Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated
There’s a great movie waiting for you on TV tonight to distract from Victoria’s virus woes. Take your pick from an alien invasion, crime drama, romance, horror or political thriller.
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ARRIVAL
****
8:30 PM GO!
Though stacked with visitors from another universe, don’t be arriving at Arrival expecting an alien invasion movie. For this is actually an alien translation movie. These intergalactic interlopers are not here to overpower us. They are here to be understood by us. This rather wonderful science-fiction drama is very much a next-century companion piece to Steven Spielberg’s 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For those with adventurous tastes or open minds, this should be recommendation enough to book a ticket at warp speed. Such people will not be disappointed in any way. The story unfolds in the present day. A dozen alien craft have appeared at random locations around the globe. The Americans take the lead and board the vessel on their turf, appointing a linguistics expert (Amy Adams) and physicist (Jeremy Renner) to interpret what the visitors have to say. Directed by in-form French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Blade Runner 2049).
AMERICAN ANIMALS
***1/2
8:30 PM VICELAND
Heist movies typically leave no incriminating tracks whatsoever. We get bedazzled by the moving parts of a complicated job going like clockwork. The notion of the law being broken is always forgiven and often forgotten. American Animals is not your typical heist movie The ‘big job’ here has all the efficiency of a broken watch. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, inviting a different level of tension into the mix altogether. This is the true(ish) story of a bunch of Kentucky college kids who hatched a plan to lift a few million bucks’ worth of priceless books from a local library. These fresh-faced perps are not rocket scientists, it is fair to say. In fact, it is a miracle they even got their (im)perfect crime off the launch pad at all. The movie is structured as an odd, yet effective blend of staged dramatic re-enactments mixed with interviews with the older-but-no-wiser participants in the scheme. A fine movie which would also make for a ripping multi-part podcast. Stars Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters.
THE DROP
*****
10:35 PM VICELAND
If we are to learn anything from this magnificently miserable crime drama, it is that there is no honour among thieves. But there are rules. Stick to them, and you just might stick around to see another day. The title refers to a traditional obligation asked of the bars and clubs in a grotty corner of Brooklyn. Each booze joint must take their turn of holding illicit cash when asked by local crooks. However, one proprietor, Marv (James Gandolfini in his screen swansong), has tired of the arrangement and schemes to get a cut of the action. His kindly bar manager Bob (Tom Hardy) knows trouble is afoot, but elects to look the other way for the time being. This thunderously downbeat tale is the work of novelist Dennis Lehane. As we already know from Clint Eastwood’s superb adaptation of Lehane’s Mystic River, the author has an eye and an ear for the things desperate men will do and say under pressure.
ELEGY
***
7:30 PM WORLD MOVIES
Your mission here, should you choose to accept it, is to watch a seedy, sixty-something Ben Kingsley getting hot’n’heavy with a younger, up-to-something Penelope Cruz. Kingsley plays a literature professor with a fondness for out-of-print books and new-release women. These two interests clash ominously when a beautiful student (Cruz) walks into his lecture theatre and teaches him a lesson about his playboy ways. Improves markedly as a mature drama after it quits dilly-dallying about with some tasteful, yet implausible eroticism. Based on the Philip Roth novella The Dying Animal.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
***
9:35 PM WORLD MOVIES
Quality political thriller starring (and also directed by) Robert Redford. He plays Jim Grant, a fugitive political activist who has been wanted by the FBI for over three decades. Now Grant wants to come in from the cold to clear his name on a murder charge that should never have stuck in the first place. There is a lot of a plot to chew through here, and some of it is a little hard to digest if you’re not familiar with the radical politics of yesteryear. Thank heavens, then, for the great support Redford draws from support players such as Nick Nolte, Shia LaBeouf, Stanley Tucci and the great Julie Christie.
THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL
HALLOWEEN (MA15+)
***1/2
NETFLIX
This bloodstained love letter to the classic 1978 slasher flick Halloween covers all bases required by hard line horror fans in fine, frightening style. A direct follow-up to the original simply goes back to basics, letting the chilling atmospherics and overall body count rise in terrifying tandem. The franchise’s foundation heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is now a screw-loose hermit waiting in her woodlands fortress for the day that her former tormentor resumes his one-man mission to kill her. Enter the infamously unknowable and indestructible Michael Myers, newly escaped from captivity, and soon back to his old ways. A smart (and smarting) horror movie out to hurt, haunt and high-five you.
ONLY THE BRAVE (M)
***1/2
7 PLUS, or RENT via FOXTEL STORE, GOOGLE, APPLE, YOUTUBE
A gripping true story of one of the deadliest wildfires in US history: the Yarnell Hill blaze that hit in Western Arizona in July 2013. Unusually, the filmmakers go out of their way to humbly humanise not just the celebrated members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots – the first rural firefighting crew ever licensed to tackle major-category blazes – but also their family and friends. By the time the natural disaster of Yarnell Hill is ramping up, both the risks facing these men and the fears eating away at their loved ones have been gracefully brought to the fore. The final impact courses deeper than this type of movie usually can. A superb ensemble cast is led by Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller and Jennifer Connelly.
SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY (M)
*****
NETFLIX
For much of 2018, the legendary American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen performed an acclaimed one-man show on Broadway. For five nights every week, The Boss hit the stage with a few guitars and a single spotlight, and simply started telling the audience some stories. Of course, Springsteen also prised open his classic songbook and played the compositions that have meant so much to so many for so long. However, it is Springsteen the raconteur – in a more rueful and reflective mode than his usual brand of stage banter – that is the principal focus of the Tony Award-winning show. Now that Springsteen’s sellout stay on Broadway is long over (and never to return), the rest of the world can now witness to its brilliance from the comfort of their own home. In keeping with the stark, no-frills aesthetic of the stage production, the filmed version just lets the cameras roll while Springsteen crafts one compelling (and often, soul-baring) anecdote after another.
Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated