG)
***1/2
DISNEY PLUS
This live-action adaptation of the classic 1941 Disney cartoon about a big-eared little circus elephant with amazing aerial skills does make some significant changes to the original story to accommodate its real-world setting. Thankfully, the superb direction of Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland) and the acting of a well-cast ensemble both fit the bill perfectly. More importantly, the special-effects work pulls off the crucial feat of having us believe an elephant can swoop, glide and soar like a falcon. Stars Colin Farrell, Eva Green, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE (MA15+)
***1/2
NETFLIX
Zac Efron excels beyond all expectations as Ted Bundy, one of the biggest serial killers in American history. The movie, based on a long-forgotten memoir penned by Bundy’s long-term girlfriend Liz Kendall (well played by Lily Collins), avoids any gruesome depiction of his crimes. Instead, it uses Efron’s performance to explore how a seemingly everyday young man became a once-in-a-lifetime monster. Co-stars John Malkovich.
Originally published as Every movie on TV tonight — rated or slated
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