Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated or slated
Your free-to-air viewing tonight includes whip-smart black comedy War Dogs, a brilliant action picture from Parasite director Bong Jun-ho or Ian McKellan as the most portrayed movie character of all time, Sherlock Holmes.
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WAR DOGS (M)
***1/2
8.30PM 7MATE
Like the award-winning hit The Big Short, War Dogs is a whip-smart black comedy with a bleak true story to tell – funny from one angle, sobering from another. Thanks to a strange US arms policy loophole in the mid-2000s, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) rapidly became kingpins in the global weapons trade. From their dinky office in Miami, these former high school buddies used a government website (not unlike an eBay for artillery) to fill defence contracts which eventually ran into the hundreds of millions. A truckload of semiautomatics to Baghdad? No problem. A monster cache of Chinese ammo for freedom fighters in Afghanistan? Can it all be shipped from a dirty warehouse in downtown Albania? Can’t see why not. Under the fast and loose directorial oversight of Todd Phillips (The Hangover) War Dogs is an equally galling and amusing case study of what can happen when big money falls into the hands of those with no conscience.
SNOWPIERCER (MA15+)
****
8.30pm GO!
If you’re a newcomer to the eccentric Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, here’s where you can get more of the great man’s work in one accessible dose. This utterly brilliant, slyly innovative action picture issues a barrage of future shocks in a pressing present tense. In a bid to stop global warming, climate scientists have triggered a new ice age. Everyone dies in the ensuing snap freeze, except for the occupants of a luxury bullet train. In the years that follow, each carriage becomes a nation unto itself. An interior security system – an unofficial set of borders, if you like – keeps everyone in their place. Due to an ambitious combo of the high-concept and the high-octane, this is an experience best seen (almost literally) cold. Stars Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton.
MR HOLMES (M)
***
7.30PM WORLD MOVIES
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Sherlock Holmes as the “most portrayed movie character” of all-time. The highest recommendation that can be made of the new British production Mr Holmes is that the great actor Ian McKellen delivers one of the finest and most focused portrayals of old Sherlock ever attempted. In fact, you can take that “old Sherlock” and raise it to a “very old Sherlock”. For in this stately adaptation of author Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, McKellen’s Sherlock Holmes is 93 years old. Always self-analytical to a fault, Holmes can sense his renowned intellect could be on the wane. As if to revive his fading powers of deduction, Sherlock re-examines the case which forced his retirement three decades prior. While the directorial style of veteran Bill Condon (Gods & Monsters) does sometimes stray towards the vanilla, the many flavours injected into the film by McKellen’s fearless, focused performance more than compensates. Co-stars Laura Linney.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (MA 15+)
*****
9.30PM WORLD MOVIES
This masterpiece from the Coen brothers (Fargo) is a haunting, hard-bitten and incongruously affecting chase flick based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. Josh Brolin stars as a Texan hunter who happens across $2 million in a briefcase, while a frightening Javier Bardem plays a merciless killer out to retrieve the cash. Though several scenes are extremely violent and unapologetically amoral, there is a chilling composure to the film as a whole that will not be denied. Highly recommended.
SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS (MA15+)
***1/2
11.45PM WORLD MOVIES
If you fell hard for the Oscar-nominated hit Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, you should make a point of doubling back and catching the previous movie from its insanely gifted writer-director, Martin McDonagh. This is a crazed crime thriller with an astute comic edge: menacing, meaningless and massively funny, all at once. Colin Farrell plays an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter trying to pen a script about psycho killers, and being forced to research the topic in the company of actual nut-jobs. Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Woody Harrelson and the great Christopher Walken are at their brilliant best when the mayhem breaks out. An underrated gem.
THREE MOVIES TO STREAM OR RENT TO GET YOU THROUGH THE EVENING
SICARIO 2: DAY OF THE SOLDADO (MA15+)
****
NETFLIX, FOXTEL
Don’t hit Day of the Soldado expecting a straightforward sequel to Sicario. That movie, you may recall, was one of the finest released in 2015: a report from the front lines of America’s long-running war on drugs, with casualties continually piling up either side of the Texas-Mexico border. While the principal location remains the same, the change of direction executed here is instantly noted. The overall impact is a lot less subtle than before, but often, just as powerful. An aggressive opening act projects a hellish vision of the Tex-Mex border that is no longer simply all about the movement of drugs. Mexican cartels are now putting a foot down on the barbed wire and letting through terrorists of all creeds and callings. Money is money, regardless of whether you’re trafficking cocaine or suicide bombers. To stem the tide, CIA black-ops specialist Graver (Josh Brolin) and his rogue Central American enforcer Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) stage a strategic kidnapping that may provoke the cartels to turn upon themselves.
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LONG HAUL (PG)
**1/2
DISNEY+, or rent via GOOGLE, ITUNES, YOUTUBE MOVIES
The original Wimpy Kid is now very much a wimpy adult. So the franchise had to find a new one (Jason Drucker). Then build a whole new screen family around him (Alicia Silverstone and Tom Everett Scott) as the mum and dad, and Charlie Wright as that dreaded dimbulb big-bro Rodrick). As for the movie itself, it often feels like an old Chevy Chase Vacation flick for undiscerning youngsters. En route to Grandma’s 90th birthday shindig, the Wimpy Kid and his wacky clan will learn to do without their digital devices for a day or so, and experience several ‘chance encounters’ with fast-moving projectile vomit, silent-but-deadly gaseous emissions, and enough solid waste to make a plumber announce his immediate retirement. If the series keeps going at this rate, they’re going to have to call the next one Diarrhoea of a Wimpy Kid.
READY PLAYER ONE (M)
****
NETFLIX
A fast and furious futuristic thrill ride that is the most a fun a Steven Spielberg-directed movie has been in many years. Adapted from the 2011 best-selling novel by Ernest Cline, this exciting, entertaining and kinda crazy blockbuster is set inside OASIS, a dazzling Virtual Reality gaming environment where in the future, much of society retreats to seek their fortune. Ready Player One is a pure action-adventure movie, and Spielberg’s filmmaking instincts wisely push the rich and relentlessly shapeshifting world of OASIS above all else. Blink-or-you’ll-miss-it pop-culture references keep coming at a rapid-fire rate, many of them drawn from the 1980s. The sheer scale and wit with which they have been inserted will bring on a total sensory overload. Especially to anyone whose DNA carries any trace of geek, nerd or gamer. Stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn.
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