Your Night In: Every movie on TV tonight rated or slated
If you’re in the mood for Mark Wahlberg’s manly emoting then docu-disaster movie Deepwater Horizon is for you. If you’d prefer to watch Taylor Lautner take his shirt off, your TV should be tuned to the final instalment of Twilight.
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DEEPWATER HORIZON (M)
***
7.30pm GO!
This here’s what one might call a docu-disaster movie: where a real-life catastrophe will be restaged for both your education and entertainment. If you wish to be educated, you’ll get the retrospective scoop on one of the biggest preventable man-made catastrophes of all time. If you wish to be entertained, there is plenty of Mark Wahlberg emoting manfully as a monster oil rig goes up in flames around him. Luckily, the right balance is struck between lasting information and disposable thrills. The tragically infamous incident covered here took place in April 2010, where the contravention of standard safety protocols on a new BP drill site resulted in 11 men dead, scores more injured, and 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. A secondary plot melodramatically exploring tensions between working-class heroes like the rig’s chief electrics man (Wahlberg) and villains such as BP’s chief slick-talker (John Malkovich) humanises a terrifying major calamity on a surprisingly personal scale. Co-stars Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PT. 2 (M)
*
8.30pm 7FLIX
So here it is. The second half of a needlessly long last goodbye. Where were we? Oh yeah. Mopey ex-mere-mortal Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is now a vampire. Being married and all, Bella and her longtime love toy Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) can now knock vampire boots whenever they like. The couple have a young daughter. Goes by the name of Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy). She’s growing up fast, and is some kind of *semi-mortal* that makes the likes of the Volturi (those long-haired, well-dressed vamps from Italy way) want to kill her. Don’t fret, ladies. Part-time werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) still has plenty of time free to take his shirt off. I could go on. But that is the job of these tedious movie, which goes on and on and on. And on.
ABOUT TIME (M)
***1/2
10.50pm 7FLIX
Another classy crowd-pleaser from Richard Curtis, the clever mind behind such popular British feelgooders as Love, Actually and Four Wedding and a Funeral. Though stepping lightly across well-trodden rom-com turf here, Curtis applies a twist that works deceptively well. At the age of 21, a young ginger-headed gent named Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) is clued in on a longstanding family secret: the males in his clan have the ability to travel back in time. Just how this inexplicable talent is used (and abused) throughout Tim’s adult life draws some of Curtis’ wittiest scripting in years. Even if the film is guilty of sometimes getting too sweet for its own good, a genuinely moving closing act excuses the excess sugar. A fine ensemble including Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy and Tom Hollander guarantees a good time will be had by most. Might be wise to bring along a tissue or two as well.
FEAR (M)
***
9.35pm GO!
If there isn’t room for a big, dopey teen thriller in your movie-watching life, then the only thing you have to fear is Fear itself. Derivative links can be drawn to formulaic old boilers like Poison Ivy, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female, but director James Foley’s dazzling thriller is actually a notch above its many predecessors. Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) meets the gentle, handsome David (Mark Wahlberg), and immediately falls heavily for this too-good-to-be-true dude. Initially, only dear old dad is suspicious. That is, until Dave starts showing his true colours (cut to the shower scene music from Psycho).
WALL STREET (M)
****
9.45pm WORLD MOVIES
Think of every high-flying entrepreneur there has ever been, and roll them into one. Give him the trophy wife, the spoilt kids, the mansion, the pool, the limo, the priceless art objects, the slicked-back hair, the striped shirt with the white collar. Voila! Now your have your very own Gordon Gekko (played to unprincipled perfection by Michael Douglas). Feed the crafty critter an eight-figure deal on a daily basis, and he will do his baddest to prove that “greed is good.” Co-starring Charlie Sheen, who used to be some kind of actor, apparently.
FOUR MOVIE PICKS TO STREAM OR RENT TO GET YOU THROUGH THE EVENING
THE OLD GUARD (MA15+)
***
NETFLIX
Big-budget, low-calorie action has long been a house specialty for Netflix’s original productions division. This new Charlize Theron butt-kicker will definitely appease those who thought highly of the platform’s recent hit Extraction with Chris Hemsworth. Theron plays Andy, the leader of a band of immortal warriors whose one job is save the world from its self-destructive tendencies. Andy is tired of centuries of dying and resurrecting repeatedly, and seems to want out just as her posse is admitting their first new member (Kiki Layne) in many generations. Plotting can get pedestrian here – the stakes feel a little low for a tale encompassing political hotspots like Afghanistan and South Sudan – but well-designed fight sequences never drop their guard for a moment. Based on the cult graphic novel series by Greg Rucka.
GREEN BOOK (M)
****
AMAZON; or rent via GOOGLE, APPLE, FOXTEL STORE
All that Green Book delivers is two blokes with short fuses on a long road trip. A white guy sits upfront, making all the small talk. A black guy sits in the back, doing his best not to listen or respond, and inevitably failing miserably at both. This is the true story of venerated African-American jazz pianist Don Shirley (a majestic display from Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali) and his brawny Italian-American driver Tony Vallelonga (a lovably lug-headed Viggo Mortensen). Together they undertake a dangerous concert tour of the Deep South in 1962, a region that seems like another planet to both men for different, yet bonding reasons. A genuinely irresistible feel-good film of the highest calibre, capturing a rare spark between two great actors while maintaining a fire in its belly when it comes to matters of acceptance, tolerance and understanding.
THE TURNING (MA15+)
****
ABC IVIEW
With characteristic frankness, Australian author Tim Winton says he is “still trying to make sense of the damned book” he wrote in 2005, many stories from which serve as the basis s for this unusual movie experience. How unusual? Well, 17 different local directors, casts and crews have been summoned to interpret different sections of Winton’s award-winning tome The Turning. The variety of styles on display is dauntingly diverse. The overall running time is three hours, including a welcome intermission break. Some instalments breeze by with little impact. Others stun by deploying short, sharp stabs of great emotional power. Sometimes, the whole thing can be a drag. Then The Turning can suddenly hit you with some of the best Australian filmmaking seen in years. The push-me-pull-you nature of the production will definitely prove to be a challenging experience for most viewers. A commitment is demanded to go with the erratic, elliptic flow of it all. The choice is yours: respond or resist. Stars Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Rose Byrne, Miranda Otto.
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (M)
****
NETFLIX
An intriguing, sobering and compellingly strange slice of real life forms one of the best documentaries of recent years. It all starts with an incredible tale of coincidence that happened in the US in the early 1980s. Robert Shafran, Edward Galland and David Kellman were born identical triplets some two decades earlier, only to be adopted out by a young mother not capable of raising them. By the slimmest of chances, the brothers accidentally found one another as adults, and from that moment on, were inseparable. The world’s media couldn’t get enough of the yarn, and the trio parlayed their fame into a successful New York restaurant. All of this alone would make for a cracking doco. But there is more. So much more. The upbeat coincidence of the siblings’ chance reunion is gradually overshadowed by the possibility there was nothing coincidental about their separation at birth. If you don’t know what happened, keep it that way until you see this remarkable investigative work.
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