Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated
If you’re a Scarlett Johansson fan your movie viewing is sorted, with two of tonight’s free-to-air offerings starring the Hollywood heavyweight. Or if you’re in for a scare, the IT reboot is truly up to the task.
Leigh Paatsch
Don't miss out on the headlines from Leigh Paatsch. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IT (MA15+)
****
10.40PM 7FLIX
This spooky adaptation of the old Stephen King book is sure to force a global spike in outbreaks of coulrophobia. That’s the fear of clowns, in case you didn’t know. However, once you get to know It’s big-shoed, red-nosed protagonist, Pennywise (played by Bill Skarsgard), there’s every chance you’ll be a coulrophobic for life. Pennywise is a Freddy Krueger of the fairgrounds who spends the summer in the same small town every 27 years. Any child crossing paths with this creepy freak scores a one-way ticket to the missing persons list. While scary enough to have you avoiding circuses, street parades and birthday parties forevermore, It is also a very well-made, well-acted movie that can easily claim a place as one of the year’s best. Not just for its unsettling collection of eerie, vanished-kid shocks to the system. But also for some accessibly illuminating and involving storytelling, which often recalls an entire season of the Netflix classic Stranger Things administered in one powerful two-hour dose.
DELIVERY MAN (M)
***
8.30pm 7FLIX
Vince Vaughn (The Internship) has crashed too many times before with lazy performances in lack-lustre laugh vehicles. Therefore some will not care the lanky funnyman finally finds himself in a good movie that goes the distance. He plays a secret (and prolific) sperm donor who must decide if he wants to remain anonymous after a distribution error leaves him as the biological father of 533 children. It is a clever-ish premise that is not placed under pressure to generate too many dumb chuckles for the sake of it. The more directly sentimental scenes often bring the best out of Vaughn and the movie as a whole. File under “happy accident.” Co-stars Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders.
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (M)
***1/2
7.45PM WORLD MOVIES
A lively comedy of manners, morals and mischief from filmmaker Woody Allen. Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Halls star as two young American tourists who fall under the spell of a seductive artist (No Country for Old Men’s Javier Bardem) during summer holidays in the Spanish capital. This is Allen’s most laid-back movie in memory, but the relaxed, carefree vibe does not blunt the edge of the humour. The city of Barcelona is a delight to gaze at throughout too.
DREDD (MA15+)
***
9.30PM WORLD MOVIES
Futuristic action pulp of surprisingly consistently quality, good enough to obliterate the bad memories of Sylvester Stallone’s dreadful Judge Dredd (adapted from the same cult comic-book source). Karl Urban plays the title character, a hard line, no-frills cop spoiling for a fight when a killer narcotic nicknamed Slo-mo hits the streets of Mega-City One. Some clever set-piece chases and skirmishes, and a sly sense of humour round out a very solid effort. Co-stars Lena Headey.
THE ISLAND (M)
**1/2
7.30PM GO!
So-so sci-fi that will effortlessly chew up two and a half hours on your life if you feel like dropping your guard (and expectations). It is the year 2019, and in the wake of a planet-wide environmental apocalypse, the survivors look as if they’re coping just fine, thank you very much. Typical folk such as Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) are protected from instant infection by living their entire lives inside highly organised health facilities. Morale, motivation and all hope for the citizens of these hi-tech hospital cities are pinned to the results of a weekly lottery, where the winner is transported to the last safe open space on Earth, spoken of in awestruck tones as “The Island.” However, when Lincoln and Jordan get an inkling this longed-for last resort may not actually exist, the pair try their luck as fugitives in the outside world.
SPECIES II (MA15+)
*
10.15pm GO!
Natasha Henstridge is Eve, a half-human, half-monster cloned by the Pentagon to see if they can turn her into a walking weapon. Eve spends much of the movie in a transparent glass booth, wearing tight-fitting skirts that accentuate the heaving of her chest whenever the impulse to go forth and multiply takes hold. Her soulmate is astronaut Patrick Ross (Justin Lazard). He’s just back from a NASA mission to Mars, where he has been unknowingly infected by a dangerous strain of DNA. This has dramatic repercussions for his busy sex life. Immediately after relations with willing women, Patrick’s partners go through a two-minute pregnancy before giving birth to already-grown children. Remarkably, after all of this, someone somewhere put up the money to make Species III.
WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME? (M)
***
9.05pm Ch. 9
[This broadcast is Part 2, carried over from last night.]
A poignant, pointed reminder that the late, great singer Whitney Houston was taken from us way too soon, and for no good reason. This well-crafted documentary is a little light on for footage of the music legend in her prime, but the shortfall is made up in other areas. While carrying the same shortcomings that affect many an ‘unauthorised’ doco – particularly when it comes to accessing interviewees who really knew the gifted songbird – the filmmakers do make the most of not having to please any keepers of her flame. This is anything but a puff piece, and is worthy of consideration purely for its willingness to address certain controversial aspects of Houston’s sad life story that a recent ‘authorised’ doco was inclined to avoid. It’s all here: the meteoric rise, the slow drug-ravaged descent, the doomed marriage to singer Bobby Brown, and the ongoing frustration of being trapped inside a manufactured image nothing like her real self.
THREE MOVIE PICKS FOR STREAMING OR RENTAL TO GET YOU THROUGH THE EVENING
SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (M)
***
rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
A teen-friendly horror movie, with added emphasis on the ‘friendly’. This is a highly amiable, not that frightening adaptation of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, compendiums of urban legends and freaky folklore that sold like hot cakes in the 1980s and 90s. Producer and co-writer Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) is out to revive interest in the series with this appealing affair, which sits about halfway between a Goosebumps and an It on the horror-flick spectrum. The plot has been backdated to 1968, where a bunch of nerdy high-schoolers have happened upon a supernatural book that cannot only write itself, but also accurately predicts the grisly fate awaiting certain readers. Being a del Toro production, the grisly effects and monster design are well above average, and provoke a lasting chill at odds with the lightweight tone of the picture. A sequel would be pushing it, but this remains a nice entry-level outing for younger fans of the macabre. Stars Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza.
THE SHALLOWS (M)
***
FOXTEL
A movie featuring nothing but Blake Lively in a battle of wits with one very agitated shark. And it delivers more than many a big-budget blockbuster. While there ain’t much deep or meaningful to The Shallows, it makes good on its simple promise of keeping the splashes, gnashes and gashes coming, while tension levels continue to peak at just the right side of unbearable. The villain is a finned food-processor always ready to make himself another surfie smoothie. The hero(ine) is a human half-scared out of her wits, and half-clever enough to never to run out of ideas about how to survive. So what’s not to like here? Not much. You’ll be afraid, amused, alarmed and rather exhausted, all inside 85 short, sharp, shark-infested minutes. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (Run All Night).
IT COMES AT NIGHT (MA15+)
****
NETFLIX
A perplexing, haunting and unapologetically bleak thriller. If mankind’s time on earth was a book, we are well into the final chapter as this terrifying tension-magnet of a movie experience begins. The devastation wrought by a highly infectious plague is barely kept at bay by three residents of a heavily fortified cabin in the woods. The man of the house, Paul (Joel Edgerton, superb), calls the shots. His wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) dutifully follow suit in the knowledge their lives depend on it. After a long period of solitude, the trio offers cover to another family seeking their help. If they too can stick to Paul’s rules – which include the selective use of guns and gas masks, and carefully planned journeys outside – then there shouldn’t be a problem, right? Of course, it is the ever-niggling promise of what will go wrong that gives this intimately intimidating affair a raw power all its own.
READ MORE:
JESS’ HEARTBREAKING MASTERCHEF MOMENT
HOW LONG UNTIL LIVE MUSIC RETURNS?
ROBARDS ‘RELIEVED’ NEIGHBOURS FILMING PAUSED
Originally published as Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated
Timely take on Munich Olympics terrorist crisis
The edge-of-your-seat factual drama September 5 takes viewers behind the scenes in one of the Olympic Games’ darkest hours with a message that still resonates today.
Companion’s a terrifically twisting thriller best seen spoiler-free
Companion is the kind of original and inventive thriller that comes around all too rarely – but the top-level twists hit hardest by going in spoiler-free, writes Leigh Paatsch.