Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated and slated
Art blends perfectly with heart against a Parisian backdrop in Amelie, eerie psychodrama Take Shelter takes viewers on a race against time and Disney offers another classic animation in Mulan. Leigh Paatsch rates all the TV offerings tonight.
Leigh Paatsch
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AMELIE
*****
10:00 PM WORLD MOVIES
Almost twenty years on from its creation, Amelie remains the perfect blending of pure art with pure heart. Initially, at least, there looks to little method to the madness of the title character (an arrestingly adorable Audrey Tautou) and her penchant for practical jokes, white lies and crackpot schemes. But then director Jean-Pierre Jeunet begins to play upon a small series of links and inter-connections that eventually brings the picture to a triumphant conclusion that will leave you walking on air. Just how the filmmaker gets from a garden gnome fond of international travel — via a horse galloping amidst a bicycle race, a scrapbook of discarded snapshots from a railway station photo booth and a cat that likes to eavesdrop on children’s bedtime stories — to one of the great screen first-kisses of all time is a mystery that will not (and should not) be solved, no matter how hard you try.
TAKEN 3
**
8:30 PM CHANNEL 7
Since the days of the original Taken, Liam Neeson has made it his business to saturate the market with messy revenge thrillers. Most of them have been better than bearable, largely thanks to Neeson’s willingness to trash his own reputation in compelling fashion. Unfortunately, Taken 3 will be remembered as the one where Neeson just couldn’t save the day. Part of the problem is that all the highly strung, highly improbable stuff is happening in America this time around. The exotic European settings of the first two Takens were more important to the franchise’s success than producers realised. Therefore this tale of how Neeson’s Bryan Mills is framed (sigh) for a murder he did not commit rarely engages like its pulpy predecessors did. Co-stars Dougray Scott, Forest Whitaker.
JUPITER ASCENDING
**
8:30 PM GO!
From the creators of The Matrix, a bumptious, bonkers space fairytale which carries on like a Star Wars clone dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm. Mila Kunis stars as an immigrant Russian toilet cleaner from New York City, who somehow finds herself on the planet Jupiter, where various members of the royal family would like her dead. Our heroine’s sole guardian angel is a pointy-eared half-dog-half-man with groovy flying boots. He is played by Channing Tatum. The freakiest performance in a film full of wacky weird-outs comes from Oscar fave Eddie Redmayne (Theory of Everything), who whispers, lisps, wheezes and squeals his lines in a manner that beggars all belief. Sure, the visuals are fifty shades of wow, but everyone knows that ain’t enough these days.
TAKE SHELTER
****
8:30 PM VICELAND
A punishing psychodrama staged as a race against time, as the clock runs down on a man haunted by constant visions of apocalypse. Which will come first? The total loss of his mind? Or the absolute end of the world? As late as the final minutes of Take Shelter, the result looks way too close to call. The unqualified success of this eerie, elliptically staged film all comes down to a bravura performance by Michael Shannon in the lead role. He plays Curtis, an honest, hard-toiling miner who is doing everything he can to hold on to the last shreds of his sanity as everyone around him calmly goes about their business. Co-stars Jessica Chastain.
THE FALCON & THE SNOWMAN
***1/2
10:40 PM VICELAND
Not often this quality spy drama from the mid-1980s pops up anywhere, so do jump on it if the combo of great acting and an unfeasibly baffling true story. This is how two impressionable American lads, Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) and Andrew Daulton Lee (Sean Penn) found themselves recruited by the KGB for a left-of-centre espionage operation in the 1970s. Drugs played a part in the pair’s inevitable exposure and downfall, as did a total lack of worldly awareness. Not exactly a fun watch, but a fascinating one for sure.
THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE
*
7:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
This lifelong passion project for acclaimed filmmaker Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys) is two tonnes of terrible twaddle. Assisting Gilliam in his feeble fumbling of the Don Quixote concept are Adam Driver, Stellan Skarsgard and Olga Kurylenko. Avoid.
THREE MOVIES FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
MULAN (PG)
***
DISNEY+
Another classic Disney cartoon from the studio’s golden run in the 1990s gets a live-action remake. So does the new Mulan cut it as an entertainment experience? Yes, but often only just. For those unfamiliar with the tale: Mulan (played stoically, though convincingly by Liu Yufei) is a young woman who goes undercover as a man fighting for the fabled Imperial Army. The Emperor (Jet Li) has decreed that each family must supply one male to the combat ranks to stave off the threat of a mysterious nomadic tribe advancing across the country. Mulan secretly signs up to the cause for the sake of her elderly father (Tzi Ma), who is in no shape for the battlefield. Viewers with fond memories of the original Mulan could be forgiven for wondering where all the fun has gone. This new version does take itself very seriously for an all-ages film, and does veer dangerously close to boring if there is too long a gap between action sequences. Nevertheless, when the movie finds its groove and revels in the lush visuals and stirring heroics so widely associated with Mulan, all misgivings subside.
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (PG)
***1/2
FOXTEL, AMAZON
A resolutely odd, yet undeniably endearing examination of the life’s work and lasting influence of the late Fred Rogers. Fred who? In Australia, at the very least, it is this one question that will be the making or breaking of the movie for most viewers. A long-time fixture on American afternoon television, Mr Rogers (as he was popularly known) specialised in a uniquely quaint and highly effective brand of educational entertainment for children rivalled only by the gang over on Sesame Street. However, because this movie trades heavily on a saintly reputation and naive mystique barely known outside the US, its full potential may not be realised for those who have never heard of the fella. What does help, however, is that the irrepressibly friendly and unpretentiously wise Mr Rogers is played superbly by the great Tom Hanks (a current Oscar nominee for his fine work here). Matthew Rhys (of TV’s The Americans) co-stars as a cynical writer looking for cracks in the glass-always-full veneer of Rogers.
IDEAL HOME (MA15+)
***
SBS ON DEMAND
What we have here is two movies for the price of one. Both prove to be good value, and blend together effectively as well. The first and most accessible is a pleasant, well-paced comedy about the changing face(s) of the notion of family. Nestled alongside for those seeking something deeper is some clever light drama about the tensions that can arise when a family forms where there was no family before. Steve Coogan (The Trip to Spain) stars as Erasmus, the self-indulgent and rather oblivious host of a popular TV cooking show. Paul Rudd (soon to reprise his popular role as Ant-Man next month) is Paul, the producer of the program and Erasmus’ loving, if exasperated partner for almost a decade. Not all is cosy and settled in the lives of this successful couple, and the relationship will soon face a surprise acid test in the form of Bill (Jack Gore), the biological grandson Erasmus never knew he had. Coogan, Rudd and their (thankfully) un-precocious co-star handle this feelgood fare deftly and likably throughout.
Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated and slated