Your night in: Every movie on TV tonight rated or slated
Top-notch thrillers and guilty-pleasure rom-coms headline tonight’s movie offerings. Leigh Paatsch rates every movie on TV to help you make the most of your night in.
Leigh Paatsch
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INDECENT PROPOSAL (M)
**1/2
8.30PM 7FLIX
Ten tonnes of top-notch trash piles up to a Tuesday guilty-pleasure treasure. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson are a happily married couple in deep financial trouble with their bank. So they do what any pair of fools trapped within the concept of a flimsy script would do – they gather all of their remaining cash and splurge it on the roulette tables in Vegas. Enter Robert Redford as a playboy entrepreneur who spies Ms. Moore from afar. Sensing recent poverty in the air, this dodgy codger puts up one million dollars for a night’s worth of grappling with her silicon-boosted charms. Woody takes the cash. Demi and Bob bonk on a boat. A monied ménage a trois ensues. The moral fallout is steeped in petty distrust, lust and bulldust.
NIGHTCRAWLER (MA15+)
****
9.30PM WORLD MOVIES
When it comes to Nightcrawler, it is best to be both alert and alarmed. Each state of mind is necessary when processing the motives of its chilling lead character, an unhealthily driven young man named Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal). Having just started out as a freelance TV news cameraman, Lou prowls Los Angeles after dark in search of what sells: car crashes and murders soon become a house specialty. Though Nightcrawler is squarely taking aim at the worst inclinations of US tabloid television – the holy grail of footage is described as “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut” – it is the eerily centred performance of Gyllenhaal that draws all focus. With a smile always on his dial and a work ethic that never lets up, Lou seems like the kind of guy that would do anything for anybody. Gyllenhaal reads him differently, and gradually gets us thinking the same way: Lou is really the kind of guy who would do anything to anybody.
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS (M)
**
9.00PM CH. 9
Standard-format rom-com, with a mismatched Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz doing the quick-to-bicker, slow-to-bond thing. They play an unhappy couple married mistakenly in Las Vegas, then forced to remain together while the courts determine the rightful owner of a slot-machine jackpot. A morally outraged judge orders the unhappy couple to stay married for six months before he hands down a verdict. Improves marginally later after a very clunky start.
LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE (M)
**
7.30PM GO!
Mediocre sequel cut from the same drab cloth that sealed the original Tomb Raider to its forgettable fate. Yes, Angelina Jolie is stunning to look at – and all the usual event-film elements are exactly where they should be – but there’s just no tension to be derived from waiting to see whether Lara or the bad guys will get their hands on the fabled Pandora’s box first. Jolie snaffled a cool $15 million for her work here. Doubt Hollywood will ever be coughing up those kinda wages for anyone after the big lockdown is over.
NATIONAL SECURITY (M)
**
9.55PM GO!
Flat, forced action comedy starring Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn as dimwit security guards accidentally busting open a smuggling ring. All the good stuff can be guffawed at in the opening half-hour. After that, you’re on your own.
ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA (M)
***
7.50PM WORLD MOVIES
The long-awaited movie debut of a British TV character revered by comedy connoisseurs all over the globe. Alan Partridge (played by Steve Coogan) is a washed-up talk-show host now making ends meet on a low-rating radio station. When a fellow DJ is sacked by management and takes the entire station hostage, the bitter, twisted and supremely self-serving Partridge is the only person the cops and the crook will trust. A big mistake for both parties. Perhaps best appreciated if you have already had some exposure to the unique absurdity of all things Alan Partridge. The humour can plunge to dark depths very quickly if you’re not on your guard. So have your wits about you, and be prepared to laugh hard and often. Sometimes against your better judgment.
FIVE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (MA15+)
***1/2
rent via FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
True Terminator fans will immediately recognise just how good this sixth instalment in the 35-year-old saga can be when it truly hits its stride. All the contradictions, paradoxes and clangers sounded out by the latter-day sequels are silenced once and for all, with the story only really acknowledging developments logged in the first two movies as relevant reference points. The action sequences kick ass repeatedly, the new characters rock, and the old-school reunion of Terminator icons Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton – together again on screen for the first time in almost three decades – hits it right out of the park.
OPEN WATER (M)
****1/2
AMAZON
An unjustly forgotten shark movie of the highest, nerve-shredding calibre. This low-key, yet gripping “what if?” drama based on real-life events – remember that American couple inadvertently left behind by a diving tour operator up at the Great Barrier Reef in 1998? – makes for a totally unforgettable cinematic experience. Susan (Blanchard Ryan) and Daniel (Daniel Travis) are treading water in the middle of the ocean. There’s no boat nearby. There’s no land in sight. As the sun goes down, some shadowy figures circling in the distance immediately activate the part of the brain that permanently stores the theme from Jaws. To put it simply, this movie gradually gets to you. It doesn’t wear down your defences. It removes them. Then it directly gets at you.
BURNT (MA15+)
***
NETFLIX, AMAZON, STAN
Bradley Cooper stars as Adam Jones, a rock-star chef who has fallen on hard times after succumbing to heroin addiction. As he recovers, Adam reunites the kitchen dream team from when he was the toast of the food scene. While Burnt does get off to a rather uncertain and contrived start, it effortlessly finds its right gear once Cooper gets to lock acting horns with co-star Sienna Miller.
FINDING YOUR FEET (M)
**1/2
FOXTEL, NETFLIX
A very middle-of-the-road British comedy-drama, making tracks for the same mature-age crowd that loves their Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies, and wish there were more of them. No shame in that, really, if all you’re wanting is a simple laugh, a quiet sniffle and a little feel-good uplift to linger in the air afterwards. Imelda Staunton stars as Sandra, a snobby socialite wife brought down a peg or two when she discovers her husband has been having an affair with her best friend. With her dreams of a cosy retirement with her spouse now a nightmare, Sandra is forced to throw herself on the mercy of her eccentric and estranged sister Bif (Celia Imrie). Long-dormant tensions and frustrations subside when Sandra joins a weekly dance class frequented by Bif’s colourful circle of friends (among them Joanna Lumley and Timothy Spall).
MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. (2018)
***1/2
STAN, rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES
Fittingly, this intriguing, frustrating and lively documentary on the trailblazing Sri Lankan-born recording artist M.I.A. sends many a mixed message. This would usually mean game-over for any movie dealing in verified facts, but not this time. For throughout the influential career of M.I.A. (real name Matangi Arulpragasam), the obvious contradictions have never been hidden.
Originally published as Your night in: Every movie on TV tonight rated or slated
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