Before you watch Tár, revisit Todd Field’s Little Children

You should revisit Todd Field’s Little Children, plus, two choice Taika Waititi picks.

Milla Jovovich as Leeloo in a scene from 1997 film The Fifth Element.

The Night Of

Watch on Binge

Fans of The Wire (i.e. everyone with a pulse) will lap up Steve Zaillian’s taut HBO legal thriller. The Night Of follows, in excruciating detail, the case of Naz Khan (Riz Ahmed), the 23-year-old son of a Pakistani American cab driver, who is found leaving a crime scene containing the body of a brutally murdered young woman. Naz had spent a night partying with her. Naz, who is a sweet, mild-mannered kid, says he is innocent. But to the cops, the case is open and shut, and he is sent to await trial at Rikers Island, where it’s kill or be killed. He’s taken under the wing by a lifer, played by Michael K. Williams, in one of his great, last performances. With a peerless script by novelist Richard Price (Clockers), and moody cinematography by Oscar-winner and Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood), the show outclasses all others in the oversaturated procedural market.

The Fifth Element

SBS World Movies, Sunday, 3.10PM

Not that we need an excuse to rewatch The Fifth Element, but designer Haider Ackermann’s heavenly Jean Paul Gaultier couture week show is as good as any. Gaultier, at his prime, designed more than 1000 costumes for Luc Besson’s zany sci-fi classic. The lusty Prince-indebted leopard print number sported by Chris Tucker’s eccentric radio host; the busty 23rd-century McDonald’s girls; Bruce Willis’s backless orange vest; and, of course, Milla Jovovich’s “last-minute” fresh-out-the-DNA-slicing-machine bondage/bandage suit are among cinema’s greatest hits. The costumes’ lingering impact on the fashion world has influenced everyone from Jeremy Scott at Maschino, Pam Hogg and Alexander McQueen. These days, most good sci-fi looks and feels so anhedonic and serious, so it’s titillating to revisit Besson’s sexed-up, singular, and downright goofy play on the genre. It’s a film the director says he started cooking up as a teenager, and man, does it show.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

SBS World Movies, Monday, 5.40pm

Taika Waititi is clearly having a ball churning out Marvel hits in Hollywood, but we need that freak back in New Zealand. His madcap humour is his greatest strength, and it’s at its best in his early films — like the genuinely moving family drama Boy, and the vampire flatshare mockumentary that spawned a hit US TV show, What We Do In The Shadows. Waititi’s fourth film, reigning New Zealand box office champion Hunt for the Wilderpeople, stars Sam Neill as Hec, the gruff and grouchy foster uncle to rebellious city kid Ricky (a dynamite Julian Dennison). After a family tragedy, child services threaten to take Ricky away, so he and Hec flee to seek refuge in the glorious New Zealand bush — and spark a national manhunt in the process. On the run, they meet a cast of kooks — useless hunters, a gorgeous Maori girl riding bareback, and Psycho Sam (Rhys Darby), a mad as a cut snake conspiracy theorist.

Reservation Dogs

Watch on Binge

Scratch that. Waititi can stay in the US if it means he’ll keep producing series as good as FX’s Reservation Dogs. The tender, wacky dispossession comedy, made in collaboration with Native American showrunner Sterlin Harjo (everyone involved in the production, from the actors to the crew, is indigenous), follows the lives of four teenagers on a modern-day reservation in Oklahoma. The kids are hellbent on getting out of their poverty and addiction-pocked rural community, which they blame for the death of their friend Daniel, and skipping town to California. To fund the trip, they embark on a petty crime spree: selling stolen vehicles to meth addicts for parts, nicking steak from the market so they can make and sell pies, and a Flaming Flamers chip truck heist, soundtracked by The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog.

Little Children

Watch on Stan

In 2006, Todd Field made Little Children, a miraculous, cerebral film that earned three Academy Award nominations, and notched a place on critics’ top ten lists, then he disappeared. Last year, he emerged with his first film in 16 years, the Cate Blanchett drama Tár, you may have heard about it. In Little Children, Kate Winslet is a malcontent stay-at-home housewife with a master’s in English, and an internet porn-addicted husband. She is wilting away in cookie-cutter suburban Boston, “I’m a researcher studying the behaviour of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself,” she tells herself at the children’s playground, under the watchful gaze of gossipy, small-minded mums. It’s at this park she meets the “Prom King” (Patrick Wilson), who the other mums fantasise about, and with whom she strikes up a scandalous affair. Also in the picture is a paroled pedophile, living in fear.